Blyde River Canyon

We woke this morning to even more fog or low cloud, I'm not sure which. Our chalet has a wonderful view from the big bedroom window. We are high up, looking out over the canyon, and this morning it was filled with fog. We decided to go to the end of the route planned for today, and work our way backwards, hoping that the sun would burn off the low cloud and we would get a glimpse of the canyon. So we continued as far as Pilgrims Rest, which turned out to be a sort of theme town for gold miners. It has been well preserved and there was a real atmosphere of an early 20C prospectors settlement, despite all the touts and curio stalls. Many of the buildings were dated at 1920 and retained a great deal of authenticity. Looking across the valley we could detect small heaps, overgrown now, but which could well have been mining spoil. We attempted to walk up to the Old Cemetery, but it was too far uphill and we were running out of time. It's a shame we didn't make it, we reminded of the old Cemetery we went to at Lyell in NZ, the graves of early prospectors and their families.
We went on, retracing our footsteps to Graskop, which is at the southern end of the canyon. This turned out to be quite a big place, lots of people, probably lots of tourists, judging by the number of Accommodation signs. It seemed like a busy commercial centre for the area. Continuing on the way northward we stopped of at all the recommended viewpoints for the Canyon. Unfortunately, even though there had been warm sunshine in Pilgrims Rest and Graskop, the fog hadn't lifted from the Canyon itself. It had in fact intensified, we took the loop road, close to the Canyon edge, so that we could go to the vantage points of 'God's Window' and 'World View', but it was thick, thick fog, and we could see absolutely nothing looking down into the Canyon. We only needed to go a couple of kilometres away from the Canyon and we were in bright sunshine. We discovered this when we went to The Lisbon Falls, small in comparison to Victoria Falls, but very picturesque. We went in to the Park Reserve and saw Bourke's Potholes, which were also impressive and it was warm and sunny there. Back at the Camp we went to the two viewpoints and discovered that from the top one we had a excellent view down into the Canyon.
This is a beautiful area, and I am so glad that we came. I don't know how often the Canyon is completely mist and fog free, we have possibly been lucky to have seen as much as we did. The mountains are truly impressive, the jutting rocks, as if the whole landscape has been turned on it's side.
Maybe this is the last entry I'll write in S.A. Tomorrow we return to Pretoria for the last night, to organise ourselves, get our packing sorted, before leaving for the flight on Sunday. Home for Xmas.