Weekend in the Mountains of Nelspruit

A few weekends ago I experienced my first taste of the mountains of Nelspruit, South Africa. Drew and I frequently go to Nelspruit for supplies, averaging about once a month, and end up doing lots of errands, picking up equipment and parts, and groceries, blessed groceries. Well, Drew got wind that the South African family he previously lived with in Mozambique while working for Maranatha were at their homestead just outside of Nelspruit. He had not seen them in years! We checked further and found they truly were in town and were off to Nelspruit to combine a supply run with a nice visit with friends. They live about 15 min outside of Nelspruit in the beautiful mountains! They have a home and cottage as well as several outbuildings, one of which was like a spare bed and bath, a schoolroom, a shop, storage, etc... They work for Maranatha and hadn't been to their home in Nelspruit in about 1.5 years, as they are currently working in Zimbabwe, so they were trying to catch up on everything, and were semi-camping. They were so happy to see us and catch up with Drew and get to know me. We had such a great time with this family, it's like they are our family away from home. We met up with them for the first time just after church. We ate a quick lunch and headed off for some exploring. They know the area well and took us to some of their favorite places. First, we went to the most quaint little town of Kaapsehoop, up the mountain from Nelspruit. This was a small little gold mining community and has turned into what appears to be sort of a hippie community. Here they have wild horses roaming free, rumored to be the remnants of the Anglo - Boer war from about 1900. Apparently these were war horses that got away, or their owners were killed. In any case, there were wild horses just roaming about. Quite exciting! You could see them eating random people's lawns. Haha.

Then we went on this amazing hike through what looked like a rain forest, with mossy trees and small creeks. It was a beautifully rugged hike. We were rewarded at the end with a stunning waterfall with very refreshing water. Such fun, and what a fun group!

From the waterfall we drove back to the little village (not far) and a few of us rode on the back of the truck. Just hanging on. No big deal. Quite fun!

We went poking around some old buildings, back from war days. The old jail from this very old quaint gold mining town, we hiked back amongst the rocks. It looked like the perfect place for an ambush! I imagine many people used to be ambushed there, which is kind of creepy. We traversed through the rocks and pretty soon all of these rocks started looking the same. One could easily get lost here without someone who knows where they are going. All of a sudden the group in front of me disappeared into the area under a rock. As I approached, I saw their heads poking out, and you had to go down about a 4 foot rock to this new small little trail into the crevice of a pile of rocks. Here was a pleasant little treat of a small cave with a waterfall. How amazing! Then we hiked out to the edge of the cliff. SOOOOO BEAUTIFUL!!! I almost felt like I was flying and my feet hadn't left the ground