Golden Gate

Yesterday was another great day of hiking. We went to Golden Gate Highlands National Park. It's about a two hour drive from Maseru.

We planned to do the Rhebok Trail, which according to the hiking book, is a two day trail, of 28 - 30 km (depending on which book/map you look at). But like all the other hikes that we've done, we assumed that the estimated hiking time was way over estimated. After our last 28 km hike, which was supposed to take 16 hours (we did it i 5.5), we figured this would be much the same. Undoubtedly, though, the park ranger just stared at us when we told him our plans. Then said, "You want to do what?!", as if we were the craziest people alive. As we left the registration building, he shook his head, "Good luck..." Encouraging words, eh?

The Rhebok trail is a loop trail, with an overnight hut at 14km. We made it to that hut in 3 hrs, and decided to press on with the "day two" part of the trail, since it was only noon. So we walked for about 45 min, assuming we were on the trail, since there were no signs, when we got to a cave that was filled with water. On the other side of the pool was a ladder up the rock face. "Huh? We're supposed to wade through that to continue?" Seeing no other option, and not remembering reading about that in the trail description, we decided that we probably weren't on the Rhebok Trail, and decided to just back track the way we came. It was really too cold to go through the chest deep pool, holding out packs over our heads, especially if at the end, we actually weren't going the right way. So we went back to the Rhebok Hut, and then back up the 14 km trail to the parking lot.

All in all, we hiked about 35 km - 20 miles. It was a great day, great fall weather, and great to get home to a big dinner and my bed. I woke up starving this morning (my HRM told me that I burned 2500 cals yesterday), so I'm glad I had gone to the grocery store on Thursday!

I'm driving out to the airport today to pick up a clinical volunteer who will be in Maseru for about a week. I'm considering going to the gym first (mostly because I'm crazy and I won't be able to go tomorrrow). But then it's home to tackle a Public Health Management and Leadership training that I'm developing.