TheTravelingTortoise
Puppy
Part 3 - Sabie - Lone Creek Falls
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Cissy having her morning tea.
After enjoying our morning coffee and tea we packed up our campsite and packed the bikes. Today again is not going to be a very long distance ride but we have a plan for the day.
Leaving MacMac Adventures we where faced with our first challenge, that steep rocky uphill we came in we now had to go down. The rocks on this little down hill section is extremely loose and we both had a little bit of a wiggle and waggle and a slide here and there. Nothing serious but as we are still getting used to the loaded bikes it was an extra shot of espresso to start the day.
From where we camped to Sabie, our destination for the day, is only 16km. At least it is more than what Cissy's bike came with! This road is still part of the Panorama Route and we enjoyed the scenery towards Sabie. We have risen this road many times but once again it felt like a whole new road as we are on our adventure. Coming into Sabie we made our way to our BnB for the night, Hettie se Plekkie, where we met Hettie. A lovely lady who also was very kind to let us book in earlier than what you normally can.
But now we had a place to drop the bags and drop the weight, we dressed a little cooler and in clothes that we can walk in. Our next stop would be Lone Creek Waterfall where we want to spend the day hiking and relaxing. But first we had to get some fuel for "Mouse" - Cissy's 390 Adventure. We are still figuring this bikes fuel gauge out, when it says almost empty she can still do about 200km. Well either the bike is extremely light on fuel or that reserve tank is massive! But anyway, we made our way to the fuel station and found ourselves with a constant pain everybody in South Africa has to live with, Loadshedding! Now to those that are wondering what load shedding is, we have in South Africa rolling power blackouts. Depending on what stage we are in we can have up to 12 hours of no electricity a day. Wonderful!
So back at the fuel station and faced with load shedding the fuel pumps where powered down and we could not get fuel for Cissy at that moment. They do have a diesel generator to power the pumps during load shedding but they where having issues with it. But hey we did manage to get some sandwiches and cool drinks, so all good!
We decided to forget about the fuel and just go and hope for the best. Lone Creek Falls was not far out of town. Cant let little things like not getting fuel get in the way of a good day! So off we went towards the falls, riding out of Sabie we came across one of the worst potholed invested roads we have come across so far! I mean you try and dodge one pothole and end up hitting 5 others! But it was not that bad, the bikes are made to handle much worst things than this. The ride there was actually pretty nice and we laughed at all the potholes, as we came to the entrance gate, we payed for entry and head towards the waterfall. Cissy singing in my ears and enjoying the amazing landscape we came around a bend in the road and got our first glimpse of Lone Creek Falls! WOW! it is beautiful! Waterfalls is scattered all over this are, you can spend a whole day riding from one to the other and still not even come close to seeing all of them.
Lone Creek Falls
We parked our bikes at the start of the hiking trail that leads to the falls. Well, hiking trail is a bit of an over statement, if you are able to walk to the kitchen and back you can make this walk. It is a lovely little walk under the trees and it gave us some cover from the sun and cooled us down. Once we reached the falls we made our way down to the rocky "beach" if you want to call it that and enjoyed the beauty of the place. We had our lunch there and spend some time just relaxing and chatting away. It was quite busy but not to over crowded and we really enjoyed it there.
Cissy having lunch at Lone Creek Falls
Lone Creek Falls is 68meter high and has also been declared a national monument. There are quite good facilities at the parking lot and also some vendors selling stuff like hats, art, etc etc normal tourist trap you get all over South Africa at places like this. But it is worth going and seeing this place, take a picnic basket and spend some time there. Truly beautiful and good for the soul.
Cissy in front of Lone Creek Falls
We intended to not travel a long distance to accommodation that day, as we wanted to go and explore more waterfalls but as we could not find fuel for Mouse we just spend the time at Lone Creek. I think it was better as we could just relax and slow our minds down, we are still getting into this lifestyle and our minds are processing everything that has happened and what is happening now. So slowing it all down and stopping to smell the flowers or well looking at a waterfall is what we needed.
After our lovely couple of hours we spend at the waterfall we made our way back to Sabie over the patchy road, made a quick stop at the supermarket to get some food for the evenings dinner and went to our BnB. We would spend 3 nights here. But that is for the next part of the story.
If you want to watch the video of this day, here it is.
More stories to come! Stay Tuned the Adventure has only begun!
