Sporekrans: The “Tree Crisis”

by Stephanie Brown

We promised a weekend of adventure, but hadn’t quite counted on the “tree crisis”! As we got close to Sporekrans, we were awed by the sculpted mountains against a setting sun and beautiful sky. But we were a bit puzzled when we came across the most enormous tree blocking what we thought was our route.

We called Pitso, our host, who told us there had been a “tree crisis”. Still a bit puzzled, Jennie managed to drive our vehicle around the tree and make our way to the camp. We arrived at a dark camp (loadshedding) and in the glow of the headlamps saw the devastation that had been wrought by the storm that had passed only an hour previous. There were fallen trees – and even more fallen branches – everywhere including on the roof our cabin!

Fortunately, the cabin itself was not damaged and, as the storm had passed (and the night was dark), we decided to stay for the night following Pitso’s advice to stay in the back section of the cabin. It was a bit eerie – but the lights did come on at about 9am – an ominous start!

The Cave

We arrived at The Bushman’s Cave just before 2pm. The cave is about 100m long, 20m high and 30m deep with 26 beds all in a row. On two of these beds was all of our bags and food that Pitso and Abraham portered for us. There was a fire pit with a grate, and a clean pot and large bucket of drinking water on the table next to the fire. Along a trail at one end of the cave was the “loo with a view” – no door just an open space looking out onto the most spectacular view .
We took some time to revel in our surroundings, settle in and then got the fire going for a braai and long, lazy evening.
We slept well in our mountain cave, but all awoke at different times, awed by the stars spread across the big, open night sky and a variety of wildlife sounds. And then the Bright and early the sun rose and we watched the sky change colour and to mark another beautiful day arrive.

Hiker’s Paradise

The “Spore in the Krans”

Waking in the morning, we all had stories.  Did you hear the kittens?  Did you hear drinking the sounds of lapping?  Who was brave enough to walk to the loo? We saw what we were sure were cat prints on the sandy floor of our cave – large ones near a pool of water at the far end of the cave and tiny ones (kittens?) farther along.  After some close investigation, we found one cat print over what we were pretty certain was one of our boot prints. There was also an animal dropping, but that had been there when we arrived.