DOING LIFE

21st Wedding Anniversary - 30 November 2005

We spent a long weekend (Friday, 2 December to Monday, 5 December 2005) at Cathedral Peak in the Drakensberg celebrating. Of course nothing else but the Honeymoon suite would do. We booked in around lunch time and as usual Conroy had to see whether there were guided hikes the Saturday. Our luck was in as a guided hike was scheduled to climb Cathedral Peak itself at 7:00am the next morning. I reluctantly had my rubber arm twisted to do the climb.

It was a murdurous climb just to get to the bottom of the peak itself from where the last 400m is climbed with the aid of ropes (yours truly used her head and waited at the bottom of the peak). Below my scrapbooking page shows the peak from a distance. It took us 11 hours in total to do the hike and the sore bodies were worth it. We were very fortunate weather wise. It was a clear day affording us beautiful views all the way as we climbed.

Our guide Moses was the best - he always waited for the slowest person of the group (us and a father withhis two sons) to catch up and was always enquiring whether we are feeling okay. (Yes, was always the answer -disguising the real suffering!) - especially for Brian who was suffering from a groin hernia. He and Conroy were the only two of the group who braved it, guided by Moses and his ropes, to the top of Cathedral Peak. After we have done a third of the hike going back, Brian was in agonising pain after he realised that his hernia has popped at the summit of Cathedral Peak. The pain was just too excruciating and we decided to ask Moses to radio for help. Within half an hour the rescue helicopter arrived and fortunately our location was perfect for landing. The whole evacuation of Brian and his two sons took about 45min after which me and Conroy completed the rest of the descent with our guide, Moses to base camp i.e. our honeymoon suite (scrapbooking layout coming soon).

The rest of the weekend was spent lazing around and wining and dining in the evenings. I even got to do some scrapping, while looking out on Cathedral Peak from our honeymoon suite.

Myself at a trout dam about 1.5km from the hotel - posing for Conroy who was testing out my new Canon 20D digital camera he bought me for our wedding anniversary.

LEGENDARY THRILL SEEKERS ANONYMOUS Saturday, 3 December 2005 Cathedral Peak, Drakensberg, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa I just had to do this scrapbooking layout of Conroy (who was one of a very few) that makes it to the top of Cathedral Peak - even got the certificate of achievement to prove it!!