Steelpoort – Getting Too Cocky?

There had been some rain at home but not a great amount. Not certainly within the last few days, although several localised thunderstorms should have done the trick. I was desperate for a paddle and so Luke Longridge and I drove down early that Sunday morning and met up with Neil O’Leary and Chris Barichievy. Having our usual breakfast of Steers was great, like always, and after that we hit the road to the put-in.

Upper Olifants – A Two Day, 50 km Trip

This unknown section of the Olifants is not paddled very often. It was paddled on the odd occasion in the past but now the people who own the land at the Bobbejaan Hiking Trail will not allow us kayakers to use their land to take out on. Karl Martin phoned them up and they refused us. Quite weird actually, perhaps somebody, somewhere along the line pissed them off. Karl is a very friendly and diplomatic person but he couldn’t get them to change their minds. So we didn’t have a choice and would have to paddle to the low level bridge inside the Kingdom Farm. This would be a far paddle and cover a lot of ground.

Crocodile Gorge – Hippos, a Close Brush with Death

After another cramped drive through the outskirts of Barberton, up through the mountain pass which I have so many fond memories of as a child, through Nelspruit and finally we had arrived at the head of the Crocodile Gorge. A foreboding place to be. We had managed to get to the southern side, on a road between the railway line and the river. It had been decided that we would drive down a little to see what the river was about and to see how much water was flowing down. The river seemed placid and peaceful and so far, no sign of hippo. This was quickly proved untrue as we found fresh hippo tracks at the put-in. I glanced upstream to the flat water and small rapids and was glad that we had missed out on about a kilometres worth of river.

Steelpoort Meets Fluid Spice

Another early morning and Adrian Vroom arrived merrily at my house. Well, maybe not that merrily as mornings aren’t really his thing and he claims that ‘normal’ people don’t get up that early. Ha, we kayakers aren’t too normal anyway. Still he was as stoked as I was to be getting away from this horrible place they call Johannesburg and we left armed with two boats each. Our mission was to paddle the Steelpoort on the Saturday, then drive down to Vygeboom Dam and stay with a good mate of mine and then the  following morning we would continue to Nelspruit to paddle the notorious Crocodile Gorge.