Blyde River Canyon and the Echo Caves

Well, a month into our trip, this is finally an update from the Dan part of the Aileen & Dan duo. Aileen has not been allowing me to write on the blog because she says I'm boring and nobody wants to hear what I have to say anyway.

She's off taking a shower in our wicked cool outdoor safari shower, so I've snuck onto the computer.

I have had fantastic time on the trip thus far. I've had monkeys piss and shit on me. I've coiled up a whole crap load of barbed wire. I've tried to kill the wasp nest at our chalet twice, and failed, so now I've just learned to live with it. Today I made a small gate to keep the warthog off the patio.

Last night I killed a centipede that we found under Aileen's shoe inside our chalet. Today we found another one in a pile of rocks and Tjart went berzerk stomping his boot on it until it was dead. Tjaart is a crazy old farmer that helps out with things around Enkosini. Everyone here says "Anything Tjaart doesn't know about nature is not worth knowing". He told me about how the dung beetle lays its eggs by rolling a piece of poo into a ball, and then burying it, digging out the insides, and planting its eggs in there so the larvae have something to feed on. Then there is a type of wasp that finds the poo, and puts its eggs inside as well, so that they can feed on the dung beetle larvae. So anyway, Tjaart killed the centipede, and then told us that if they bite you, "it burns like mad and then you start to rot from the inside". The only way to save yourself it to cut out all the rotting flesh around the bite.

So I guess I should be telling you about the highlight of the weekend, which was a trip yesterday to the Blyde river canyon. It's about an hour and a half drive from Lydenburg, and it is absolutely breathtaking. We'll have to post some pictures later. There are three huge circular mountain type things called the "Three Rondevals" in the canyon. Rondevals are the old circular mud/grass huts that early humans in the area lived in. The best part was a cave we stopped at on our way back. It was called the "Echo caves" because there are stalagtites deep in the cave that you can play like a xylophone. The sound magnifies through the caves and is quite loud coming out of the entrance. The guide told us all about the history of the caves, and how they were used as a hiding place by the swazi people when the zulus were attacking.

So anyway, the monday excursion back into town just arrived, so I should go help unload groceries and eat my pizza.

Guye Dag!

Dan&Aileen (see how I switched that?)