A 24 Hour Hiking Adventure in a South African Nature Reserve

We found out about a relatively small nature reserve where you can hike along its many trails, spend the night in a cool overnight hut and search for safari animals including zebra and wildebeests. It's called Seeker Bus Runt Nature Reserve and it's only about a one hour drive south of Johannesburg. We spent 24 hours in this nature reserve enjoying the scenic views, searching for as many safari animals as possible, getting lost a little bit. My girlfriend and I are forcing me to go for a morning run. A better place to run in a nice peaceful nature reserve. And experiencing as much nature as we could in this little gem of a nature reserve in South Africa. Made it to reception. Okay so we've sorted out the payment and the logistics and they've given us a map here and quite a lot of the reserve is actually closed so there's not much that we can actually walk along. But they gave us a big list of animals that we're going to see and there's baboons which we've already seen and there's wildebeests and foxes, cape foxes, porcupines, hyenas, all sorts of animals and zebras as well though. Hopefully see some zebras. So the actual paths that are open they aren't that far so we'll probably do about 10 kilometers today and get ourselves to the little hut where we'll be staying and hopefully we see some wildlife along the way. I can hear wildlife. There's none of like the big safari animals, there's no giraffes or anything like that here, no elephants. Are you excited Di? Why not? It's to be out in nature because we were in the busy city of Johannesburg. Lots of cars, lots of noise so it's nice to be out in nature now. I've been climbing up in elevation for about one mile now and it feels like we're up in the clouds. I can't really see much. Very very overcast today but because there's a lot of moisture in the air I do have wet feet already because all the moisture is collecting on the plants. It's all good. Just spotted this little millipede. Oh it's quite a big millipede. It looks like a big worm. Wow. Is he tickling them? He will be. There he goes. He's like this isn't the grass. Looks like the trail's going down into this gorge here. I've definitely got to protect myself from the sun now. The sun's starting to come out. Oh wow that's incredible. Such a strong lemon smell. Wow and it's got tiny little flowers on. Wow. Oh it smells beautiful. Very very nice. Interesting plants here. I'm not sure the names of all these plants but there's a lot of interesting flowers as well. Check out this view. Beautiful. You can see a family of baboons running up the hillside. Yeah I think the baboons have heard us and they're all running away from us. I can see quite a few off in the distance. Cool. Very very nice. We've made it to the first hut now and they look really good condition. They look really comfortable and they all have facilities. They have toilets and showers and they have like a barbecue area and places to sit. Originally we were going to do three days in this nature reserve and spend two nights in a hut but I think we're going to do two days now and just one night in the hut and that's because we got the map of the nature reserve here and this is the only trail here that's actually open and this little bit here and the guys in the office said that all of this part of the nature reserve is just overgrown and we can't hike it. So we started here and we just hiked to Springbok Hut. Okay that is lunch done and we had a bit of a rest, a bit of a sit down and the temperature's getting quite hot now. Sun's come out. Very nice blue sky. Beautiful flowers as well. The baboons were watching us. They were sat up on the rock watching us and I think I was just as interested in them as they were in me and I think they were eyeing up our food a little bit I think. Very cool to see baboons in their natural habitat. Very interesting nature reserve. There's basically loads of hiking trails and quite a few huts dotted around and you just plan your own hike and you can stay in any of the huts. We're quite limited to what trails we can hike and I think there's only two huts we can stay in. So we're heading to the second hut. So much climbing today. The hut that we were at is down in this valley here. We've been climbing up out there. You're working hard Dai. Yeah it's definitely not lovely views though. So for navigation we're just using this little map that they gave us at the office and the trail's pretty easy to follow and we're just coming up to some electricity wires and some pylons and on the map they have little electricity symbols so when you pass under one of these wires you can tell exactly where you are on the map and we haven't got lost and then we get to these little markers that tell you which way the trail goes. Yeah navigation is pretty easy. It's not too bad. We're getting a few more animal sightings now. We've got one lone wildebeest up ahead of us. I feel a bit bad because he's sort of very skittish and sort of running away. I don't like disturbing the animals. I think I can see some zebra up ahead. Not 100% sure but I think they are zebra. There's lots of animals up ahead but we're disturbing the herd which I don't really like. Yeah there's lots of zebra. Nice to see some animals Dai. Saw quite a few animals now. Very nice. Feel like we're on a bit of an African safari Dai. We're allowed to just wander around the nature reserve. Luckily there's no lions or anything so there's nothing here that can that can harm you. Everything seems to be running away from us which is good. What did you spot? Of course a little weaver bird nest hanging from the tree here. Nice little house. Cozy. A bit overgrown on this bit now. We made it Dai. We made it. Home. Made it to the second hut and we're on eight miles hiked now and it's half past four so it's gonna get dark in just over two hours so I think this is us for the evening. We've made it to a nice little hut. What did you find Dai? I followed the sound. There's not much water in this nature reserve. There's a lovely little spring going through it and we have toilet block and shower block. Barbecue area. Let's go and see what the inside looks like. It's very similar to the other hut. It's exactly the same. It's got the key and you have these nice big mattresses. Very comfortable. Got lots of little sticky things on my socks. Yeah on both socks. Sticky balls. Trying to take all the little sticky balls off of my socks. I've kind of just given up now and just put my flip flops on. You have a good hike? Yeah I really enjoyed it here. Hungry? Nice. I'm not hungry yet. It'll be nice in the rain. I'm always hungry. I know you are. Time to get some food going I think. Got a very big gas. Got a little stove to cook some food. I think you're very hungry. Pastas bubbling away now. So much thunder. So much thunder we can hear off in the distance now. I think it's going to start start raining very shortly. All right we've just paddled over the food. It's fun. Look. Just have a little pasta. Yeah it's looking good. We've basically just boiled some pasta, tin of baked beans in, a few chunks of cheese, salt and some herbs and that's it. That is it. Looks good. A lot of food. It tastes good. There's so much food. You want to try some? It is heavy I can confirm. That pasta was tasty and the heavens have opened now. It started raining but we've got this lovely little cover to shelter us from the rain. I've all cleaned up now and thought we'll go for a little afternoon stroll before it gets dark and the thunderstorm seems to have passed us now and it rained for about 10 minutes and that's about it. So we'll go for a nice little walk. It's a beautiful evening. It's about about an hour before the sun sets and you can hear all the birds chirping away. It's a lovely evening. What happened? You've got all the sticky bits on you. Oh dear. They're so difficult to get off. You must have just brushed past one of the bushes. There's loads of those little acacia trees here. The little spikes. You're having a nightmare there Di. I'm going to leave her to it. There's a bigger acacia tree and it even has spikes coming straight out of the trunk. Such a cool tree. Look at the size of that. We haven't seen anybody today hiking. It feels like we've got this whole nature reserve all to ourselves. I don't think there's anybody staying in any of the other huts either. Got it all to ourselves which feels incredible. Good morning. Slept really well last night. Hi Di. Hello. How'd you sleep? Amazing. The best I've slept in South Africa and Ed was already good. Yeah it was nice. Really comfy mattresses. And no mosquitoes. That was the best thing, there's no mosquitoes. It's a very cloudy day today. The same as yesterday morning. It's quite early in the morning. It's twenty to seven and Di is insisting that we go for a run. You've got a mouth to yell. I'm tired. I slept really well but I'm not a really early morning person. But basically the walk we did last night up the hill, Di wants to do that as a run this morning. Ready? Yeah are you ready? Start my watch. I'll start my watch. Go. I'm tired already. We might see some early morning animals. We're going for a minute thirty. Do you regret your decision Di? It's steep. So much moisture in the air and what better place to run in a nice peaceful nature reserve. You alright Di? I'm tired. So one mile uphill, one mile downhill. Back to the hut we're doing. It's tough. Keep going Di. I can't. Made it to the road. Just under a mile. You're doing great Di. Well done. That was tough. So tough. Hills are so hard. Especially first thing. Soaking wet because of all this long grass here. I'm glad you got me up. I can feel that. Glad you got me out of bed to do that. Now it's just under a mile back down the hill. She's off. She's off. Yeah well it's a bit easier going downhill Di. Just under two miles. That definitely wakes you up in the morning. Definitely. So breakfast time. We're having a breakfast of champions. We have rice krispies with soy milk. Okay so this is where we spent the night last night and we now have just five kilometers to get back to where the car is. So all packed up. Ready to go Di? Just reading some interesting information. So these huts are fairly cheap. You have to book them five people minimum but it's two pound a person so this hut just cost us ten pound for the night. So it's fairly cheap and what do we have here? We've got a marker. So this is where we parked the car so it actually says 6.6 kilometers here. So 6.6 kilometer height. That's about four and a bit miles. You all right? Yes. Got to duck really really low. These trails are very overgrown. It's making for quite the 24-hour adventure isn't it Di? Yeah. Just really enjoying being out in nature and all the birds chirping. Yeah. It's very nice isn't it Di? So lovely. It feels very very adventurous this nature reserve. We haven't really seen any animals other than birds this morning but let's see if we can see something on the way back to the car. So this is what I'm wading through at the moment and you can see all the moisture on the grass and we're following these little yellow footprints. We've got a river crossing Di. Yeah go careful. Squish. All right. Squish. Fighting our way through the undergrowth here. Di your leg. Got so many. That's the purpose. It's meant to cling on to animals. Yeah but look how many you got. It's a great design. They just don't come off either. Yeah. Trusty little yellow footprint to guide us back to the car. At this point I started to wonder why I hadn't seen any trail markers in a while. I now felt like we were on the wrong trail and we didn't know where we were on the map either. But we did see another herd of zebra which was pretty cool. We were now completely lost and we did the sensible thing and turned around and retraced our steps and tried to figure out where we went wrong. Di I found it. I found the footprint. We're no longer lost. I think we were lost for about a good hour. Yeah we're on the path. That's all good. Made it back to the car park now and just over 10 kilometers. So we did four kilometers going on the wrong trail but I really enjoyed that 24-hour adventure in a nice nature reserve near Johannesburg and I think the highlight was definitely the animals wasn't it? Yeah the highlight was awesome to just be no ranger tracking the animals a little bit. Yeah definitely. It was nice to see zebra, wildebeest and all different types of antelope just in like a natural setting and even though they were quite far away from us running away still really nice to see them. You enjoyed that didn't you? I loved it. It was so nice. It exceeded my expectations.