"...Fasten your seatbelts for extreme air travel, because the novelty of flying in commercial aircraft may fade, but a helicopter ride remains a thrill..."
The name Drakensberg was given to this 200km-long mountain range in the late 1800's, when a Boer father and son claimed to have seen dragon flying over the mountain peaks. There's little chance of seeing a gigantic, fire-breathing lizard while cruising over the range in a helicopter but there's plenty of jaw-dropping scenery to get your heart racing.

The chopper of choice for JNC helicopters' aerial expeditions into the mountains is a single-engine Jet Ranger or an EC120 that takes off from the JNC's base in Durban. It flies parallel to the North Coast and then heads inland towards the berg, which forms the northwestern border of KwaZulu-Natal.

During the trip, the chopper's four passengers get up does with some of the ranger's spectacular waterfalls - "you lift over the top them, which is very nice," says owner of JNC Helicopters Carol Sobey- and experience hidden pockets of the region that are inaccessible to man and most machines. Even winter flights are a treat, Carol says, as the waterfalls are frozen towers of ice hugging the cliffs and peaks are snow-capped.

The trip takes about two-and-a-half hours, including the relaxing 30 minutes or so on the ground to sip bubbly and soak p the awe-inspiring views from the 3000m-high Cathedral Peak. Maximum pleasure, minimum dragons.

-Marcus Croft