Monday, October 7, 2013

sebebe rock hike and a word on combies

 today Louis and I   decided to hike sebebe rock hiking trail.    sebebe  is  the second largest exposed rock in the world. the bigger one being   in Australia.    when you see it from the road it looks like a  not gigantic, round   hard mountain-  I guess, basically what it is , a  very large exposed rock-      there is some green on the bottom , growing from the black of bushfires, and then the big rounded rock.  we  hiked from the back end  up so it  ended up not seeming like it looked from the front.  Louis said it looked a lot like iceland .                  the day was cool which was great.   , we got to the base of sebebe  about 11 am and  we were the first hikers of the day. we were actually the only hikers of the day.              .  the first part of the hike is a  dirt path road heading up passed some  houses made of small logs and mud, brick combo. and as always , smattered with chickens and a couple dogs- partially burnt trash ,  and hanging laundry.  . steep, just challenging  enough. dry grass and small rocks.      then it starts to  level off .        the walk from then on is mostly  grassy, with lots of boulders strewn about-  one  probably 60 or 70 ft high     .  I guess at one point , they all rolled there from somewhere higher. but now, they all seem pretty stable,    although they did look like they somehow stopped mid stream.   the green is  mostly on the background of the black of fairly recent cleansing bush fires-  there are  lots of wildflowers starting and a   very nubile green .                       just when I hoped to see some cows, we were amidst a herd of about 30, lots of whom had very large horns.  they didn't seem to mind us, but they definitely noticed us.  we walked with and then passed  them onto the top , where we climbed up some steep rocks to a vast overview of mountains and valleys.  Swaziland is very mountainous-   we turned back, revisited our herd and this time had the pleasure and brief company of a shepherd, or as Louis said, since  they were not sheep , the man was a cowboy.  he pointed us in the right direction since we lost sight of our markers and a couple hours  later we  were back on the road , hailing a combie . really nice southern African music playing in the background , through the rolling hills.  it was a good day. really nice to spend time with luigi Louis. 

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