| Interesting Lessons... |
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As a kid probably my favourite holiday destination was a caravan park in the Drakensberg mountains (the Berg) called Dragon's Peak. We would hook up to our 6 berth caravan and head out on the six hour or so long trip into the mountains west of Estcourt in Natal. This caravan was built like a brick shithouse, it probably weighed about the same too. Inevitably by the time we got past Pietermaritzburg we had to start worrying about the car overheating and stranding us on the side of the road. Of course my memory is probably tainted with the passage of time but if I remember correctly we had this concern with all three of the vehicles we used over the years of traveling up there. When we finally got there, around the time Kerry and I had driven the folks mad with "are we there yet?" and everyone was worn out, we would break out the tent that formed an extra room on the side of the caravan and try to figure out how it was assembled. This is probably a pretty common scene in most families but after about five minutes, with the tent and poles still in a bundled mess, either Mom or Dad would leave in a huff after a display of pitiful teamwork and gritted teeth, leaving those of us remaining to figure it out. It took me quite a few trips to learn to just disappear early on and save myself from having to sit through the re-run! |
| Once we had gone through the
setup ritual we were in for a very relaxing time. In the beginning there
was nothing at the resort in terms of services like stores etc. There was
a swimming pool, some self catering bungalows, a tennis court, a small
lake where you could paddle canoes and paddleskis and a reception building
with a TV room. Quiet, simple and tranquil. Now that I'm thinking about it
it seems as though most of my more prominent childhood memories took place
in the Berg over the years. It was here, while crossing a huge field, that
I was chased by horses and barely made it over the fence at the far end
before being stomped to a pulp by these stark raving mad beasts. To this
day no one has believed me about this. When retelling the story, which I
have long since stopped doing, I would always be met with looks suggesting
I was as mad as the damn horses! (that was probably their plan all along!) It was here too that I met my first zebra up close and personal. There were two of them that would wander around the property and every now and then stick their noses in at select campsites. (Those became the prime sites as far as Kerry and I were concerned) One day I was running over to see them when I stood on a sharp bone that buried itself between my toes about an inch into my foot, of course we would never have thought of wearing shoes at that age. I can remember looking for sympathy from Mom or Dad and all they did was pull out the bone, say "it doesn't seem to be bleeding!" and sent me on my way! These days I could probably find a good psychologist who would absolve me of any and all responsibility, past and future, for that little bit of trauma! The resident ostrich wasn't as much fun as the zebras, his whole objective in life was to circle the fenced of tennis courts and wait for someone to miss the ball and then race them to it. If you didn't get your ball before it hit the fence you would have to stand there and watch this ostrich swallow your tennis ball and stare at you as this lump (your ball) traveled slowly down its scrawny neck! I don't think I ever finished a game there because we would always run out of balls first. |
| One memory involved "the
lady with the red undies". In the area there were plenty of great hiking
trails for families. On this particular day we were taking a break from
hiking and it was just as well because by lunchtime it had started to
drizzle. The whole family was sitting under the awning attached to the
caravan enjoying sandwiches, or something similar for lunch, when it
really started to pour. Now rainstorms in Africa can be very dramatic. I
haven't heard the saying outside of Africa and there is probably a reason,
it was "coming down in sheets!" That is about five times as heavy as
"bucketing down" which is at least twice as much as "raining cats and
dogs"! Anyway, as we sat there during the transition from just drizzling we could see a family cresting the hill on their way back to the resort. Everybody was there; mom, dad, kids and grandparents. As the drizzle picked up they would slip and slide more and more down the trail. As the rain increased so did the mud on the path and therefore so did the drama and comedy of the troupe, now legs and arms were flailing in the mud with almost every step as they tried to rush to shelter! This is where the mom carved out her place in history... our eyes were drawn to her because every time she went "ass over tea kettle" her dress would fly up over her head and we would get a flash of her red underwear! By now we were openly laughing and pointing (my family oozes sympathy at times). Comments were flying like, " Ooh look, the trail is getting steeper hahaha!" and " Hahaha, every time the mom lands ass first her undies get more and more covered in mud!". By the time they came dragging their feet into the campground we had tears in our eyes. They were all identical in colour from head to toe, the unmistakable reddish brown of the Natal Midlands! |
| I never
realized how much the Drakensberg featured in my life until I sat down to
write this. I have memories of walks with the family discussing dream
homes in the mountains when I was too young to understand it was just a
dream; my Dad following my sister from a distance with binoculars while
she went tubing down the river with some boys, my sister and I playing on
a rope swing over the creek to years later playing drinking games with
"Sandy and Michael" out at the airstrip or climbing in through the wrong
window of a chalet at midnight looking for a certain girl and diving out
again when someone other than her threatened to shoot me. I never had much luck with girls there in one way. On a separate occasion I had lost track of the time I had spent out with someone until I looked up to see some guy staring at us, I said something along the lines of "what the hell do you want?" to be told that " It's two o'clock in the morning, I want my daughter!" That was the end of that one! |
| Even as an adult I came back. My Dad and I made a trip in the helicopter for the weekend when I was about twenty two. We had a great flight (in spite of my Dad's navigation skills) and visited a few different sites in the area by air. Once I dropped him off on a nondescript hilltop only to lose him in the enormity of the mountains when it came time to pick him up! I had to search for a good fifteen minutes before I found him and then had to listen to his mutterings about never getting out of the helicopter in the bush again! Hahaha. That night in the thin walled pre-fab cottage the temperature dropped down to around the holy shite level and we were both too cold to even get out of bed to see if there was any heating in the cottage. When my Dad pulled rank I got up to investigate. We eventually had to make do with the oven door open and the grill turned on, all the while with him barely poking his face out from under the sheets! That was the coldest either of us has ever been, if I had known then how he would pay in the future in a hundred different ways I wouldn't have grumbled at all! |
On one of
our visits to Dragon Peaks I had just finished paddling around the lake
when I heard a girl screaming. I turned around and out on the lake I could
see a girl of about ten (I was probably around fifteen at the time),
caught upside
 down under a capsized paddleski. She could
catch her breath to
scream every now and then by paddling furiously with her hands.
Nobody seemed to hear her so I ran around the shore of the lake, along a
small pier and dived in. I swam as fast as I could and was pretty much
ready to drown myself by the time I reached her. When I got to her her
head was under the surface so I reached under the paddleski and released
the seatbelt type arrangement that held her, I pulled her up and held her
there until she stopped spitting water and had caught her breath long enough
to start crying. Next I righted the paddleski and propped her up on it and
dragged us all back to shore. Not a soul had witnessed the event, the
little girl ran off to find her parents and I was left standing there
watching the world go by exactly as it had been doing all along!This life lesson - fame, glory and public opinion are not necessarily related to a persons actions but more closely to the effectiveness of marketing. Just like with the horses, if nobody saw it, it didn't happen. That little girl and I, and of course those damn horses, know the truth though. |