Well the ()^^&%^% cough / cold seems to like me and has intensified, however it is more of an annoyance than anything else, my energy seems to be there which is just as well as we have been doing a fair bit of walking / hiking.
Today was another voyage of discovery, we headed out towards Pilgrims Rest but stopped to find a geocache on the way, we found the geocache and got two new converts in Robert and Mollie. We found two more geocaches through out the day, with Robert discovering one of them.
Pilgrims Rest was one of the first gold discoveries in S. Africa, in the last 100 years they have mined 500,000 ounces of gold. Many of the early gold mining towns were company old, but in Pilgrims Rest the miners owned their own properties. These properties remained pretty much as they had been 100 years ago and the local tourism authority have started to promote the town.
While we were there we watched one of the locals making beaded wire ornaments from small Christmas tree ornaments to 3ft tall giraffes. Mollie commissioned him to make key chains with her charities logo in it. Fifty key chains to be picked up in 48 hours for 6 Rand (50c Canadian) each!
General pictures of and within Pilgrims Rest are below.
Next stop was the Mac Mac falls, entrance here was the outrageous price of 50c Canadian! Pictures below.
A few Kms down the road were the Mac Mac pools, a series of small pools along the Mac Mac River where we went swimming and had lunch. (Un)fortunately no pictures of swimsuit clad tourists!
After lunch we took a circuitous route back to the resort over the Long Tom Pass up at 7100ft AMSL. Long Tom Pass got its name from the fact that it was the location of the last shell fired from the Long Tom Gun at the end of the 2nd Boer War in 1902. For its time this was a large gun with a barrel of 7m and a range of 9kms.
Long Tom and some shots of the trip home follow.
