Information on Drakensberg Central - Drakensberg - South Africa

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Nearby tourist attractions include the Basothu Cultural Village, the Inkart Art Gallery for unusual painted arts, Creative Metal Works for customised wrought iron ware, as well as the famous Battlefields of Spionkop. Visit the nearby Trevreden Cheese Farm for homemade cheeses, the world renowned Meadowsweet Farm where visitors are offered the opportunity of observing herb production from nursery stage to the dried product, or the Royal Natal National Park which boasts the most magnificent scenery in the Drakensberg.

WALKING IN THE BUSH

The Drakensberg is renowned for its varied walking and hiking opportunities. Did you know that you can also walk and hike in our bushveld reserves? In fact there are hiking trails in virtually all of our reserves. The opportunity to walk through natural bush or grassland, where you can touch, smell, feel the African veld with all your senses is really special and on your next KZN Wildlife holiday take the time to experience it.
The ultimate hiking experience in the bushveld is a wilderness trail. There are a variety of options to experience the unspoilt beauty of the natural bush where Homo sapiens rub shoulders with the natural world without the trappings of civilization. Walk out each day from a base camp, returning to your creature comforts in the evening. Walk from fly camp to fly camp moving from place to place in the wilderness. A bucket shower is welcome to wash away the dust of the day. Carry the necessities on your back and make camp wherever the days adventures take you. Stand solitary guard through the night and reacquaint yourself with the sounds of the African night. It is soul cleansing!
No time or unsure how you will handle a wilderness trail? A guided walk with an experienced field ranger is a great substitute. Working in the bush every day, their senses are attuned to the comings and goings of the denizens of this natural world and they will expose you to things you would never see on your own. Experience mornings, afternoons or in some cases an all day walks. Each time of the day has its own special characteristics with light and shade, smells and the wildlife that is active. Want to test your own observation skills and walk at your own pace and time. Ithala Game Reserve has some wonderful trails that take you through a variety of habitats to some breathtaking view points where green hills shift to blues and greys into the distance. A shady hat, loose clothing, a stout pair of hiking boots, binoculars and camera for those special shots to win the photographic competition and you are ready for your walk in the bush. Don`t forget the tick repellent or your walk will live with you for a while!

DRAKENSBERG GEOLOGY

Think of our world as a ball of super heated molten magma on which floats a solid crust or mantle which is divided into a mosaic of irregular pieces called tectonic plates. These plates move because of gravity and momentum, grinding against each other creating enormous heat and pressure. This movement takes place incredibly slowly over an inconceivable length of time. As these plates push together, material is forced upward to form mountain ranges like the Himalayas. Plates brushing against each other form areas of great instability, characterised by volcanoes and earthquakes. In some instances one plate is forced below another and material melted into the molten core. This is the basis of our worlds geology which is then sculptured by temperature, wind and water.
Before time began, the uplifted tectonic plates formed one huge landmass we call the super continent of Gondwanaland. The lower lying plates were covered in a huge primal ocean. Through movement of the solid crust and individual tectonic plates, this super continent gradually broke apart and individual sections moved or drifted away from each other to eventually become the continents that we know today.
This evidence of tectonic movement can be seen all over our continent of Africa, the most obvious being the Great Rift Valley that stretches from the Sudan down into Southern Malawi. Our beautiful province of KwaZulu-Natal is dominated by the Drakensberg which stretches 250 kilometres along its western boundary. The `Berg, as we affectionately know it, with grassy slopes dotted with proteas, deep valleys and gorges with dark splashes of forest. These crouch beneath stark vertical sandstone cliffs and the towering ramparts of the `High Berg stretching into the sky above them. These landscapes are very much a result of this tectonic convulsion.
The Drakensberg Mountains, meaning "Dragon's Mountain" in Afrikaans and called uKhahlamba, barrier of spears" in isiZulu, are the highest mountains in Southern Africa, rising up at Thabana Ntlenyana to 3,482 m (11,422 ft) in height. Geologically, the Drakensberg is a remnant of the original African plateau. The mountains are capped by a layer of basalt up to 1,500 m thick, with sandstone lower down, resulting in a combination of steep-sided blocks and pinnacles. The sandstone layer was deposited as the remnants of a gigantic sea that occupied much of what is now Southern Africa some 500 Million years ago. The Basaltic layer which overlies this was deposited about 220 Million years ago in what many geologists think was the largest volcanic eruption in the history of the world. This was linked with the splitting of the tectonic plates of Africa and South America. Molten magma poured out through cracks and fissures in the ground covering the thick sediment of the ancient Karoo basin to a depth of more than 1500 metres. The pressure caused by the weight and heat of this d eposit turned the underlying sediment into the sandstone that we see as Cave Sandstone in the Drakensberg. In these mountains we often find fossilised sea shells and wonder how they could be here when we are so far above the sea. In Giant`s Castle there are footprints of a dinosaur on the roof of a cave. These footprints were left in the silt of the ancient sea and fixed for all time by these geological forces. The material in the fissures and cracks crystallized into dolerite dykes and sills which are a feature of our KwaZulu-Natal landscape. Moist easterly winds off the Indian Ocean precipitated heavy rains against the sheer escarpment of the African plateau and this gushing water cut into the enormous plateau, producing an extraordinary and almost unique landscape. The Drakensberg is one of only two mountain ranges (along with the Simian Mountains of Ethiopia) to have been formed in this geological way, which accounts for its extraordinarily distinctive formations and colours. The landscape is dominated by extremely steep cliffs, some of them amongst the most impressive cliff faces on earth, such as the Amphitheatre in Royal Natal National Park. Caves and overhangs are frequent in the more easily eroded sandstone, and it is here where the First People, the San Bushmen, lived and where they recorded their view of life in the many rock paintings found throughout these mountains.