Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens Walk

Gauteng has a few nice day hikes about and I'd wanted to do this one for a while. Walter Sisulu national botanical gardens is a little bit like Kirstenbosch in Cape Town, with wide open lawns and a large variety of plants, shrubs, trees and wild flowers. It's about 45mins drive from Pretoria. Not too bad for a Sunday walk, and it makes a nice change from our local, the Faerie Glen Nature Reserve.

The view of the gardens looking towards the waterfall

Myself, Renalda and Louis decided to spend our morning doing the walk. You start by walking past the outdoor amphitheatre, where they sometimes have concerts. That day the place was over run by girl guides in brown and yellow!

One of my favourite things about the walk was the giant insects and spider mounted in appropriate places.

Shelob awaits..

I really like dragon flies

This guy wood give Po a run for his money :P

Renalda and I in front of the waterfall

Louis looking very serious

 And then we walked up beside the fall to the top of the ridge, where I thought it was an easy hike, but it got harder and there was more of a climb. The veld god rocky with lots of interesting rock layers of different origin, sedimentary and igneous.

View from above looking roughly northwards

The hiar was getting a bit long!

Scary looking dude with 4 eyes :P

Lots of mooi blommetjies (pretty flowers)

Nog blommetjies (more flowers)

Nog meer blommetjies (still more flowers)

View of the layers of rocks above and the lawns below

All in all it was about a 2 hour walk, with a well deserved beer afterwards. If you haven't done it, give it a go, you won't be disappointed.