Blyde River on a Budget! Day One

Well, it's been a exactly a month now since I wrote last.  I did promise to share more of our trip, besides all the reptiles we saw.  We wanted to maximize our vacation time away so we left around noon on the Friday and made our way to Graskop, in Mpumalanga state.  We had been advised as to the best scenic route to take, so we went through some neat towns on the way.  One had a pub with a great sign, I took a picture for my dad.

Just a throwback from my pre-teenage Lion King obsession days. It was the favorite movie of  my cousins, my sisiter and me for awhile there.

South Africa has such a variety of landscapes.  It's awesome!  We took the Long Tom Pass, It was breathtaking:

I love the layers of the scenery.

It's steep too, don't worry though, there is signage to help you out:

After just a little longer than we had anticipated we arrived at our destination.  I had made the reservations for the cheapest campsite we could find. After all, it was a nine year anniversary trip.  When we got there, we were surprised that it was at a backpacker place.  (Guess the title of the place "Valley View Backpackers" should have clued me in. Just a tip, if it has backpackers in the title, it means a backpackerish/hostel place.) A house where they rent out rooms and you share communal bathrooms and kitchen space.  Well, as we were camping, we were shown to the back yard, or garden as they call it.  I inquired as to power points for plugging things in...I got a strange stare and no reply.  No power points in the back garden apparently. So we pitched our tent by the back hedge for maximum privacy.

This was taken our first morning.  We arrived in the dark so, no pics of the set up. They weren't lying about the view though, from our vantage point in the back garden we could see pretty well.  Even better was the front view:

It was a very clean place, and it turned out for the best, as we were winter camping, it gets a bit cold at night..so it was good to have a warmerish place to go to prep food, and take showers...I say warmer, what I mean is warmer than outside, not warm.

We had been advised by some Bethelites that hail from the area as to the best place for food:

Cool Landy too. 

We totally recommend it too.  If you come visit this area, make sure you stop at Harries!  We had carefully planned every meal and had not planned eating out at ALL.  However, it was so yummy we ended up eating at Harries 2x as an anniversary splurge.  Having saved some $$ on accommodation we figured we'd go for the pancakes!  There is an African Market across the street.

and the windows that face the street are helpful for the vendors to try to sell things to you as you eat.  They actually had some cool stuff and Matt liked the giraffe and kudu carvings they had, but we had brought only enough cash for our tolls and entrance fees.  Matt saved so much by us doing it that way! :D

Then it was on to the sights!