Less than an hour after Rudi drops us, we get to Adam’s Calendar, a big, circular arrangement of rocks. There’s a grassy plain on our right and a 180-degree view over the De Kaap Valley. It’s a warm, sunny day following a downpour last night. The air is so clear that every tree, every gravel road and every puddle of water is visible all the way up to the Makhonjwa mountains on the far side of Barberton.

I touch one of the cool rocks that make up the “calendar”. Some people say it dates back nearly 75 000 years. (The Great Pyramid at Giza was built about 4 500 years ago.) They say these rocks served a similar purpose to Stonehenge in England – a way of keeping track of the seasons.
“The rocks of Adam’s Calendar are made of dolerite,” Rudi told us earlier. “But the others in surrounding area are sandstone. Someone or something must have carried them there.”

To me the rocks don’t look very different to all the others, but when we turn away from the escarpment and I look back down, the circle is obvious and somehow out of place.
Hmm...

Now we’re on a twin track leading up to a plantation. A stream murmurs companionably. On the other side of the stream we come across four members of the Quo Vadis hiking club where they lie resting on their backpacks like beached turtles.
Tired of looking for the picnic site promised on the map, we collapse onto a couple of scorched tree stumps and unpack lunch. The Quo Vadis bunch moves on. Oh well, there goes our chance for first choice of beds at the overnight hut!

We’re sorry when we find the elusive picnic area a little further on, with a shady bench surrounded by moss and lilies.
The cicadas are chirping… and then everything is still. Shafts of sunlight pierce the overhanging foliage and it feels like the inside of a cathedral – the light as though filtered through stained glass, and the roots of a nearby strangler fig like the pipes of a church organ.

An hour later we take a nap on the grass in front of the Florence Hill Hut and wake up to see the sun trace purple, orange and pink stripes across the horizon. 

Kaapsehoop has a resident herd of wild horses, here spotted briefly before vanishing into the mist.

 
The next day we step out into deep mist. Everything is soft, slightly blurry and a bit distorted, like an Impressionist painting. The previous evening photo­grapher Lawrette joined us, as well as Gert, a medical doctor. The five of us now set off, just behind the Quo Vadis group. Gert tells us how he and his sister, Marzahn, stayed on in a little tent after their first school hike – the Fanie Botha Hiking Trail – so that they could prolong the experience just a little more.

Gert is serious about his hiking – he’s even brought along an IV kit and a vial of adrenalin! I wonder what else he has in that backpack? Now the path curves along a contour with a sharp drop-off. In places the path is only about a metre wide. There are aloes in the valley below and the pine trees form a tapestry of brilliant green. In the damp undergrowth we discover two snails as big as a hand.
After about two hours of walking we have a tea break at a picnic bench. There’s apparently a great view here if it’s clear.

“Ten points for atmosphere, though,” Gert says as he peers over into the void. Although the weather is pleasant for hiking, it’s a pity we can’t experience the full glory of what lies below.
We tramp through the veld, the mist totally enfolding us. You can understand why the Swazis call this place yodwa, “where you are alone”.

A fine drizzle begins to fall and we squirm into our raincoats and ponchos. Like wraiths, we walk through a gold-digging area of days gone by. You can still see the metal markers that once designated whose claim was whose.
At the digger’s hut, a small stone building hardly as big as a minibus taxi, we ponder the gold fever that lured people here into a life of hard labour, far from civilisation, with mosquitoes and wild animals just some of the concerns.

An hour later we arrive at the tar road that leads to Kaapsehoop. Across the road is a beautiful picnic spot under a stand of pear trees. A river culminates in a dam, forming an idyllic swimming pool. There are also some gazebos and braai areas where you could while away the afternoon.
From here it’s easy going, past the enormous boulders that lie scattered around the town. After five hours we’re almost at the end. The weekend is drawing to a close.

Clip-clop... Clip-clop...
We hear the footfalls before we see five wild horses cantering on the road just ahead of us. Then the mist swallows them again. For a moment the effect is spooky. Were they real? All I know is that they have trampled the python and purged my head of that silly song.