Looking for Hobbits

Our second to last trip was to a tiny place called Hogsback. Named after the three mountains or “hogs” that surround it, the little village is probably not what someone pictures when they think of South Africa. Thought to have possibly been the inspiration for the settings Tolkien describes in the Lord of the Rings, it was a place of rolling hills and dense forests. Everything was incredibly green and incredibly blue. It was the usual warm and sunny during the day but at night we felt how cold Africa could really get. Apparently during the colder months it actually snows much of the time. Everywhere was beautiful and I didn’t have trouble imagining this as the inspiration for Middle Earth. And whether it really was or not, the locals have certainly decided to capitalize on the story. Everywhere were places named after Lord of the Rings- like Hobbiton, and even The Ring Hardware Store!



The first day we went on a hike through the very old, very beautiful, indigenous forest. We first made our way up a high cliff to see the forest laid out below us enclosed by the three mountains. We also found a random bathtub, perched on the side of the cliff. It would definitely be a nice place for a bath, but a little odd all the same… We then headed down, into the forest we had looked at from above, to a tree marked off with a little gate around it. Ashwin, who had been coming to Hogsback since he was very young, told us the tree was eight hundred years old. After resting for a while in the shade of the ancient tree we moved on through the forest to the Madonna and Child Waterfall. The waterfall was lovely the water spilling from a high cliff to water pools at our feet. It had not rained that much, it hasn’t rained much in all of South Africa, but the misty downpour, steaming in the sun, was still impressive.



The way back was almost straight up, to the road at the top off the cliff. We ate lunch in a little restaurant, than separated, some heading back to the hotel, and the rest of us driving the forty five minutes to the place where we would go horse back riding. We rode across green, rolling hills for two exhilarating hours, watching the sun set over the mountains. Occasionally we let them run, and I felt the wind in my face as I tried to remember my long ago riding lessons.



The next day was quiet. The rest of the group took their turn at horseback riding and I walked around and enjoyed the remoteness. I also watched TV on an actual television for the first time in weeks. Our last day we stopped at a spot at the top of a cliff called, appropriately, the Edge. The view was amazing, you could see almost all the way to the ocean. At the Edge was also a series of outdoor sculptures, called the eco-shrine, created by a woman who lived there. The sculptures were lovely stone and mosaic abstract shapes, some of them forming frames for the view they overlooked. On some of the sculptures were set vibrantly coloured paintings meant to symbolize a connection between humans and nature. We stood and looked at the beauty around us, and as we walked back through the woods to the van, a group of monkeys started jumping from tree to tree above us.