In South Africa, in the Drakensberg mountains, there is a mountain peak or head that looks like the Sphinx in Egypt. From the side, you might mistake that you are in Egypt! Jokes aside, this natural-looking sphinx is a beautiful hike for any avid hiker. At some stages, trying and hard, at others breathtaking, anyone who takes this hike will not be disappointed! I know for a fact I was not.
En route, you walk past the "Crystal Falls", a small but beautiful waterfall inside of one of the many forests that you will need to walk through. Inside these forests, you are met with the deafening and loud sound of the screaming cicadas, and you will be treated with beautiful flowers. As soon as you walk out of the forest, you are met with the most beautiful views.
Standing on top of the sphinx head, you have a 360-degree view of the region. Mountains bleed upon mountains, the views cannot get more beautiful! So please join me on this virtual journey as I show you the beautiful hike up to the top of the sphinx, at Monks Cowl, in the Drakensberg mountains, South Africa.
The Sphinx: A Small Promise
We started at the bottom of the sphinx, its head only a small promise of where we were hiking towards. The area provides you with many different hiking routes, some of them up to 10-plus kilometres. I think there are also a couple of multi-day hiking routes!
The hike starts out with beautiful laid-out steps. Most of the route displayed this well-kept feeling, illustrating that your entrance fee goes to the right places! (Side note, we have hiked so many places by now where you pay an entrance fee and you do not see that they have used it to keep the hiking routes well-manicured.)
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On top of the hill, you can see where our destination was. The outlines of the sphinx head look toward the mountains, the very mountains we will also very soon experience!
As we hiked closer and closer to the head, it grew in size, but you also see at some stage the uncanny resemblance, but at other times you also lose sight of the beautiful resemblance. The broken nose looks even more broken from certain angles!
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A Small Detour: En Route, a Waterfall!
It is almost always rainy season in the mountains. We experienced so many rainy days while camping. But this offers beautiful waterfalls! Because there is so much water falling, it feels like a never-ending supply of water. On some of the routes, you end up walking through rivers that overflow, but nothing too bad!
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This particular waterfall offers a beautiful and serene setting where you can eat some snacks, drink some water, and cool off before you hike further to the top! The sun really gets you down, as there is not a lot of shade on the hikes.
If you are brave enough, you can take a shower underneath the water! Below, I will share with you a small video of the waterfall, at least, the part we could get underneath. In various parts of the hike, you can get close to areas where it becomes dangerous, especially with all the water falling. In the photograph below, you can see just how wet the rocks get!
Here is the small waterfall video:
Steps ad infinitum
The hiking route has its fair share of steps. But these steps all lead to a wonderful view! All in all, we climbed about 350 meters. That is a lot of steps to get to the top. Even though this hike was not dangerous at all, some of the corners, as you can see below, come very close to a very steep ridge.
But again, the relative danger is paid off with these stunning views! The photograph below shows the bottom of the sphinx.
And the photograph below is almost eye level of the sphinx. As you get higher and higher, and then at eye level, the distinct similarities fade a bit. But when you are tired, and almost at the top, the similarities do not matter that much any longer!
When you get to the bottom of the sphinx, the texture of the mountain changes. In some places, the mountain gets an elephant-like skin texture, at other times, the rock face is smooth. Sadly, people do not know how to treat nature, so at various stages, you see people who engraved their names on the walls.
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At the Top!
And then you walk around the last corner, and you stand on top of the mountain. You have this tremendously beautiful view. You are surrounded by silence, nothing, no sounds. The hills just keep on carrying on, with hill upon hill upon hill unfolding in front of you.
Here is a small video of the 360-degree panoramic view from on top of the sphinx head:
And we had to have a snack on top of the mountain! We had some leftover BBQ meats, these little fire-cooked breads (we call them rooster koek or bread baked on the grill), and some ice-cold water. (But to be honest, at that stage, I already craved a beer.)
But we conquered yet another hike!
The Senery: The Beautiful, the Scary, and the Loud
As we hiked back, the sun was high and the flowers opened. My mother's favourite flowers are these lilies, and I have never seen them grow in the wild. But I do not think these are endemic and might be because of people who bring flowers on the hike, or bird droppings that contain seeds, or something along those lines. Either way, these flowers are stunning!
A lucky find, we saw one of the cicadas that make all these loud forest noises! What a beautiful little insect, but man, do they sing loudly. Their sound is deafening and in the forest you almost get headaches.
And when we hiked back, we saw something really scary. A big boulder broke lose from the main mountain, rolling over the hiking route, leaving destruction in its pathway.
This just puts things into perspective, we are so small, and if such a boulder crashes over us, we will surely not make it.
Postscriptum, and so another hike ends...
Hiking is really fun, and it is sad that you cannot carry on beyond a certain threshold. Either the sun gets too hot, your water runs out, or energy levels drop. But the views and the experiences are beyond this world. If you can still do hikes, and you enjoy it, you really need to do as many hikes as possible!
For now, we are again recovering from a small-ish hike, but more of that in the future.
I really hope that you enjoyed this virtual journey with me to the top of the sphinx head! What a view we had on top of the mountain. And that was not even the highest by any stretch of the imagination.
For now, happy travels and hiking, and stay safe!
All of the writings and musings are my own, albeit inspired by this beautiful hike. All of the photographs and videos are my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and/or iPhone.