Ex-Toti resident Jody Main-Baillie and two friends were lucky to escape with their lives after they were attacked while hiking the Drakensberg Grand Traverse on Saturday, 23 April.
Jody (33) joined Cameron McLein (30) and Dave Mouldenhauer for a hike in the Berg to celebrate Dave’s 40th birthday, but their celebrations came to a premature end when they were set upon by three men and about 10 dogs on the first evening of making camp.
The Grand Traverse is billed as an epic hike across 220 kilometres of the Drakensberg mountain range. However, before they’d had a chance to savour the experience, it became a fight for their survival.
“It was nothing like I had ever experienced or would even dream of something that vicious happening to us. The three of us are really lucky to be alive,” said Jody.
“It started off with the men throwing rocks at the tents and as we tried to come out, they hit us with knobkerries. We knew we had to get out of the tent as the rocks started coming through, so we rushed them which pushed them back for a bit, but then the rock throwing became unreal. They had clearly collected rocks before they attacked as they came faster than bullets.
They kept coming closer and their dogs had surrounded us and kept trying to bite us. After going down from a hit from one of the rocks, one of the dogs ran up and bit me on my back.
Dave managed to pepper-spray one of the guys and his dog, but not without taking a rock and knobkerrie strike to his head. We kept shouting why and to please stop. All they said was they wanted money.
After the pepper-spray, we managed to get a gap and we said to each other to grab what we could and get out as fast as possible. We crossed the river and walked for many hours to get away as we could still hear the dogs.
I have never been so scared in all my life. I really thought we were going to lose our lives that night. It might sound like I’m being over-dramatic, but I can assure you it was no joke. They were ready to kill us for our stuff, and the three of us have no doubt of that.
The strike from the knobkerries were only aimed at our heads and with some serious force behind it. If it wasn’t for their dogs, we would have caught the three guys. Everytime we rushed them, they retreated, but then their dogs came for us.
We were lucky to make it out with our shoes and the few clothes we were able to scrounge before retreating and hiding in the mountains until first light. Other than that, everything of ours was taken.”
The three managed to make contact with rangers in the area at about 1am and they waited until day break to go and meet them on one of the trails. They were taken to hospital and their wounds treated.
“My friend Dave had the worst of the injuries. He is still in a very bad way. He was taken back to hospital and from the scans, they discovered he had a depressed skull fracture and had blurry vision in one eye. I am still waiting to find out the full result as they are waiting for a neurosurgeon. He also has to have surgery on his left hand to fix three of his fingers.
I was hit on the head and bitten by the dogs on my back. I am going through the rabies treatment regimen for the next couple weeks.
Cameron has massive welts all over his body with serious bruising. Counting the marks between the three of us we got hit over 16 times from rocks and knobkerries.
It’s really sad as we had been dreaming and planning this trip for a very long time and had spent lots of money on gear and food, only for it all to end on our first night.
We go to the mountains to get away from the crazy lives we have to live already, but this now too has been taken away from us. I can’t see us attempting the Grand Traverse anytime soon. I don’t like that we now have to worry about our lives when trying to be out in those beautiful mountains.
I want to thank Stephen Richert, conservation manager of RNNP and his amazing team of rangers. You guys were nothing less than amazing and we will forever be thankful to you and your team. And Brenda from Witsieshoek for sending your guides to help and for feeding us and making trips to the hospital.”
