Our First Road Trip

Our First Road Trip

Last weekend, both ALA and Nova Pioneer had their mid-term breaks, so we could took advantage of the break to explore outside of Johannesburg.  We found a small village, named Machadodorp (after a Portuguese general), with an Airbnb that we used as our base to do some hiking in the area. 

On our way out, we detoured to visit Pretoria.  In spring, in South Africa, the jacaranda tree is in full bloom and, apparently, Pretoria has an abundance of jacarandas.  On the ride in, I randomly looked on TripAdvisor for "jacaranda viewing."  One post suggested that the view from the Union Buildings affords a great place to see the purple of the flowers, so I plugged it in. We navigated through Pretoria, interested in see another city in South Africa, then made our way to the Union Buildings -- which seemed a huge historic site (to our surprise).  We parked, then asked the always helpful parking guy -- can we visit inside?  Oh no, he laughed -- that is for President Zuma!  But, don't worry, he's not here since it's the weekend!

In our complete ignorance, we had driven up to what is comparable to the White House, and just wondered -- can we come in??  Well, now we know better!  We had a brief, but very helpful, lesson of the different branches of SA government and some cool photo ops.

Overlooking the city of Pretoria

The Union Buildings, working place of the President

Nelson Mandela and Hans

The jacaranda trees in front of the US embassay
(NB: illegal photo!)

Beautiful purple blossoms of the jacaranda

The next day, we went hiking.  Rather than state/national parks, the hiking here is often on private farms and you pay the owners a fee to hike on their land.  The trails are actually maintained quite well and offer facilities too.  Looking on-line, many of the hikes are two-five day hikes with huts in between -- we'll definitely try that the next time.

Here are some pictures of our first day of hiking;

We hiked up a ravine, then down to this waterfall --- beautiful.

The second day, we were more out in the open, on a working farm (cattle and game).  And -- another waterfall to hike to! The only problem with both hikes is that some of the signs were ONLY in Afrikaans.  Which we don't speak.  We honestly just hoped that there was no pertinent information that remained untranslated...

We also visited a cute town called Dullstrom.  A bookstore/smoking store with a shelf for 

"Woman Weepies."

Now we're back at work -- and back into our regular routines, which feels pretty good, too!