by The Naked Barista 24 September 2015
Woweee! What an amazing long weekend we had…
We are still working in Eshowe, but we were superblessed to be able to leave on Wednesday to meet up with our friends, Christo and Megan, in Durban for a long weekend away.
Our friends, Gerhard and Arina flew in from Cape Town and we had a lovely evening with a braai (being in South Africa, obviously a braai). Some more friends, Michael and Pixie joined us for a most enjoyable evening discussing all sorts of diverse topics ranging from permaculture to nutrition…
Six of us left early next morning as we were excited to be in the Drakensberg. Bethesda and myself have never been there and it was on our wishlist… check….
We were quite close when we visited the Midlands Meander (written article at superblessedandloved.org), just the other day as we could see the mountains far off in the distance…
We are superblessed to have friends like Christo and Megan who plans gatherings like this for friends to enjoy time spend together. After all, is it not what life is about? To make beautiful memories and have awesome experiences…
On our way we bought food…lots of it… as we divided the leftover food and we are still eating this week while back home in Eshowe.
We set up camp in ‘Dragon’s Peak Resort’. Soon, some more friends arrived, Johan, Hellen and Maja. We are superblessed to have many friends around the world..
The resort is next to where the Drakensberg Boys Choir resides. It is very well maintained with many campsites well shaded by beautiful big trees and tidy ablutions. It is well managed with a restaurant and bar. There were even a wedding while we were there. The retreat is definitely adequate for a wedding venue, as a lovely hall was build in the middle of a picturesque dam complete with ducks and frogs. We sat on the dam wall on the first night, listening to the amazing frog choir adding ambience with a variety of sounds echoing into the night. There were definitely some huge bullfrogs in the mix…it was absolutely beautiful and I felt superblessed…
The next morning we had breakfast, organised our backpacks and shoes…some of us were definitely more organised than others…but, we set off all the same enthusiastically and super excited…
The view of the mountains are majestically beautiful and after we paid our dues at the gate, we set out following our tour guide, Christo, with maps and all… we climbed to about 2200m high and still each time we looked up, the mountain towered up even higher.
The weather for the whole weekend was amazing…and although it was very hot, reaching around 40 d; we did very well… We walked around 22km for the two days, which really does not sound like much, but keep in mind the steep climb and the heat.
We were superblessed indeed every time we found trees for shade and waterfalls with crisp cool pools…
The mountain water was ice cold, which made it all the more enjoyable to drink…so much freshness…
Getting a very hot body wet, is entirely a different story and we had so much fun laughing at each other trying to get in under the waterfalls and then trying to just breathe 
normally…
Needless to say we rested up quite a while at the pools and some of us even felt creative enough to build some beautiful structures…
Getting back to the campsite we were blessed to have a swimming pool to jump into as well and we took full advantage of this…
There has been some fires on the mountains as the photo on the left side shows and some fires were still burning. It was interesting being so close to the fire. We saw some firefighters as well…
Over the years, some of us, I would say all of us, has had a gradual change of mindset regarding healthy living and so we are all more mindful of our eating and drinking, but an ice cold beer went down very well after walking in the heat…
Nature always astounds me and coming round a bend, a particular 
beautiful purple flower greeted us..
As mentioned our journey with our friends together has been quite something as we are very much conscious of healthy living these days and we inspire each other all the time…
We even started our day each morning with some yoga…
Some of us could maybe have stretched some more, as Bob, my builder (my husband Bethesda) is feeling his muscular legs quite a bit this week…
Blessed with some more friends, Camel and Anetta, joining us on Friday.
Anetta is known to be a “feeder” as she loves to feed us snacks and we were very well taken care of in that department. She also loves tequila and it is not easy to say no to her at all…
Camel blessed us even more as he has a stargazer toy (huge telescope) which he promptly set up for our viewing pleasure on Saturday night.
Weather is so fickle and I enjoy this as it always reminds me how quickly things can change…we had a very quick thundershower on Thursday and Friday afternoon, but the weather was perfect for viewing Saturn and the moon with craters and all on Saturday evening. How amazing this time spend was, with all of us taking turns to peak through the lens at the sky with one eye and observe such awesome wonder so very, very far away…
Once again we can say we are superblessed to have the most beautiful friends…
Special thanks for Christo and Megan, not only for their good organisation of bringing friends together always, but also for making sure that all of us had bedding, ointments and plasters…and gratitude to Annetta always for the feeding of eats and drinks…
Photo credit to Johan, Camel and Bethesda for all the photos used in this post…Gratitude…
…and so our lovely weekend at the Drakensberg ended on Sunday morning as we left early, taking Gerhard and Arina to the Airport, having a quick smoothie before they departed…
…but that’s not all, because as I mentioned, we have friends everywhere and from the airport we went to Ballito where we met up with our friends, Heydenrich and Tori on Willard’s beach…and we were superblessed to have a swim in the ocean…then a beer and a quick shower at their beautiful ‘French styled’ accommodation.
As they already had lunch plans, we decided to have lunch, just the two of us in Ballito at Giannis Ristorante. What a lovely lunch it was as we reminisced over a glass of white wine and seafood platter with stunning view of the ocean about our awesome time spend in the Drakensberg mountains.
Superblessed indeed!