A Loop around Southern Africa – Day 6: Surviving the Tugela Falls

The hotel shuttle to the parking lot under Sentinel Peak picked us up at half past seven. For three quarters of an hour, the rocky road rattled our bones while the car trundled its way above precipitous cliffs both left and right, so I was glad when we finally hopped off the car and I stood on my own feet. Our group of four quickly separated into two pairs, with me and Brent speeding towards the waterfalls while Joel and Tiana made a more leisurely walk to the nearer view over the so-called Amphitheatre.

Had the walk begun at its most terrifying section, I would have turned around and gone right back to the hotel. Instead, we were slowly eased into increasingly hair-raising situations, and each time things got worse I thought “well, I am already here.” First, the path narrowed. Second, the drops below us became more precipitous. Third, the path started to alternate with smooth rocks, which in some cases stood directly above these precipitous rocks. Fourth, the path began to employ iron footholds and small ladders in the steeper sections. Fifth was the part that I already knew of and dreaded the most: the chain ladders.

The two chain ladders with a few dozen rungs each began right above a horridly steep cliff and led somewhere out of sight. I knew that if I were to climb up them, I could not let myself think too much. As soon as I saw the ladders, I cursed out loud, and I did not stop cursing until I was at the very top. It was there that the wind really picked up, and I had to run away from the precipice to convince myself I would not be blown over. Brent, who does not suffer from acrophobia, used that opportunity to pee off the edge. He had previously chased a fallen water bottle down the slope, so this little effort clearly did not his adrenaline level very much.

We were not sure where we should head from the cairn at the top of the chain ladders, but wandering around, we came across a dirt path that led us further onto the plateau. We followed it, and to our great surprise, we found a river. The scene was dreamlike: a deep blue river rushing through this arid landscape on top of a plateau with its grassy, treeless expanses, and more peaks in the blue distance. Across the river, we saw a few baboons drinking and running around. We had seen some baboons previously, before we had reached the ladders; they were bounding heedlessly along the steep cliffs below.

The wind was very strong when we reached the edge, where the river simply disappeared into the unknown. We sat down and crawled along to get a better view of the waterfalls, but I could not bring myself to dangling my feet off the edge like Brent, who seemed completely unfazed by the prospect of being blown clean off the plateau. We both tried crawling on our bellies, and this did yield some results. Still, I quickly reached the limit of how much close exposure to deadly drops I could take in one day, and I reconciled myself to taking a few very uninspiring pictures capturing only a tiny section of the waterfall.

Before heading back, Brent and I made a stop at a shack we saw from the waterfall. It was the only structure we had seen since arriving at the tourist reception centre, and we were curious to see what it was. The shack – officially campsite – was covered with ominously swaying corrugated iron sheets, with the left-hand side of the house relatively well roofed, while the right-hand side lacked a roof entirely. On one of the walls in the house was a tally someone kept of the number of days they spent trapped there because of a rainstorm, while another red letter scrawling commemorated a person who had plunged to his death at Tugela.

The way back was in some ways more difficult than the way to the waterfall, as scaling a chain ladder without seeing where to put one’s feet is intensely unpleasant. We hurried back as we thought there would be a shuttle at half past one, but no one had reserved it, so we had to wait with another few tourists until the three thirty shuttle we had originally booked. From the hotel, we drove all the way down to the nearest village and continued all the way to the outskirts of Bergville, where we spent the night.