saturday

On our way early the next morning and the mountain is huge. Known sometimes as island in the sky because of the clouds that often cut the view in half making it look like land in the sky I couldn’t imagine if rhona and I had made it before that we would ever have made it up…it looked very formidable. Again we missed our turnoff but it gave us the chance to see all the tea plantations. Fields and fields of green all around the mountain. And we just kept driving. I think we were probably 6k from the Mozambique border before we realized that we should have turned 20k behind us. (NB: we passed through at least 3 police road blocks who all asked us where we were going and when we said the mountain they let us continue…all in the wrong direction—so helpful). so around we went to our (once again well marked from this direction) turn onto a dirt road to get to the entrance to the national reserve. Pounced upon every time we had to stop or turn by people who wanted to be our guide we continued on to the CCAP Guesthouse where we found clean rooms and friendly staff. An afternoon hike to a waterfall where we could swim and relax. Just beautiful really. We started back down when the clouds came in and we were worried about rain. Made it back to the hostel before the rains began and set up for some r&r for the rest of the evening.