Last weekend Dorje and I went to Greenpop’s Family Fest in Platbos Forest. After some grumbling about missing Pokemon, he settled into the idea of getting muddy and helping plant thousands of trees.

The existing forest, which claims to be Africa’s southernmost, is a beautiful piece of ancient indigenous forest, with some trees over 1000 years old. As with all south-western Cape forests, it’s gentle and welcoming, with small trees and a low canopy, and lots of space on the forest floor.

However, it’s also tiny and vulnerable, surrounded by alien Port Jacksons and very vulnerable to fire. Platbos is restoring forest to almost of its remaining land, and the good yet sad news is that there may not be too many more Forest Fests in Platbos, as since the project began in 2011, a hige area of land has been replanted, and in two or three years time the land will be completely covered.

Friday evening we explored the forest, late enough to see the glow-worms which had somehow survived the epic undead battle raging around us. I was tired not long after, but Dorje wasn’t ready for the tent yet, and decided to stay up. Some time in the night I woke up, realising it was a little too quiet, and went to find Dorje, sitting half-asleep, listening to the music around the campfire.

Somehow he made it up for planting the next morning. I hadn’t thought much about what to expect – perhaps some military-style chain gang? An arboreal version of this?

But no, it was lots fun, with the supervisor more likely to break into dance than crack the whip.

Dorje insisted on staying up as long as I did on Saturday night, listening to Paige Mac, Lemonella and others, so at least I can say he didn’t stay up later than me. Not surprisingly though, he missed breakfast on Sunday.

There were lots of activities in the day, from forest yoga, walks, games, but Dorje found Psychedelic Theatre’s poi area and parked there for the rest of the time.

This week, sans Dorje, I go back to do it all again in the Friend’s Fest version. Less puppet show, more…?

Today, Dorje and I embarked on a dangerous raid into the domain of the Guardian. The Guardian possesses a precious jewel, hidden at the very highest point of the mountain. After scaling the peak and bagging the jewel, the Guardian began to emerge. An immensely powerful, yet slow moving, creature, it first ascended to space before falling back to earth causing a calamatous crater. Fortunately we were well away by the time this happened. If began to hot-foot it after us, but, after battling our way past numerous lesser Guardians (while Dorje had powerful spells, I was armed only with a dagger), we made it to safety.

Or, put another way, Dorje and I climbed Platteklip, which was busier than I’ve ever seen before. There was a church group, many hundreds large, descending, so we were passing a constant stream of walkers (or in some cases, crawlers). Having got to the top, we headed to a cliff for some food before going to Maclears beacon (the source of the jewel above), and, eventually, back down again. We started walking at about 1pm, and got back down at about 6.45pm, so it was a good, long walk, and Dorje’s longest by far.

He’s still sleeping now, at 9.30 am, but I’m sure will never forgive me if I let him miss Pokemon, so time to wake him up.