Souvenir Going

This Monday was a very nice winter day in South Africa. The kids have a nice long winter break from school and Hannes was off on a buffalo hunt, so Mandi decided to take Susie and I to the mountain lookout points to do a little shopping and site seeing. The place we were headed is called Blyde canyon, which is the second largest canyon in the world after the grand canyon. Luckily it was only about an hour drive so not much time was wasted getting up there. Our sight seeing was unfortunately somewhat blurred by a lingering smoky haze from some massive fires that happened that previous Wednesday. Our first stop was to see these 3 mountain formations that look just like the native huts of the area. Although hard to see it was still a very cool sight. There we also got to do some shopping from the local venders. Almost all of their materials are hand made and I have to say their craftsmanship is amazing! Everything I saw I knew my family and friends would love, but I had to chose wisely. I'm glad we had Mandi there because she filled us in on what items were the best quality and she also helped us haggle the sellers to lower the prices.

After we got a few items there we headed to our next stop. Mandi filled us in on some history of the natural pothole pools we were about to see. There is an old legend that goes behind the formation of these pools. I don't know it exactly, but I think this is how it goes. Supposedly there was this group of explorers that were heading through that area. They got to a point were it got pretty steep, so the men and boys told the women they would go down first to make sure it was safe and if it was they would come back up to fetch the women. The men headed down and almost all of them got malaria and got very sick, then being unable to get back and fetch the women. The women after a while got worried and decided to head down to find their husbands and sons. About half way down they came across one of the men who had gotten sick and he told the women the story. They all became very sad and decided to head down along the Truer River (sad river). It turns out though that the men and boys had ran into a local tribe after getting sick and the tribe gave them medicine that cured them. This tribe was up the Blyde River (happy river) and it made the men happy for being healed, so they headed down the river and eventually met up with the women. The happy and sad river combined forming these natural swirling pools that over the years created these amazing perfectly round holes all throughout the canyon. I found the old story very cool and the sights beautiful. 

After the sites we finished up our shopping were I found some more amazing souvenirs. My favorite are these wax paintings that the women do, they are extremely original and I can't wait to bring them back and show everyone. Finally my shopping was finished and we headed a little further into the mountains for lunch at one of Mandi's favorite restaurants. It's called Harry's pancakes and it was delicious. I ordered the biltong (jerky) and cheese one. It was a bunch of biltong and cheese wrapped in a crape that came with a cheese sauce and it was amazing! After that we headed back. It was a great day and we were informed on the way back that hopefully there will be some zip lining in our near future. Until than I'm gonna continue sitting in the blind waiting for my wildebeest to come in. I'm hoping tonight is the night. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.