Everybody has their travel bucket lists.  I’m no different but because I would still like to do a lot of travelling I have divided mine into International, African, South African and Eastern Cape.  One of the things that has been on my Eastern Cape travel bucket list for a while now is doing the Innikloof Waterfall hike.  Innikloof is situated near the Gamtoos Valley town of Hankey and the hike is done once a month as a guided hike as it crosses private land and a conservation area.  The return walk is about 14 km long and well worth the effort, but don’t kid yourself, it’s not a walk in the park, like we found out. 

Innikloof was the location of the annual Port Elizabeth Geocaching camping weekend this year and the Saturday was set aside to do the Waterfall Hike.  We could not spend the weekend so rushed out from Port Elizabeth  early morning to join our fellow cachers and InniKloof owner John Wait on the hike.  The first kilometer is an easy stroll down the road to warm up those calves and then the climbing started.  To get to the kloof the waterfall is in you have to literally go over the mountain.  Not around it, not through it, not underneath it, but over it.  The climb from the start wasn’t too bad as it was a gradual one and by the time we arrived huffing and puffing at the top we enjoyed fantastic views back the way we came.  After a short walk along the top of the mountain I realised that we had lost Chaos Boy.  He walked ahead of the group when we stopped to take a breather and seemingly took a wrong turnoff.  I seemed to be the only one really worried and after about a frantic 30 minutes the message came along that he had found his way back just in time to link up with the back markers.  Hope he learned his lesson.  

The view down towards where we were going was stunning.  You can see the river as well as a number of waterfalls and cascades below but this was also where the big challenge of the Waterfall Hike started.  Getting down the steep side of the mountain.  It is a descent of engaging one’s diff lock, keeping the air brakes engaged and making sure you don’t pick up speed too quickly.  Going down here you quickly realise that you will have to come back up and it won’t be easy, but that was a hurdle to overcome later cause we started to hear the waterfall below us. 

Once down at the bottom it’s like a different world.  The waterfall flows into the dark pool below and being hot and sweaty after the walk there is only one thing to do…

Clothes off, costume on and into the refreshing water.  Always refreshing to be able to swim in a mountain pool like this. 

The Damselfly chose not to swim, but did fill her bottle from the waterfall. 

Nice cold water for the journey back.

Before starting back though John took us a little further down the river to see the falls and cascades we noticed from the top.  Although the stream is a bit low due to the drought it was still a great sight.

A girl and her dog.  Well, actually John’s dog but hey, a picture tells a 1000 words. 

Fellow Geocacher Spiesie enjoying the view

As we started our journey back up the mountain side we found the dried out feces containing a lot of bones and fur.  My guess is leopard with the Cape Leopard still found in these mountains.