One of my favourite childhood books was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Besides the deliciously fantastic storyline, the ending always fascinated me – when Willie Wonka took Charlie into his glass elevator and headed upward into the unknown.

This is exactly how I felt when we entered Graskop’s brand new glass elevator.  The shiny modern structure clinging to the vertical side of a naturally stunning deep gorge is a sight to behold. Instead of up, it transported us deep down into the unknown caverns of the enormous gorge, below the canopy of tall trees and into a hidden world entirely magical and full of sweet and surreal surprises.

And the lift is just the icing on the cake – although the ride in the uber contemporary and impressive looking glass elevator is reason enough for visiting, it was the enchanting world in the forest at the bottom of the gorge that really blew us away.

More or less this time last year, a little newspaper article with an artist’s impression of the futuristic Graskop Gorge Lift caught my eye. I could see that this was going to be something different and that someone was planning to plough a lot of money into this new tourist attraction, and bring something entirely new to South Africa. We have enjoyed similar tourist attractions in Canada (the Glacier Skywalk at Jasper) and seen more in the likes of China (with glass skywalks clinging to tall mountains) and the United States, but this looked like a first for our lovely Rainbow Nation. I have to admit that I assumed it would be like so many other grand African plans and would probably never happen.

So when I was paging through the Getaway magazine and I saw an actual photo of a space age elevator descending into Graskop Gorge, I literally squealed with delight. As luck would have it, we had already booked a couple of weeks along Mpumalanga’s Panorama Route for our June/July holiday – the timing could not be better!

The Graskop Gorge Lift Company opened its doors at the end of December 2017. The impressive 51m high lift tower has an elevated viewing deck on top where you can enjoy the incredible view out over the Lowveld and below of the forest canopy and the Motitsi waterfall. It is the perfect spot for an impressive selfie and an iconic travel photo next to the massive distinctive logo.

The viewing deck was leg-numbingly high

Entry to the complex is R20 per person and there is plenty to do besides going down the lift. The restaurant dishes up delectable milkshakes, coffees and meals and has what is arguably one of the best views in the country from its deck tables. There is also an art gallery and craft shops and plenty of enviable selfie spots as well as lots of places to stand and enjoy watching mad people scream their heads off as they leap off the little platform 130m up on the other side of the gorge and plunge down at 180 km/hr at the Graskop Big Swing.

The lift costs R175 per adult and  R120 per child under 16, which we felt was incredibly good value for money considering the massive investment that has clearly been made developing this attraction (similar facilities overseas have a price tag of R300 per person and up). The ride itself is not really adrenaline pumping – the elevator is really smooth and the downward journey feels very safe and solid. However, standing on the tower above the lift and walking around the high platforms was more than enough to give us some zinging knee vertigo effects.

The view from the top

Once at the bottom, we emerged into a rocky cave greeting us with a sign of things to come “Into the forest I go. To feed my mind and find my soul”.  This set the tone perfectly for a soul-enriching experience which in our opinion every South African should try and do.

There is a network of wooden decking, stairs and suspension bridges with lots of interesting interpretive displays and signs. We loved the stunning stained glass artwork catching the light, the forest quotes along the way and the butterfly bar with bright flowers to attract butterflies and a drip fountain of sugar water that feeds these beautiful creatures.

It was extremely entertaining to stand on the suspension bridge at the bottom of the waterfall and watch people leaping off the top of the gorge, free falling hundreds of metres and swinging right over our heads as they screamed for dear life. To our alarm, Cian (13) decided that he wanted to do the swing. As travel bloggers, this should have been pure gold, but as caring and nurturing parents, all we could see was how insanely high the drop is and we were alarmed to watch the adrenalin junkies pinging up and down on the elastic rope with their spines bending in all sorts of unnatural looking contortions.  What a conundrum!

Looking up at the Big Swing platform

Motherly love triumphed over the prospect of awesome video footage – I told Cian that we would check the age limit as I was quite certain that they would only let 16 and above attempt the jump and then the debate would be over. Horrifically, when I asked the staff member at the landing platform below the waterfall, he chuckled and said they allow jumpers from 7 years old. I cannot imagine what parent would allow their 7 year old child to jump from a 130m high cliff (no judgement intended here – each to their own. We are extremely scared of heights and Cian is our “laat-lammetjie” so we are quite protective of him. I was the one who egged Ralph on to leap from the top of Soweto’s Orlando Towers for the sake of the blog, but somehow this felt very different). As it turns out, we managed to convince Cian that we would come back later in the week for his jump and when the crunch came, he decided against investing R300 of his own money into leaping off a rock cliff.

In our opinion, the Graskop Gorge Lift is reason enough to visit the gorgeous Panorama Route. It made us feel so proud to be South African, and of our natural heritage. We thoroughly enjoyed the lift rides, watching the insane swing jumpers, taking selfies and the magical forest trails below.

The Graskop Gorge Lift Company gets a resounding thumbs up from the Chasing the Rainbow family!

Click here to watch on YouTube if the video does not display properly on your device.

Yours in travel