A Mountain Retreat...

 As I mentioned in my previous post, Marius' birthday present to me was a weekend away at Mount Ceder in the magnificent Cederberg Mountains, about 2 1/2 hours outside of Cape Town.  We heard during the week that we'd been upgraded to their flagship chalet, so that was a real bonus and the views were beyond spectacular.  We also both managed to get Friday off work, so we were able to leave nice and early, stopping for breakfast and a quick shop along the way.  Needless to say, the moment we arrived I was in that jacuzzi-with-a-view and I didn't move much for the rest of the day!

The weather was warm and sunny and we spent the whole of Friday afternoon relaxing around the jacuzzi and braai'ing...

 There aren't too many cottages at Mount Ceder and the grounds are huge, so they're all spaced out well.  It really was very quiet and peaceful...

Perfect reflections of the mountain in the setting sunlight...

  This is the view of the chalet, with it's ginormous deck...

  This is the view from the main bedroom.  The units are fully self-catering and this one sleeps 6.  There is a restaurant too and we had the most divine breakfasts on Saturday and Sunday morning.  On Saturday evening, they brought our 3-course dinner up to us too, which was divine...

There were plenty of birds around and I did spend a lot of my weekend thinking about how much Jake would've enjoyed it.  This is hoppy...

We (read I) was thrilled to see this little guy too.  At first we thought he was a mouse, but look at that nose... It's an elephant shrew (sorry my photos are blurred here, I was excited!)...

 He liked the cracker that we'd thrown out for the birds...

 Hello little weaver...

 I was up early the next morning - I mean, who would want to miss a sunrise like this???

 I shared my coffee and rusks on the balcony with the bird - meet Stripey...

 And this handsome something-or-other...

 And this one...

 And this one, who I think is the girlfriend to the blue-headed job above...

 Our breakfast spot...

 Gorgeous bougainvilleas... 

 Looking back up to the balcony where we sat for our breakfast...

 Mount Ceder is also a working olive farm - their olives are truly divine if you're lucky enough to spot them in Pick 'n Pay...

 The Cederberg is home to (we were told) 14 very elusive and rare Cape Leopards.  We weren't fortunate to spot any. But come on... 14???

 We spent Saturday out and about.  Mount Ceder is on a dirt road, so you have to travel that to get anywhere.  We headed off to Cederberg Wines for tasting and landed up getting a bit tipsy and bought too much wine home with us...

 Leopard food...

 Before our wine stop, we went to go and look for the bushman (San) rock art. This time, in a reserve...

 This explains more about the rock paintings for anyone who's interested...

 Neither Marius, nor I, have ever seen real Bushmen (San) paintings and the fact that these are still evident about 5000 years after painting is quite unbelievable.  We were totally fascinated by the elephants - they must've been roaming the mountainous region too back then.  Here's me with some African history.  That black stuff on the wall of the cave at the bottom (next to me) is created by flies (poop), that eat the rock...

 Marius, the artist...

 He thought he was being very funny...

 Me with elephants walking on my head...

 The view from the rock art - just imagine the elephants...

Marius with the paintings again...

 When we got back to the car, we realised that we'd been driving on a flattie and so Marius had to do the honours and put the spare on...

 It gave me time to wander around and find things to photograph.  Like these baboon tracks.  See the front hand print, above the foot print.  There's a strong resemblance here to Jake....

Crazy rocks...

And breath-taking vistas over the mountains...

Marius reading the facts about our next stop, Stadsaal (caves)...

Our little walk.  The rocks are really crazy in these parts - one can see how a leopard can hide so well...

The main cave...

A cairn - the top one is mine, of course...

The inside of the cave has been signed by many, which I think is quite sad.  Some of the signatures are from "famous" South Africans and date back a long time...

Looking through the cave...

And the view from outside...

There are a lot of fossils in the Cederberg and it's a huge expanse of unexplored mountains.  This wasn't really anything, but it does look a little like a giraffe inside the cave...

More crazy rocks...

And a view looking through another cave...

Some of you might remember that Jake did a hike with Marius and his boys during the last school holidays.  They came to the Cederberg and hiked way up there...  You can actually see this section in a few of the pics above too...

They walked through those cracks in the mountain...

The weather had changed quite a bit between Friday and Saturday and it was starting to look like this dry land might actually get some water... 

Pretty proteas...

On our way back from our delicious wine tasting, we stopped in a Kromrivier for coffee.  This cat was not friendly, as they told me after it'd scratched me...

Remembering the good old days...

It was a lovely stop and I have no doubt that we'll visit it again with the boys sometime in the not-too-distant future.  The camp sites are solar powered and each has it's own private bathroom, which is a definite winner for me...

I nearly bought Jake a t-shirt with this written on it, but decided it was inappropriate for an 11-year old...

An eagle in the top of the tree...

The dusty road back to the lodge - you can see the olive plantations in the background.  There are tons of bikers that ride these dirt roads, for reasons I will NEVER understand...

Our little housie...

Thank goodness we were in Marius' car - my little Yaris would never have cleared it over this road...

The next morning we woke up to find a gazillion dassies (rock rabbits) outside our hut.  The birds must've told them that we were dishing out free crackers...

We shouldn't have fed them some left over raw veggies, but they looked like they were waiting, so we did.  Turns out, dassies don't like to share...

This was the house we were supposed to have stayed in.  Granted, I took this photo from a moving car, once we'd passed the main entrance, but our upgrade was fabulous...

Once we'd signed out, we decided to go and check out Mount Ceder's rock paintings too.  I mean, why not go look at them.  It was an 800m walk (through sand) to get there.  The Cederberg falls in the Little Karoo, which is basically a semi-desert...

Jake has been studying the San people and their medicinal plants this year, as part of his history syllabus (so different from Jan van Riebeek's story that we heard year after year).  It was fun to see some of the plants he'd learned about.  Those dead, brown tendrils are coming from that fat green bush...

No clue what these are called...  they look like fingers, with claws on them...  Love how everything is succulent...

This one Jake did study, it was called a Hoodia (so Jake tells me).  Marius loves that I'm full of useless information about the random things we see along the way...

We were being properly checked out by a troop of baboons...

It made me slightly nervous, when they looked like they were moving closer (see the baby behind the bush?)...

Pretty bugs... this is some kind of longhorn beetle...

Marius poking at something with his snake-warding-off stick.  We had to walk to that back hill...

Grasses blowing in the wind...

Back lit flowering bushes with no leaves...

It took a bit of searching (and I was terrified of the snake-potential), but eventually we found the paintings.  So different from the first ones we saw and definitely in poorer condition, but rock art non-the-less...

Jake tells me that the San people's god was called Kaggen.  He can take on various animal forms, mostly a preying mantis, but also an eland, a snake, a caterpillar or a louse.  This, Jake tells me is definitely an eland, you can see by the hump on it's back.  He's sure this is a picture of their god...

Unfortunately, this one was being hunted, so I don't actually think it was their god.  Most San rock art, they say, is of important events, such as hunts and religious ceremonies...

I have no clue what the heck the paintings mean, but it's just amazing that they've lasted so long (thousands of years) and it is quite a humbling experience to stand in the very spot where these people once lived.   Note the very tall person on the left of the picture...

Me and the rock art...

And just so you can see how small the images are (I made sure I wasn't actually touching the art)...

This picture is of the same art that I put up at the beginning, but I think it shows the other two, taller figures better.  They look like they're wearing something on their heads and the other two are carrying something (maybe their hunts)...This explains a lot about the size of my bum...

Rocks looking up from where the paintings were.  The San usually painted in caves...

Since the San existed in a time before proper clothing, I am not going to comment on the below...  It's his leather flap, right?

In this picture, you can see lines radiating from a buck that's leaping down on the right hand side of the picture - this Jake tells me is a sign of religion...  Those buck are important.

This rock face is the entire scene from all the photos above...

Did I mention how much poop we had to walk through to get there....

Marius found a second site with more paintings, but they were fairly faded...

It's quite weird to imagine the San people sitting under these rocks, hunting and gathering in the fields we'd just walked through...

While Marius did a bit of mountaineering (checking for more art)...

I looked for fossils.  The Cederberg has uncovered many dinosaur fossils and I'd have been thrilled to find something to take a photo of for Jake.  Marius will vouch for the amount of time that I spent looking, but I didn't find a thing...

The view walking back to "our" car...

A pretty little flower basking in the sunshine...

And a last look back.  Oh how I wished that Jake were with me...next time!!

Our last little adventure was a walk to the local waterfall.  It was a flat 3km (at most) walk through a little lush area...

And it was quite amazing to see water in this dry area...

A dung beetle, a dung beetle - SO cool...  it was even checking out a bit of poop...

We do actually walk together...  I just take a lot of photos along the way and Marius has learned not to wait for me.  I generally run to catch up...

The waterfall.  The boys would love swimming here in Summer time...

It was finally time to head on home.  We didn't want to drive in the dark and had hoped to stop somewhere along the roadside for something to eat...

On our way through, we'd seen kids standing at this bush shelter, waiting to go home after school.  Our boys have it so lucky, they don't have a clue...

This place really is an archaeologist's dream...

The other side of the mountain, coming back in towards Cape Town...

We arrived in Tulbach and found that there was loadshedding (power cuts) on the go there, so decided to stop in Malmesbury, but got there and the power was out there too, so we carried on home.  The power was off at home too, which meant that we hadn't had coffee in a very long time.  By 4:30, the lights were on and Marius had a quick coffee, before heading on home.

It was such a lovely weekend and I do love our little adventures that we take together.  Those of you who know me well, know how driven I am by travel (30 days today till we leave for the bush! Eeeeeeee) and there are so many amazing places on our doorstep that we have yet to visit.  A huge thank you to Marius for an incredible weekend and a total spoil.

Lots of love,

Sue XXX

PS.  This post has taken me no less than 10 days to put together.  I realise that it is a picture overload, but what was I supposed to leave out?