4 November Pilgrims Rest and Hazyview

Tomorrow we'll be going in to Kruger Park and it will be a dawn start each day so today we gave ourselves the luxury of having a leisurely breakfast and a walk around the town before driving to Pilgrim's Rest in Mpumalanga.

Jacaranda in bloom

Pilgrim's Rest main street

Pilgrim's Rest is an historical village owing it's existence to a gold strike in 1870, the first proper gold mining settlement in South Africa. Tents gave way to houses at the turn of the century and what is left today are those Victorian houses. Gold was mined here up until the 1970s and then the town was left..until it was restored to be the tourist attraction it is today. We were fortunate to be here when the jacaranda trees were in bloom making the main road particularly pretty.

High above the village is the cemetery with graves of the early miners who came from England, Wales and Scotland. The cemetery owes it's improbable setting to The Robber's Grave, the only grave that lies on a north-south direction. It contains the body of a thief banished from Pilgrim's Rest for stealing gold from a tent, after which he was tarred and feathered and chased out of town. He foolishly returned and was shot dead. Buries where he fell, the area around his grave became the unofficial cemetery.

Graveyard above the village

With the natural and cultural sites ticked it was time to make our way to our next over night stop, Hazyview, chosen because it is only twenty minutes drive from Phageni gate in Kruger Park.