October 25, What An Adventure!!!

We began our adventure at 6:00 this morning by going up the pass towards the ski resort - NOT the one we had intended!!  The gravel road became ridiculous, absurd, outrageous and bizarre as we climbed straight up the mountain at such a steep slope they had paved it to give one a glimmer of hope of making it.  We stalled out at a very sharp corner that was gravel; parked the car for an hour or so while we walked up the road and birded and contemplated how we were going to get back down.  While I worked on calming myself down 😕 I found a warbler that is scarce here - Barratt's Warbler - and one that we would NOT have found had we not drove up the "wrong" pass.  I had the passing thought that perhaps this would be my very last life bird........... But Tom climbed in the car and successfully drove it down the extremely steep section - and I WALKED down.  So, onward to the pass we had intended to drive up.  Along the way, we found many of the Drakensburg specialties, but of course, missed some too.  We found so many Drakensberg Rockjumpers that we lost track of the number.  Sentinel Rock-thrush, Ground Woodpecker, Drakensberg Prinia, Drakensberg Siskin were a few of the other new ones.  One of the other highlights today was seeing a Red Meerkat (yellow mongoose) with it's fresh hare kill.  So now we're back at the guesthouse waiting for 7:00 dinner and listening to thunder and watching flashes of lightening - glad the weather waited for us to come down off the mountain!

Photos are of Tom beginning down the very steep road (wondered if this was the last I'd see of him)(photos do no justice to the extreme grade of this road!), had to show 2 views of the Drakensberg Rockjumper, Red Meerkat, Drakensberg Siskin, Malachite Sunbird on a red hot poker (apparently native here?), Sickle-winged Chat, Sentinel Rock-thrush, Ground Woodpecker, 3 flower photos, a view of the road as we headed down with it running right along the ridge and around the conical peak and back down the other side, the next 2 are our view from the top of the 8000' pass (notice the roads down below).