Chris Weidner: Culture, climbing and community in South Africa.

One of Waterval Boven's famous walls gives
climbers a thrilling, and sometimes misty,
journey adjacent to its eponymous waterfall.
(Chris Weidner / Courtesy photo)

There's a wildness unique to South Africa.

It's in the jungle, where mouse-sized spiders spin webs as thick as dental floss, and baboons, with their eerily human voice, shriek from treetops.

It's in the streets, where electronic music pulses from giant speakers on Saturday night, so loud it hurts your ears. And in the alleyways, where tall flames lick the sky and the hazy stink of burning garbage pervades the air.

It's everywhere — a palpable tension guarding the secrets of ancient tribal conflict, centuries of African-European hostility and the recent remnants of government-mandated white supremacy, cloaked in the term: apartheid.


By Chris Weidner.
Full story at Daily Camera.