Hiking in Wonderboom

A couple days after Christmas we went with our blended family, the Bensons, hiking in Wonderboom Nature Reserve, about 30 minutes north of Pretoria. We followed the waterfall trail up to the top expecting to see, a waterfall? We found a rusty, broken fence and a broken water pipe. We could hear a waterfall, but could not see it. I crawled out through some bushes and managed to get a small glimpse of it through the trees. Not quite as impressive as we were hoping.

 I took a picture of the "waterfall" so everyone could claim they saw it.

So no good view of the waterfall, but a pretty good view of the Makro shopping center and parking lot.

After being a bit disappointed with the waterfall trail, we decided to take the trail to the fort. I didn't expect much and turned out to be very pleasantly surprised! Turns out the Wonderboom Fort is actually quite impressive. It was one of the four forts built by the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek in the 19th century to defend Pretoria from the British forces. It ended up never being used.

 View of Pretoria Central Business District in the distance

Being in an old ruined fort was a perfect place for Luke to sneak a kiss from Piper. Luke seems pretty pleased with himself, while Piper does not, and Kent seems like a creepy voyeur. 

 Luke trying to go for another kiss! Piper's dad better not see these pictures!

 And of course we found a large hole which Kent needed to explore.

After our exciting hike we headed home for band practice. What an amazing sound, Paul on the electric guitar, Piper on the bass, Luke on the drums, Nikki on the keyboard, and Kent as lead singer. I haven't seen a better band.

Luke is quite impressive on the drums. I think he was trained by Animal Muppet.