DK hike day 2 night

Elevation: 3000m

Chilling inside the tent after some grueling hiking. The last major formation we hurdled was this pretty steep decline:

This was the view upon the start of the descent:

The mist helped cover up the kilometer-long slope to the valley floor. 

This and the climb before it were the most challenging parts of the hike today. It was raining the hardest, and the rocks were the loosest. It was dangerous if you weren't paying attention, but manageable if you were. So of course I was paying attention. 

I don't have pictures of the obstacles to illustrate the difficulty, but I couldn't recommend this hike to everyone. Matt says so far, it's not as bad as the last day of Kilimanjaro. But there's lots of spots where you need to make the right moves to proceed safely, and not everyone might be comfortable with that level of commitment. 

In between all the mist, we were still treated to the stunning Drakensberg landscape:

In the upper right of the last picture, where the peak is reaching into the clouds -- our cave is on the back side. It's more of an overhang, which is why we're in the tents. Poor Gabe and Darren have to suffer with a wet tent and a host of steady drips hammering down. 

While Matt and I were chilling in the tent, a few Lesotho men walked by. Gabe described their gear -- wooden walking sticks, rubber galoshes, only one guy with a backpack. Darren had them pegged as smugglers, though he was surprised by their choice of route. They were making fast time trying to get to wherever they needed to go. It made me appreciate how rugged the land is, that it simply denies A-to-B travel. The Zulu name for the Drakensberg is uKhalamba, the Barrier of Spears. Darren says that Tolkien, born in South Africa, based the Misty Mountains on this landscape. Wikipedia says otherwise fairly specifically, unfortunately. In either case, there was no way the movies could have been filmed here -- the terrain is inaccessible at that scale. Nor, I think, would all the people who enjoy using this land want that kind of attention. 

Dinner was gnocchi with salami.