Johannesburg - A chill breeze ruffles my hair as I join a collection of characters in a car park early on a Sunday morning.
I smile at a few familiar faces as I lace up my hiking boots and feel ridiculously virtuous, setting off on a brisk 8km hike instead of languishing under the duvet.
I’m far from alone, as Sunday morning hikes at Melville Koppies are becoming quite the in-thing. Our group is black, white and brown; old and young; fat and thin; some alone, some with friends and family.
A couple of guys in full hiking gear are lugging large rucksacks as if they’re going camping for a fortnight. It turns out they’re American backpackers who spotted the hike on TripAdvisor and wanted to walk on the wild side of Joburg before catching an evening bus to Harare.
We cross Judith Road and pass through a gate that’s usually locked to keep this part of the Koppies protected. The path soon grows steeper, and we duck beneath branches in a mini-forest before we finally crest a hill and see Joburg laid out before us.
The city has us surrounded, but we’ve risen high above it and try to pick out landmarks from this unusual angle.
It’s embarrassing when I start to huff and puff a bit as I walk alongside the group leader, volunteer guide Wendy Carstens. She’s striding out like a robust mountain goat and looks nothing like her 70 years. At the back of the group her husband David, at 75, is chivvying the slower ones along so we don’t lose any stragglers.
They lead the walks every week, alternating between a hike and a guided tour, where you cover a shorter distance and stop frequently to learn about the flora and geology.
They’re beautiful places, with the central koppie only opened for these official walks to protect its landscape and the Iron Age relics that form part of its history. The east and west koppies are open to the public, but being Joburg, nobody’s really sure if it’s safe to roam there or not.
Carstens tells me there was an incident once where her whole hiking group was held up at gunpoint and relieved of their valuables. It must have been very scary, but I can’t help grinning at the sheer chutzpah of Joburg’s criminals. Now a couple of armed guards from CSS Tactical keep a discreet eye on us, and protect us from another Joburg terror by stopping the traffic when we cross the road between the different koppies.
Every so often, I see a slim figure in a cowboy hat watching us enigmatically from a nearby hill. That’s Siya Mkhwanazi, another of the group’s regular protective escorts.
Now the main danger is the risk of slipping on a steep rocky slope or twisting an ankle on the paths, especially if you’re distracted by the stunning views and endless skies. I can hear traffic on the roads below us, but if you block your ears, you could be in the middle of the bush.
It’s best to start gently, by joining a three-hour guided tour where you walk about 4km through the protected heritage site. Carstens stops regularly to point out proteas, wild apricots and the fabulous milkweed that smells like coffee if you run your hand along its stems. I do that several times, missing the coffee I skipped in the morning so I wouldn’t be needing a bush loo later.
Carstens first got involved after taking early retirement from teaching and going on a guided walk one weekend. It’s addictive, so you can see how she got hooked on these exhilarating Sunday morning missions.
At that stage, the walks only happened once a month. “We’ve changed the whole pattern and now something happens every Sunday,” she says. “Our hikes seem to have hit the right spot with people’s needs for fitness and meeting friends and making friends in interesting places. We can handle fairly large numbers and still keep the impact on the reserve sustainable.”
She also leads school groups during the week, herding excited kids who come to learn about nature and evolution.
Carstens believes the hikes are becoming more popular because of a growing concern for all things green. “People are starting to learn the value of nature with green buildings and a consciousness about water conservation and global warming. Then with the cost of petrol going up, people want to do things that are closer to home. And it’s not exhausting, it’s only a three-hour hike.”
I hope I’m looking energised, not exhausted, as she says that.
The geology of the koppies dates back 3 billion years and tools have been found showing that Early Stone Age man lived here 500 000 years ago. Centuries later the Iron Age settlers left remains of their kraal walls and an iron-smelting furnace has been excavated and preserved in situ.
Every season brings something different, with spring flowers, winter aloes or the brilliant yellow of August Gold flowers. The vegetation is entirely indigenous, largely thanks to the Carstenses and other volunteers on the Melville Koppies Management Committee.
Although the land belongs to Joburg City Parks, it’s the committee that pays for three full-time workers to maintain the sites. The volunteers do everything else, like weeding, site maintenance and running the tours. One of them, metalworker Tony Nunes, regularly repairs the fences and recently overhauled the dilapidated shelters that protect the Iron and Stone Age relics.
More volunteers are needed to lead the hikes and to train as guides to conduct the tours. Right now, if the agile Carstens pensioners didn’t turn up every week, the walks wouldn’t happen at all and this beautiful and little-known Joburg gem would be overrun by weeds and litter.
If You Go...
The walks cost R50 each, which goes towards the R19 000 a month needed to maintain the koppies and pay for security guides. For more information, visit www.mk.org.za
Lesley Stones, The Star