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Day
12
(October 14, 2022) Panorama Route
Before
This is the day we will leave the Kruger National Park as we leave
Olifants Camp early in the direction of the exit gate.
We will be able to see fauna during the departure drive but the
attraction of this day is the Panorama Route, an itinerary going
through multiple natural highlights, which we will do until we end up
in our B&B in Graskop, in which it will be our last night in
South
Africa.
The spots marked at map are:
0- Laguna Lodge
1- Lisbon Falls
2- Berlin Falls
3- God's Window
4- Bourke's Luck Potholes
5- Blyde Canyon
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After
At 7 AM we are ready to leave the bungalow, but before leaving
the camp we stop next to the restaurant to have breakfast. They just
opened and we are alone.
 
We leave towards the road to Phalaborwa gate, which will be the our
exit point of Kruger National Park. Along the way we are still seeing
animals: zebras, ostriches and more buffaloes than in any other day here
Around 10 AM we arrive at the Phalaborwa Gate, where we finally say
goodbye to the Kruger Park after about two hours since we left Olifants
camp.
We drive for about an hour through long straight lines, some of them full of holes that force us to go slower to dodge them.
Then the landscape becomes more mountainous and we feel that we are
reaching the Blyde River Canyon, which is our stop on the panorama
route. Craft vendors are also starting to appear along the road, but it
will still be about another hour until reaching our first stop.
When the signs for the "Three Rondavels" appear, we follow them until
we reach the viewpoint ticket office and pay R140 per person to
continue along the road that ends at the top, where the parking area is
in front of a long row of gift shops.
We follow the path closest to the car park to reach the first
viewpoint, which overlooks the so-called "Three Rondavels", a curious
formation in the mountain made up of three mounds.
The second path leads to another viewpoint where you can see the three
mounds from another angle, but here they are just part of the
background in a view where the highlight is the turn of the Blyde
River, which gives this canyon its name.
We do some shopping and use the bathroom here before heading back on
the road to the next viewpoint. It is the Lowveld View, and it is
clearly not as popular as the previous one since there is no one here,
not even in the gift shops, which are closed. There is no admission fee
either.
We left for Bourke's Luck Potholes, our next visit, where we
arrive after driving 15 minutes and pay another R140 per person. We
look at the restaurant options but they only offer sandwiches and
hamburgers and we're seeking another type of food for today.
We go to the place of the potholes, some curious rock
formations, and we access the part of the river, which appears quite
crowded despite how hot it is now and the lack of shade here.
We follow the path to the bridges area because they have been left empty and we can take pictures now there.
When we return to the part of the river, where there are several
people in the water, we find the potholes under one of the last bridges.
 
 
After completing the visit we rushed out because we want to find a
place to eat, since it is already 2:15 PM. We stopped at a couple of
restaurants on the way, but they have the same type of food that we had
already rejected and we decided to go straight to Graskop, where we
presume will be multiple restaurant options.
Arriving at Graskop we follow the sign for a restaurant, The
Garden Shed, which turns out to have a very extensive menu. We ordered
the pasta with feta and mushrooms for me and a seafood pizza for Eva
with two delicious homemade puddings: 358R in total.
 
The food was very good but they were quite slow and, after
confirming that the waterfalls close at 5 PM, we headed towards Berlin
Falls, as it is now 4:30 PM. The idea is to visit the furthest one to
make it easy a possible visit tomorrow in case we have to leave us one.
We come across some road works that leave us waiting for some
minutes that some street vendors take advantage of to offer macadamia
nuts. We ended up buying three bags from them.
We arrive in Berlin Falls at 4:47 PM and the gate is open, but
there is no one to charge us. It seems that they have already left. The
visit is short because you only have to go down to the only viewpoint
in front of the waterfalls.
 
We left after three minutes of visiting to speed up our chances
of reaching Lisbon Falls in 10 minutes. We arrive in 8 and there is no
one again, so we don't pay here either and we find that we are no
longer in a hurry for this visit. Here there are two viewpoints, like
balconies, to have two different views of the waterfalls.
 
 
When we leave it is to complete the day reaching our
accommodation in Graskop: a magnificent room in a modern house. From
the terrace we can see our last sunset in South Africa.
 
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