I hiked the Berg!

On Wednesday, St. Patrick's Day for all you at home, the nursing students and I headed for the Drakensberg Mountains! Now, for those of you who know me well, you may not believe this, but I bacpacked up the mountain! :) Yep! Check out me all ready to go!

Our nursing professors, Wendy and Glenda, have a good friend who likes to take groups backpacking up the Drakensberg Mountains. Their friend, Michael, is really into backpacking so he let us use his "rucksacks." We had to bring up all our food and even the pots to cook it all in, everything! It was pretty intense.

We left AE at about 9am and arrived at the Mountain a little before noon. Each of us on the hike had to carry a bucket of food that we would have for lunch, dinner, and breakfast. I had to carry the three loaves of bread. :) In my rucksack, I packed two extra shirts, a pair of shorts, a flashlight, my glasses, suncscreen, my journal, and my toothbrush and toothpaste. Oh yeah and 3 extra bottles of water. He said that we could drink the water that was flwoing up there, but that was too intense for me! My rucksack with all my stuff and my sleeping bag and mat probably weighed about 30-40 lbs.

We headed up the mountain and hiked for four and a half hours. It was about 5 miles only, but it was very uphill and steep. It was such an experience to look up and around during the hike and just see beauty. This is a picture of me at the top of the mountain! :)

When we got to the cave, which we were going to sleep in, it was about 4:30pm so we went to this waterfall that ran into this area that you could swim in. It was so pretty. I didn't get in, because it was a little overcast and the water was really cold, but I put my feet in. :) We also had to collect water from this area to use for cooking. On the way back to camp, we looked for a dead tree, so that we could find wood to burn.

The one different, but exciting thing about this backpacking trip was that Michael brought really gourmet food for us to cook and eat for a camping trip. For dinner, we made Knorr brand bacon carbonara pasta and macaroni and cheese pasta with sausage. We used the pots we brought and everything! For desert, we had peaches and cream with custard! It was like camping with a guy from the food channel! :)

After dinner, we sat around the campfire and just talked and hung out. I slept near Lyndsey, Brianna, and Tony. We couldn't go to bed at first, so we started making a movie on Tony's camera. It was so funny! We started doing video confessions of our time here in South Africa...it was really fun! We ended staying up til only 10pm and then passed out. We were so tired from the hike up! It rained during the night, but we stayed dry from the cave. It was kinda cool to hear the rain and then wake up to complete mist all around. Before we left for the hike back down, we left our own cave painting. :)

The hike down was three hours, but it was alot better because it was downhill. :) I was so proud of myself for backpacking and sleeping in a cave, becuase that is so not me, but it was fun. Definitely something that I will always remember. Until next time....