Giant's Castle

Oh, what an interesting day! We drove through the Drakensberg Mountains today to a place called Giant's Castle. From there we hiked 3 hours to some caves where we could see Bushmen paintings. The Bushmen tribes were some of the first inhabitants of South Africa and they left behind many paintings on rocks and in caves. Their paint was a mix of coal, animal blood, and various other natural substances. We visited an archeological site where there are different paintings along the rock. The paintings are faded because of weather and well, because they've been there for hundreds of years, but they are still clear enough to see. Some of the paintings are about hunters, others are about animals, and there are a couple paintings of medicine men. As a Social Science major and someone who enjoys history, I loved every second of it! The whole time we were hiking up I was enjoying the scenery, but mostly I was just super excited to see history with my own eyes.

It's crazy to think that those paintings have been there for hundreds of years. One day, a Bushman grabbed his paint and walked into the cave to draw a line. From that line he drew an animal and then he drew men surrounding it. He waited for the paint to dry and then he showed it to his tribe. His tribesmen used that painting to tell stories and they passed on their stories to the following generations. A hundred years later, those stories were still there and the first white settlers of South Africa saw them. During the African wars, the Bushmen were driven out of their land, but the paintings remained. In 1946, a white settler carved his name into the cave and started the historical site to show people the paintings that had remained. Those paintings have seen the sun rise for thousands of days and they have felt thousands of rain drops over the course of so many seasons. Maybe it's just me, but I find it amazing. It was also cool to walk on the mountain and to try to imagine how the Bushmen walked across it. I watched the antelope and wondered how they hunted them and how they dealt with the pestering baboons that we saw near our cars.

After hiking, we spent some time in the river and chased baboons to try to take a picture of them, that is until they got mad and charged toward us. These baboons are no African Enterprise monkeys (the ones where we live) because they're way bigger and much more aggressive. Some of the girls thought they were ugly, but I thought it was cute how the mom walked on all fours and the baby rode on her back and then I noticed their pink butts. They were just like the baboon in Lion King.

It was a good day, but I feel like all the energy has been drained out of me. It's time for some rest.