Day 1. Valley View Guest House, Mogwase.
It's only 9pm but we're both shattered. We left Harrogate at lunchtime yesterday, taking a train to Leeds then a very crowded train to Manchester Airport. We flew Lufthansa to Frankfurt, then overnight to Johannesburg. We sat behind two very noisy small children, so I got very little sleep on the flight. We had a Hertz hire car pre-booked - a tiny, tinny Toyota - but their office was very busy and it took us a couple of hours before we were on the road.
The South African motorways are OK, but once we were on a trunk road it got a mite scary. You are expected to pull over onto the hard shoulder if someone wants to get past you, and drivers overtake regardless of whether the road ahead is clear, assuming that oncoming traffic will get out of the way, so you have to be constantly alert. When you pass a town or village there's people walking all over the road trusting you to not run them over. My biggest problem was that I could find nowhere to pull over for a rest. I'd intended only to drive away from Jo'burg then stop at the first service station for a rest and a bite to eat, but I saw nowhere suitable for two whole hours.
We went north from the airport, skirting around Pretoria to the east and north, then heading west towards Rustenburg. I didn't have much time for taking in the scenery, having my eyes on the road all the time, but Robbie spotted a large antelope some way off, and lots of African sacred ibis' - large black and white birds with a down-curved bill - around a rubbish dump. There were many slag heaps from the mines scattered across the landscape, but it was mostly rural scenery - some lovely sunflower fields, a lot of cane fields and a huge blue sky, and once we turned off the main trunk road we were travelling through natural bush veldt which is quite pretty. We got to our guest house at about 3pm feeling like zombies.
Mogwase is a ramshackle assortment of huts spread over quite a large area just outside the border of Pilanesburg National Park, but the Valley View Guest House is jolly nice, on a ridge on the edge of town with a view across miles and miles of plain. There's a swimming pool and a gym, and we can't believe we're only paying £50 a night B&B. I remember this feeling from the previous time we visited South Africa - thinking, "Did I understand correctly when they said what the price was? Have we got our currency conversion wrong?" We both crashed out as soon as we got the keys to our room - it is very hot here midday - 34 degrees centigrade. Then we whiled away the rest of the afternoon in and around the pool. We could see tongues of lightning dancing over the plain 50 miles away, but it was fine and sunny here. There's a couple of palm trees beside the pool that have a colony of southern masked weaver birds in them, with their hanging woven nests. I've invested in a decent birder's telescope and tripod this winter, so I was able to pick out some European bee-eaters on the hillside above us, and a lovely grey go-away-bird (yes, that's it's real name!) - quite a large, gentle looking grey bird with a fine majestic crest.
We drove to a restaurant at a tourist resort just inside the Pilanesberg Park for dinner. The meal was huge - although we'd eaten nothing but a muffin since breakfast on the plane and were both weak with hunger, the salad starter on its own would have been enough. But I still managed to polish of a sirloin steak afterwards...I'd better get straight into that gym tomorrow morning! The lightning reached Pilanesberg just as it got dark, and soon we were eating under a thatched roof watching torrential rainfall pummell the concourse outside. A large friendly moth appeared and started feeding on the balsamic vinegar on Robbie's plate. Being very tired, we tried to get into the wrong car - nearly all South African cars are white - then drove out of the wilderness of the park in the dark, with great sheets of lightning blazing all around us. I took a wrong turning and we got lost in Mogwase village. Did I mention how tired we are? Going to sleep soon - it's nearly 10pm.
It's only 9pm but we're both shattered. We left Harrogate at lunchtime yesterday, taking a train to Leeds then a very crowded train to Manchester Airport. We flew Lufthansa to Frankfurt, then overnight to Johannesburg. We sat behind two very noisy small children, so I got very little sleep on the flight. We had a Hertz hire car pre-booked - a tiny, tinny Toyota - but their office was very busy and it took us a couple of hours before we were on the road.
The South African motorways are OK, but once we were on a trunk road it got a mite scary. You are expected to pull over onto the hard shoulder if someone wants to get past you, and drivers overtake regardless of whether the road ahead is clear, assuming that oncoming traffic will get out of the way, so you have to be constantly alert. When you pass a town or village there's people walking all over the road trusting you to not run them over. My biggest problem was that I could find nowhere to pull over for a rest. I'd intended only to drive away from Jo'burg then stop at the first service station for a rest and a bite to eat, but I saw nowhere suitable for two whole hours.
We went north from the airport, skirting around Pretoria to the east and north, then heading west towards Rustenburg. I didn't have much time for taking in the scenery, having my eyes on the road all the time, but Robbie spotted a large antelope some way off, and lots of African sacred ibis' - large black and white birds with a down-curved bill - around a rubbish dump. There were many slag heaps from the mines scattered across the landscape, but it was mostly rural scenery - some lovely sunflower fields, a lot of cane fields and a huge blue sky, and once we turned off the main trunk road we were travelling through natural bush veldt which is quite pretty. We got to our guest house at about 3pm feeling like zombies.
Mogwase is a ramshackle assortment of huts spread over quite a large area just outside the border of Pilanesburg National Park, but the Valley View Guest House is jolly nice, on a ridge on the edge of town with a view across miles and miles of plain. There's a swimming pool and a gym, and we can't believe we're only paying £50 a night B&B. I remember this feeling from the previous time we visited South Africa - thinking, "Did I understand correctly when they said what the price was? Have we got our currency conversion wrong?" We both crashed out as soon as we got the keys to our room - it is very hot here midday - 34 degrees centigrade. Then we whiled away the rest of the afternoon in and around the pool. We could see tongues of lightning dancing over the plain 50 miles away, but it was fine and sunny here. There's a couple of palm trees beside the pool that have a colony of southern masked weaver birds in them, with their hanging woven nests. I've invested in a decent birder's telescope and tripod this winter, so I was able to pick out some European bee-eaters on the hillside above us, and a lovely grey go-away-bird (yes, that's it's real name!) - quite a large, gentle looking grey bird with a fine majestic crest.
We drove to a restaurant at a tourist resort just inside the Pilanesberg Park for dinner. The meal was huge - although we'd eaten nothing but a muffin since breakfast on the plane and were both weak with hunger, the salad starter on its own would have been enough. But I still managed to polish of a sirloin steak afterwards...I'd better get straight into that gym tomorrow morning! The lightning reached Pilanesberg just as it got dark, and soon we were eating under a thatched roof watching torrential rainfall pummell the concourse outside. A large friendly moth appeared and started feeding on the balsamic vinegar on Robbie's plate. Being very tired, we tried to get into the wrong car - nearly all South African cars are white - then drove out of the wilderness of the park in the dark, with great sheets of lightning blazing all around us. I took a wrong turning and we got lost in Mogwase village. Did I mention how tired we are? Going to sleep soon - it's nearly 10pm.
Day 2.
I fulfilled one of my life ambitions today. More of that later...
We had a leisurely breakfast at the Valley View Guest House in the company of a party of jovial French-speaking Africans who I think were having a business conference there, then we drove to the gate to Pilanesburg Park. We bought day tickets and started ticking off new birds while we were still in the visitor centre - there was a red winged starling nesting in the thatched roof inside, flying in and out through the door.
We drove up the road a kilometre or so and took a side road - unsurfaced but easy enough to drive if you go dead slow and watch out for potholes. We were thinking, "Where are all the animals?" until we reached a dam holding back a small lagoon, and there was a water buck right beside the road, tame as anything. Then as we were driving across the dam, some logs in the water started splashing about and snorting, and we realised they were hippos! Five of them! And we hadn't even reached the end of the dam before a pair of giraffes loomed out of the scrub before us.
We followed the side road round in a loop back to the main road through the park, and soon we were looking at herds of zebras and wildebeest. We took another side road called the Hippo Loop, and sure enough there were four hippos out of the water, grazing beside the road on the bank of a large lake. Plenty of water birds along the shore too - spoonbill, Egyptian geese. A herd of twenty wildebeestwer a little further along, with suckling babies. Then when we'd stopped to photograph some bee-eaters, a herd of adult and baby zebras wandered up and surrounded the car. Almost close enough to touch. This is such a wonderful place. Beautiful thorn bush covered hills and vast grasslands under a bright blue sky.
We lunched at a cafe in the heart of the park on a terrace overlooking a water hole, watching wildebeest and a family of warthogs. After lunch came my big moment...we'd gone down a side track towards a bird hide on the lake, and scanning the far lake shore Robbie noticed one of the wildebeest was rather large. Blow me, if it wasn't a rhino! A life-time first for me, an animal I've always been fascinated with.
We walked along a boardwalk to the bird hide which was situated out in the lake, and there was a colony of weaver birds in the acacia trees alongside it. Also nesting in the reeds were southern red bishop birds - indescribably cute, but I'll try: the males are orangey-red-and-black balls of fluff. They puff themselves up and chatter aggressively at anything that comes near their nests. They whizz around above the reed heads all frizzed up like flying pom-poms. The females are small brown and dull looking.
I set up my scope in the hide for good views of the rhino. There were pied kingfishers perching on dead branches right outside the hide windows, almost close enough to touch. Walking back along the boardwalk we saw a big monitor lizard, as long as my arm, lieing along a branch at eye level in the acacia tree where the weaver bird nests were. Not surprising the birds were all so agitated!
We exited the park via a different gate, seeing quite a few more giraffes along the way, and a large herd of impala - graceful, clean-looking antelopes. We took a wrong turning and ended up at the back gate of Sun City, South Africa's tacky answer to Las Vegas. It looks like a Disney World castle on top of a lofty ridge. We turned around and found our way to the Kwa Maritine hotel where we wanted to eat. it is a very expensive looking resort hotel just inside the park boundary, but they had a huge 3 course buffet for only about £12 per head.
Before eating we sat in their hide for a full hour. It's an underground bunker beside a water hole. You reach it by walking through a very long underground concrete tunnel, and look out at the water hole at ground level through concealed slots like you're a machine-gunner in a war movie. When we entered at dusk there was a rhino far off, just disappearing into the scrub. We waited until it was fully dark and they'd turned on spotlights around the water hole, and all we saw was a rabbit, a bat, a moth and a blacksmith lapwing - a common pied waterside bird.
The buffet was huge and delicious. Dead tired again.
I fulfilled one of my life ambitions today. More of that later...
We had a leisurely breakfast at the Valley View Guest House in the company of a party of jovial French-speaking Africans who I think were having a business conference there, then we drove to the gate to Pilanesburg Park. We bought day tickets and started ticking off new birds while we were still in the visitor centre - there was a red winged starling nesting in the thatched roof inside, flying in and out through the door.
We drove up the road a kilometre or so and took a side road - unsurfaced but easy enough to drive if you go dead slow and watch out for potholes. We were thinking, "Where are all the animals?" until we reached a dam holding back a small lagoon, and there was a water buck right beside the road, tame as anything. Then as we were driving across the dam, some logs in the water started splashing about and snorting, and we realised they were hippos! Five of them! And we hadn't even reached the end of the dam before a pair of giraffes loomed out of the scrub before us.
We followed the side road round in a loop back to the main road through the park, and soon we were looking at herds of zebras and wildebeest. We took another side road called the Hippo Loop, and sure enough there were four hippos out of the water, grazing beside the road on the bank of a large lake. Plenty of water birds along the shore too - spoonbill, Egyptian geese. A herd of twenty wildebeestwer a little further along, with suckling babies. Then when we'd stopped to photograph some bee-eaters, a herd of adult and baby zebras wandered up and surrounded the car. Almost close enough to touch. This is such a wonderful place. Beautiful thorn bush covered hills and vast grasslands under a bright blue sky.
We lunched at a cafe in the heart of the park on a terrace overlooking a water hole, watching wildebeest and a family of warthogs. After lunch came my big moment...we'd gone down a side track towards a bird hide on the lake, and scanning the far lake shore Robbie noticed one of the wildebeest was rather large. Blow me, if it wasn't a rhino! A life-time first for me, an animal I've always been fascinated with.
We walked along a boardwalk to the bird hide which was situated out in the lake, and there was a colony of weaver birds in the acacia trees alongside it. Also nesting in the reeds were southern red bishop birds - indescribably cute, but I'll try: the males are orangey-red-and-black balls of fluff. They puff themselves up and chatter aggressively at anything that comes near their nests. They whizz around above the reed heads all frizzed up like flying pom-poms. The females are small brown and dull looking.
I set up my scope in the hide for good views of the rhino. There were pied kingfishers perching on dead branches right outside the hide windows, almost close enough to touch. Walking back along the boardwalk we saw a big monitor lizard, as long as my arm, lieing along a branch at eye level in the acacia tree where the weaver bird nests were. Not surprising the birds were all so agitated!
We exited the park via a different gate, seeing quite a few more giraffes along the way, and a large herd of impala - graceful, clean-looking antelopes. We took a wrong turning and ended up at the back gate of Sun City, South Africa's tacky answer to Las Vegas. It looks like a Disney World castle on top of a lofty ridge. We turned around and found our way to the Kwa Maritine hotel where we wanted to eat. it is a very expensive looking resort hotel just inside the park boundary, but they had a huge 3 course buffet for only about £12 per head.
Before eating we sat in their hide for a full hour. It's an underground bunker beside a water hole. You reach it by walking through a very long underground concrete tunnel, and look out at the water hole at ground level through concealed slots like you're a machine-gunner in a war movie. When we entered at dusk there was a rhino far off, just disappearing into the scrub. We waited until it was fully dark and they'd turned on spotlights around the water hole, and all we saw was a rabbit, a bat, a moth and a blacksmith lapwing - a common pied waterside bird.
The buffet was huge and delicious. Dead tired again.
Day 3.
We got up painfully early this morning to try to catch the animals at their busiest, so we were in the park by 6.15am with no breakfast. We needn't have bothered. We didn't see very much for a couple of hours. The weather was overcast and drizzly, and I think all the animals were keeping their heads down. It got better though.
I drove along the main road through the park again, and took a side route which twisted and turned up a hillside with some great views over the lake we'd visited yesterday. We rejoined the other main road of the park and thank goodness, at last we broke our duck on large raptors, seeing a huge black chested snake eagle circling and hovering above the valley. I drove along to where there's a hide beside a waterhole down a short but very bumpy track. I had to coax the poor little Toyota through a very deep and muddy puddle to get there. (There's a John Cooper Clarke poem about abusing hire cars that keeps popping into my head at such moments, although I can't remember how it goes.)
Right in front of the hide a hippo was floating, with a turtle perched on its back. We waited half an hour or so with no more excitement than a foursome of blacksmith plovers arriving, and we were just packing up books and assorted optics to leave, when I glanced out of the viewing slot at the far end of the hide. "*#€%!!!" I said. "Elephant!!!"
I don't know how long it had been there, silently drinking while we'd been looking in the wrong direction, but there was a massive bull elephant on the shore of the waterhole. Tusks the size of fence posts, great big flappy ears, nose like an elephant's trunk...the lot. Sadly it only remained for a couple of minutes, not long enough for Robbie to get her big lens screwed on, so the photos won't do it justice. (She's always got the wrong lens on whenever we see anything good.) Elephant nonchantly wandered off to be swallowed whole by the vegetation. How can something, so big, simply disappear so utterly?
We drove out of the park via the main roads, trying to get back to the lodge for breakfast by 10am but we were doomed, because there were birds and animals everywhere now that we had to keep stopping to look at. The climactic event occurred when we were only a few kilometres short of the entrance gate, and we came acros a mother and calf rhino, almost at the roadside. Once more the vegetation demonstrated its ability to swallow up huge herbivores, and the photos will be awful.
After a large late breakfast at the guest house we refreshed ourselves with a midday kip and a splash in the pool before striking out for the park again at about 2pm.
This time we did brilliantly for birds. The first big sighting was not a bird but a gang of about 15 banded mongooses (literary friends, please advise: should that be "mongeese"?) writhing over one another just before the park entrance gate. We saw an outrageously badly colour co-ordinated crested barbet in the same area, looking like a 1970s punk rocker. He was still "hangin' around" when we returned this evening.
We took the first trail on the right after entering the park, which was unsurfaced but mostly OK to drive on, just a few places where the rain had eroded gullies into the road that tested the poor little hire car to the limit. There were small birds everywhere, and apart from crawling along in second gear at 10kmph, we kept stopping every ten or twenty yards to look at something. Notable birds: three different species of hornbill; shaft-tailed whydah - a small bird with four long wire-like trailing tail feathers that are twice the length of its body; and the even more remarkable long-tailed paradise whydah whose tail is almost four times the length of its body. These last were flying around doing aerial display flights to impress nonplussed looking dull brown females. Then a huge rhino waddled across the road in front of us and vanished into the thorn bushes. Half an hour later we saw another rhino, not far from the road and out in the open. Somehow, we still didn't get brilliant photos...
I took a wrong turning and forced the poor abused car down an even bumpier road, but the payback was that we saw a black-backed jackal strutting through a grassland - quite a proud looking large fox-like creature with an odd black-and-white chequered pattern on its back. Glad to be back on asphalt again, we headed straight back to the gate to avoid getting locked in at 7pm, and had dinner at the Golden Leopard Resort again, the tourist lodge just inside the park. There was a family of warthogs in the car park. What have I forgotten to mention? ...ooh, lots and lotsa things!
We got up painfully early this morning to try to catch the animals at their busiest, so we were in the park by 6.15am with no breakfast. We needn't have bothered. We didn't see very much for a couple of hours. The weather was overcast and drizzly, and I think all the animals were keeping their heads down. It got better though.
I drove along the main road through the park again, and took a side route which twisted and turned up a hillside with some great views over the lake we'd visited yesterday. We rejoined the other main road of the park and thank goodness, at last we broke our duck on large raptors, seeing a huge black chested snake eagle circling and hovering above the valley. I drove along to where there's a hide beside a waterhole down a short but very bumpy track. I had to coax the poor little Toyota through a very deep and muddy puddle to get there. (There's a John Cooper Clarke poem about abusing hire cars that keeps popping into my head at such moments, although I can't remember how it goes.)
Right in front of the hide a hippo was floating, with a turtle perched on its back. We waited half an hour or so with no more excitement than a foursome of blacksmith plovers arriving, and we were just packing up books and assorted optics to leave, when I glanced out of the viewing slot at the far end of the hide. "*#€%!!!" I said. "Elephant!!!"
I don't know how long it had been there, silently drinking while we'd been looking in the wrong direction, but there was a massive bull elephant on the shore of the waterhole. Tusks the size of fence posts, great big flappy ears, nose like an elephant's trunk...the lot. Sadly it only remained for a couple of minutes, not long enough for Robbie to get her big lens screwed on, so the photos won't do it justice. (She's always got the wrong lens on whenever we see anything good.) Elephant nonchantly wandered off to be swallowed whole by the vegetation. How can something, so big, simply disappear so utterly?
We drove out of the park via the main roads, trying to get back to the lodge for breakfast by 10am but we were doomed, because there were birds and animals everywhere now that we had to keep stopping to look at. The climactic event occurred when we were only a few kilometres short of the entrance gate, and we came acros a mother and calf rhino, almost at the roadside. Once more the vegetation demonstrated its ability to swallow up huge herbivores, and the photos will be awful.
After a large late breakfast at the guest house we refreshed ourselves with a midday kip and a splash in the pool before striking out for the park again at about 2pm.
This time we did brilliantly for birds. The first big sighting was not a bird but a gang of about 15 banded mongooses (literary friends, please advise: should that be "mongeese"?) writhing over one another just before the park entrance gate. We saw an outrageously badly colour co-ordinated crested barbet in the same area, looking like a 1970s punk rocker. He was still "hangin' around" when we returned this evening.
We took the first trail on the right after entering the park, which was unsurfaced but mostly OK to drive on, just a few places where the rain had eroded gullies into the road that tested the poor little hire car to the limit. There were small birds everywhere, and apart from crawling along in second gear at 10kmph, we kept stopping every ten or twenty yards to look at something. Notable birds: three different species of hornbill; shaft-tailed whydah - a small bird with four long wire-like trailing tail feathers that are twice the length of its body; and the even more remarkable long-tailed paradise whydah whose tail is almost four times the length of its body. These last were flying around doing aerial display flights to impress nonplussed looking dull brown females. Then a huge rhino waddled across the road in front of us and vanished into the thorn bushes. Half an hour later we saw another rhino, not far from the road and out in the open. Somehow, we still didn't get brilliant photos...
I took a wrong turning and forced the poor abused car down an even bumpier road, but the payback was that we saw a black-backed jackal strutting through a grassland - quite a proud looking large fox-like creature with an odd black-and-white chequered pattern on its back. Glad to be back on asphalt again, we headed straight back to the gate to avoid getting locked in at 7pm, and had dinner at the Golden Leopard Resort again, the tourist lodge just inside the park. There was a family of warthogs in the car park. What have I forgotten to mention? ...ooh, lots and lotsa things!
Day 4.
After yesterday's pointless early start we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast this morning. There was an iridescent sunbird out in the garden by the pool at the guest house, and indeed it looked to be an omen for a gorgeously hot sunny day. Which it was...rather too hot for me!
It was about 10am before we made it into the park. The first excitement was noticing two huge, ugly maribou storks perched on a tree-top near the gate visitor centre, with their long gruesome vulturish necks. Possible they always perch there but we usually get our tickets and whizz off into the park without having a proper look around.
It was quite hot even early on, and I think the animals were hiding in deep shade because we saw not much whilst driving into the centre of the park. A steppe buzzard circling overhead and calling was our highlight. I took the car down an unsurfaced road to the north of the central road, the first time we've ventured into the northern section. It all seemed very dry there, a few small birds in the thorn trees but no animals. We stopped for a bite of lunch in a hide overlooking a small lake. These hides are a relief because they are the only places you're allowed to get out of your car. We're feeling like a couple of potatoes, driving around all day. It's not our way of doing things. The car parks for the hides are surrounded by tall fences, sometimes with electric wires too, to protect the tourists from the wildlife. At this particular hide the fences were quite badly splintered, destroyed in a couple of places. I did a bit of deduction and worked out that an elephant must have got itself funnelled into the angle between the car park log-fence, and the steel-post and mesh-fence protecting the walkway to the hide, so the great beast had simply bulldozed its way through the corner, then crossed the car park and smashed down the heavy log-fence on the other side, to continue on its way. I'm glad my car wasn't there at the time..!
The hide was quite full of people also eating lunch. They'd all brought picnic baskets groaning with salads, meats and chicken, and were eating off real plates, with knives and forks. We sat munching the rock buns we'd bought from the Mogwase petrol station this morning, feeling like poor relations. There were four female water buck on the lake shore, and a pair of sacred ibis. We decided not to venture any further into the northern park as it was very hot and quite lifeless looking, so we followed a loop around, back to the main road.
A good move. First we passed a small group of red hartebeest, an animal we hadn't yet seen, an antelope with long curly horns. Then Robbie's eagle eye spotted three rhinos lazing together beneath some thorn trees. Was there ever an animal more amazing than a rhino? We stopped off at the hide where we'd seen the elephant yesterday, and wow!.. There was the resident hippo, wallowing in the water right underneath the hide. You could see its nostrils by kneeling down and peering between the planks of the floor. And smell its breath, which was like the worst fart you have ever experienced. I don't recommend.
We exited by another gate hoping we could get a swim in the pools at one of the two lodges there, but they were "Residents Only", so we drove around the outside of the park back to Mogwase, and had a swim here and a quick work-out in the gym.
Then we returned to the park at 5pm. Incredible luck: we saw an elephant quite close to the road only 5 minutes from the gate. We drove down to the dam where we'd seen hippos the first morning, and now there were seven of them bobbing about, yawning their huge jaws wide. We looped along the dirt track and saw our elephant, still there when we exited. We had dinner at the Golden Leopard Resort again, and saw a spotted thick knee in the dark car park - a nocturnal bird with big eyes that struts around on long legs - and there was a huge herd of impala grazing on the mown lawns too.
After yesterday's pointless early start we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast this morning. There was an iridescent sunbird out in the garden by the pool at the guest house, and indeed it looked to be an omen for a gorgeously hot sunny day. Which it was...rather too hot for me!
It was about 10am before we made it into the park. The first excitement was noticing two huge, ugly maribou storks perched on a tree-top near the gate visitor centre, with their long gruesome vulturish necks. Possible they always perch there but we usually get our tickets and whizz off into the park without having a proper look around.
It was quite hot even early on, and I think the animals were hiding in deep shade because we saw not much whilst driving into the centre of the park. A steppe buzzard circling overhead and calling was our highlight. I took the car down an unsurfaced road to the north of the central road, the first time we've ventured into the northern section. It all seemed very dry there, a few small birds in the thorn trees but no animals. We stopped for a bite of lunch in a hide overlooking a small lake. These hides are a relief because they are the only places you're allowed to get out of your car. We're feeling like a couple of potatoes, driving around all day. It's not our way of doing things. The car parks for the hides are surrounded by tall fences, sometimes with electric wires too, to protect the tourists from the wildlife. At this particular hide the fences were quite badly splintered, destroyed in a couple of places. I did a bit of deduction and worked out that an elephant must have got itself funnelled into the angle between the car park log-fence, and the steel-post and mesh-fence protecting the walkway to the hide, so the great beast had simply bulldozed its way through the corner, then crossed the car park and smashed down the heavy log-fence on the other side, to continue on its way. I'm glad my car wasn't there at the time..!
The hide was quite full of people also eating lunch. They'd all brought picnic baskets groaning with salads, meats and chicken, and were eating off real plates, with knives and forks. We sat munching the rock buns we'd bought from the Mogwase petrol station this morning, feeling like poor relations. There were four female water buck on the lake shore, and a pair of sacred ibis. We decided not to venture any further into the northern park as it was very hot and quite lifeless looking, so we followed a loop around, back to the main road.
A good move. First we passed a small group of red hartebeest, an animal we hadn't yet seen, an antelope with long curly horns. Then Robbie's eagle eye spotted three rhinos lazing together beneath some thorn trees. Was there ever an animal more amazing than a rhino? We stopped off at the hide where we'd seen the elephant yesterday, and wow!.. There was the resident hippo, wallowing in the water right underneath the hide. You could see its nostrils by kneeling down and peering between the planks of the floor. And smell its breath, which was like the worst fart you have ever experienced. I don't recommend.
We exited by another gate hoping we could get a swim in the pools at one of the two lodges there, but they were "Residents Only", so we drove around the outside of the park back to Mogwase, and had a swim here and a quick work-out in the gym.
Then we returned to the park at 5pm. Incredible luck: we saw an elephant quite close to the road only 5 minutes from the gate. We drove down to the dam where we'd seen hippos the first morning, and now there were seven of them bobbing about, yawning their huge jaws wide. We looped along the dirt track and saw our elephant, still there when we exited. We had dinner at the Golden Leopard Resort again, and saw a spotted thick knee in the dark car park - a nocturnal bird with big eyes that struts around on long legs - and there was a huge herd of impala grazing on the mown lawns too.
Day 5. Abu Madi Game Lodge (not very) near Mkuze, Kwazulu Natal.
A stressful day if ever there was one! We left the Valley View Guest House straight after breakfast this morning, about 8.15am. We filled up with petrol at the local gas station. That's an easy thing to do in this country - they all have old-fashioned pump attendants, and you don't even need to get out of your car - just give them cash or your card and they bring a portable PIN machine over to you. Thet wash your windscreen too while you're waiting. In four days of almost constant motoring we'd only used about £21 worth of petrol. Motoring is so cheap here!
We drove for an hour or so until we reached the village on the N4 where we'd stopped on the way from the airport. We'd felt really nervous on the way over, with all those horror stories you hear about the South African interior, and we hadn't even dared to get out of the car. I should never have read J.M.Coetze. We also knew that this was the region where 34 striking miners were shot dead by the police only a few months ago. But today we felt braver, not to mention hungry, so we ventured out and discovered a huge and very modern shopping centre. We went round a supermarket buying a few emergency nibbles, and the place was full of really fresh and abundant food. I was acutely aware that we were the only white people in there, possibly in the whole district, but this is not one of those countries where tourists get stared at all day, and everybody was very polite and friendly. The women are funny - they love fancy hats, sun umbrellas and ambitious hairdoes. We stocked up on booze at a bottle shop that surprised me by having almost no wine. I think the African people must drink only beer and spirits.
We retraced our previous journey around the north side of Pretoria, and turned off along the N4 towards Witbank. Stopped for a coffee at the only motorway service station we passed on the whole journey today. This too was very clean and modern. After we turned off the N4 at Witbank, the challenging driving began. I'd been starting to relax behind the wheel as I got used to South African driving conventions, but from now on it was almost constant roadworks and bad road surfaces. Men stand waving red flags all day - I'm not sure why because you can clearly see there's work going on and the temporary speed restrictions are clearly displayed on yellow signs, unlike the permanent speed limits which you just have to guess at. To make matters worse we were now passing through a coal mining district, and all the coal was being taken by road, I presume to the docks at Durban, i.e. the same route we will be travelling for the next week. The following six hours were spent trying to get past an endless procession of huge lumbering double-trailered coal wagons, while the terrain became more and more hilly.
We stopped for coffee in the town of Ermelo, where we were served by a grouchy old English woman in the tearoom of an antique shop, feeling like we were intruding on her private space. There was a lovely old rusting carcass of a VW Beetle outside, planted up with rock plants. Trying to get on to the N2 to get out of Ermelo we took a wrong turning and wasted twenty minutes driving around in frustration. Some of the sign posting in this country is pathetic. We'd been driving along the motorway for about five miles before we finally saw a sign to confirm that we were on the right road.
There had been ligtning flashes while we were having our coffee in Ermelo, and an hour out of town the storm struck with a vengeance. Stuck behind a coal truck as usual, it went totally dark, and rain and huge hailstones were pounding the little tin Toyota so furiously I could barely see through the windscreen. I didn't dare pull over in case some lunatic ploughed into the back of me, so I crawled along blindly following the tail lights of the truck. It cleared after 15 minutes, and later we refuelled in Piet Retief.
Next we were struggling up huge hills along the border of Swaziland. The scenery was now looking more "African" - groups of thatched rondavels and women carrying buckets of water on their heads. (OK, I own up, I'm using "African" as an un-PC euphemism for "impoverished".) I thought the underpowered car wouldn't make it up some of the slopes, but when we began the long descent there was a fantastic view of a huge alpine valley and I realised we'd driven over the top of a mountain.
There was more slow processioning past resurfacing works once we were down again. We skirted alongside a huge lake and reached the turnoff at Mkuze dead on 7pm, the time I'd been aiming for. What I hadn't realised is there is about seven kilometres of unsurfaced road, and then a long winding rough track through dense bush before you reach the Abu Madi Game Resrve, where we are staying for the next two days. As the sun was setting we signed in to the Zululand rhino reserve, where a lone man was manning a barrier out in the middle of nowhere.
We proceeded in the dark at a snail's pace on the most challenging part of the journey yet. Saw several large owls sitting in the road that flew off as we approached, and at one point there was a herd of zebras. The track to the lodge was horrendously bad - I was driving it by headlights, trying to dodge boulders and potholes, worrying I was going to lose the exhaust pipe, and at one point we had to ford a small river. I got out to check there was a concrete surface beneath the water, then inched the car onwards, praying that the water wouldn't be deeper than the car's ground clearance. We got away with it.
We were greeted by Merle, the woman who is running the lodge at the moment, the owners being away. We've only seen it in the dark so far but it looks great. We've got a little thatched house to ourselves, we were served a lovely curry as soon as we arrived (chicken for me and veg for her) and then two porcupines turned up to polish off some bread that Merle leaves out for them every night.
A stressful day if ever there was one! We left the Valley View Guest House straight after breakfast this morning, about 8.15am. We filled up with petrol at the local gas station. That's an easy thing to do in this country - they all have old-fashioned pump attendants, and you don't even need to get out of your car - just give them cash or your card and they bring a portable PIN machine over to you. Thet wash your windscreen too while you're waiting. In four days of almost constant motoring we'd only used about £21 worth of petrol. Motoring is so cheap here!
We drove for an hour or so until we reached the village on the N4 where we'd stopped on the way from the airport. We'd felt really nervous on the way over, with all those horror stories you hear about the South African interior, and we hadn't even dared to get out of the car. I should never have read J.M.Coetze. We also knew that this was the region where 34 striking miners were shot dead by the police only a few months ago. But today we felt braver, not to mention hungry, so we ventured out and discovered a huge and very modern shopping centre. We went round a supermarket buying a few emergency nibbles, and the place was full of really fresh and abundant food. I was acutely aware that we were the only white people in there, possibly in the whole district, but this is not one of those countries where tourists get stared at all day, and everybody was very polite and friendly. The women are funny - they love fancy hats, sun umbrellas and ambitious hairdoes. We stocked up on booze at a bottle shop that surprised me by having almost no wine. I think the African people must drink only beer and spirits.
We retraced our previous journey around the north side of Pretoria, and turned off along the N4 towards Witbank. Stopped for a coffee at the only motorway service station we passed on the whole journey today. This too was very clean and modern. After we turned off the N4 at Witbank, the challenging driving began. I'd been starting to relax behind the wheel as I got used to South African driving conventions, but from now on it was almost constant roadworks and bad road surfaces. Men stand waving red flags all day - I'm not sure why because you can clearly see there's work going on and the temporary speed restrictions are clearly displayed on yellow signs, unlike the permanent speed limits which you just have to guess at. To make matters worse we were now passing through a coal mining district, and all the coal was being taken by road, I presume to the docks at Durban, i.e. the same route we will be travelling for the next week. The following six hours were spent trying to get past an endless procession of huge lumbering double-trailered coal wagons, while the terrain became more and more hilly.
We stopped for coffee in the town of Ermelo, where we were served by a grouchy old English woman in the tearoom of an antique shop, feeling like we were intruding on her private space. There was a lovely old rusting carcass of a VW Beetle outside, planted up with rock plants. Trying to get on to the N2 to get out of Ermelo we took a wrong turning and wasted twenty minutes driving around in frustration. Some of the sign posting in this country is pathetic. We'd been driving along the motorway for about five miles before we finally saw a sign to confirm that we were on the right road.
There had been ligtning flashes while we were having our coffee in Ermelo, and an hour out of town the storm struck with a vengeance. Stuck behind a coal truck as usual, it went totally dark, and rain and huge hailstones were pounding the little tin Toyota so furiously I could barely see through the windscreen. I didn't dare pull over in case some lunatic ploughed into the back of me, so I crawled along blindly following the tail lights of the truck. It cleared after 15 minutes, and later we refuelled in Piet Retief.
Next we were struggling up huge hills along the border of Swaziland. The scenery was now looking more "African" - groups of thatched rondavels and women carrying buckets of water on their heads. (OK, I own up, I'm using "African" as an un-PC euphemism for "impoverished".) I thought the underpowered car wouldn't make it up some of the slopes, but when we began the long descent there was a fantastic view of a huge alpine valley and I realised we'd driven over the top of a mountain.
There was more slow processioning past resurfacing works once we were down again. We skirted alongside a huge lake and reached the turnoff at Mkuze dead on 7pm, the time I'd been aiming for. What I hadn't realised is there is about seven kilometres of unsurfaced road, and then a long winding rough track through dense bush before you reach the Abu Madi Game Resrve, where we are staying for the next two days. As the sun was setting we signed in to the Zululand rhino reserve, where a lone man was manning a barrier out in the middle of nowhere.
We proceeded in the dark at a snail's pace on the most challenging part of the journey yet. Saw several large owls sitting in the road that flew off as we approached, and at one point there was a herd of zebras. The track to the lodge was horrendously bad - I was driving it by headlights, trying to dodge boulders and potholes, worrying I was going to lose the exhaust pipe, and at one point we had to ford a small river. I got out to check there was a concrete surface beneath the water, then inched the car onwards, praying that the water wouldn't be deeper than the car's ground clearance. We got away with it.
We were greeted by Merle, the woman who is running the lodge at the moment, the owners being away. We've only seen it in the dark so far but it looks great. We've got a little thatched house to ourselves, we were served a lovely curry as soon as we arrived (chicken for me and veg for her) and then two porcupines turned up to polish off some bread that Merle leaves out for them every night.
Day 6. Abu Madi Lodge.
Abu Madi is an odd place. It's on top of a low hill way out in the bushveldt, surrounded by an electric fence to keep the lions out. I've been along the track in the car twice so far, but it's a bumpy ride, including the ford through the stream, and I'm frightened of wrecking the hire car, so we feel a bit trapped here. It is a great place to be trapped though, so we're having enforced relaxation. Might not do us any harm. There's a swimming pool, and a waterhole just over the fence where we can watch wart hogs. Our thatched chalet is huge with all mod cons. An old Zulu lady called Suzanne cooks our meals and cleans our room for us, which feels rather uncomfortably colonial, but she makes lovely food which we eat on the veranda outside our room. I had venison stew last night and Robbie gets something vegetarian separate. Suzanne wears a leopard print headscarf and beads around her wrists and ankles and speaks not much English.
The owner is away at the moment but the place is being run by an Afrikaaner lady called Merle and her husband Andre. There was a Dutch couple here until this morning, and four elderly ladies from Jo'burg who all originate from the UK and Ireland. They're ever so nice to us, letting us charge up our phones in their apartment and inviting us to eat with them, but it's hard to escape once they start talking and some of their attitudes are hard to swallow. They all emigrated to South Africa in the 1970s, married to men who had no qualms about making a mint for themselves dealing with the apartheid regime, so perhaps it is not surprising...
Yesterday morning after breakfast I drove very gingerly down the track and we sat for two and a half hours in roasting, dirty hide watching a waterhole. It was a stiflingly hot day and we saw not much. Some impalas ran away as soon as we got out of the car to go in the hide, and they didn't come back. Must've known we were still in there. A group of four green wood hoopoes were the highlight - big greeny-black iridescent birds with long curved scarlet bills. When we could stand the heat no longer we inched our way back along the bumpy track and jumped into the pool.
Later in the afternoon we went on a game drive with the Dutch people, Merle and Andre. The guide was called Paul, a ranger from a neighbouring game ranch (which I think was a lot more posh than ours.) Paul had a huge open four wheel drive vehicle with tiered seats in the back, so that the people in the rear-most seats were getting hit in the face by branches if they didn't duck in time. He took it ploughing along the bumpiest overgrown tracks and plunging through rivers.
We stopped in the middle of one river, and Robbie and me were so absorbed looking at small birds through our binoculars that it was a while before we noticed that everyone else was looking at a huge bull buffalo wallowing in the water right beside us. Further on we came across a whole herd of buffalo. That's three of the Big Five ticked of now. We also saw giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, impala, and nyala - a pretty antelope species we hadn't seen yet with stripes on their sides, and large ears.
Paul is a bird expert and pointed us in the direction of several new ticks. A flock of white crested helmet shrikes were one of the most unusual looking birds we saw. We stopped on a ridge with a fantastic view to watch the sun setting and had snacks of biltong (dried beef) and drank beers. Back at the lodge, once we'd escaped the half hour interrogation by the old ladies who'd been having a braii (what the South Africans call a barbeque), our dinner table was invaded by a huge beetle. It's body was three inches long and it was running up the chalet wall, falling off, climbing up the table cloth and circling round and round the table.
We both stroked the tame porcupine who comes around after dark, and fed him bread and peanuts from our hands. A porcupine does not feel soft and furry. We knocked back a bottle of red with dinner and I was so tired out from the heat I slept like a dead man.
This morning after breakfast Merle drove us down a track that's just too bad for our own car, to their bush camp, and left us there for a few hours. It's a lovely spot, about five minutes drive along a rough track from here, protected by a wire fence. It's a pretty flower-full garden with a few huts and toilets, and a hide overlooking a waterhole. We sat in the hide mostly, and saw quite a number of small birds, the prettiest of which was a chinspot batis - black and white with chestnut patches. A maribou stork landed, walked towards the water hole, looked towards the hide suspiciously then turned around and walked away before taking flight again.
We've passed the afternoon lazing at the lodge, dipping in the pool, completing our bird tick list (116 so far), and Robbie's done some sketches.
Abu Madi is an odd place. It's on top of a low hill way out in the bushveldt, surrounded by an electric fence to keep the lions out. I've been along the track in the car twice so far, but it's a bumpy ride, including the ford through the stream, and I'm frightened of wrecking the hire car, so we feel a bit trapped here. It is a great place to be trapped though, so we're having enforced relaxation. Might not do us any harm. There's a swimming pool, and a waterhole just over the fence where we can watch wart hogs. Our thatched chalet is huge with all mod cons. An old Zulu lady called Suzanne cooks our meals and cleans our room for us, which feels rather uncomfortably colonial, but she makes lovely food which we eat on the veranda outside our room. I had venison stew last night and Robbie gets something vegetarian separate. Suzanne wears a leopard print headscarf and beads around her wrists and ankles and speaks not much English.
The owner is away at the moment but the place is being run by an Afrikaaner lady called Merle and her husband Andre. There was a Dutch couple here until this morning, and four elderly ladies from Jo'burg who all originate from the UK and Ireland. They're ever so nice to us, letting us charge up our phones in their apartment and inviting us to eat with them, but it's hard to escape once they start talking and some of their attitudes are hard to swallow. They all emigrated to South Africa in the 1970s, married to men who had no qualms about making a mint for themselves dealing with the apartheid regime, so perhaps it is not surprising...
Yesterday morning after breakfast I drove very gingerly down the track and we sat for two and a half hours in roasting, dirty hide watching a waterhole. It was a stiflingly hot day and we saw not much. Some impalas ran away as soon as we got out of the car to go in the hide, and they didn't come back. Must've known we were still in there. A group of four green wood hoopoes were the highlight - big greeny-black iridescent birds with long curved scarlet bills. When we could stand the heat no longer we inched our way back along the bumpy track and jumped into the pool.
Later in the afternoon we went on a game drive with the Dutch people, Merle and Andre. The guide was called Paul, a ranger from a neighbouring game ranch (which I think was a lot more posh than ours.) Paul had a huge open four wheel drive vehicle with tiered seats in the back, so that the people in the rear-most seats were getting hit in the face by branches if they didn't duck in time. He took it ploughing along the bumpiest overgrown tracks and plunging through rivers.
We stopped in the middle of one river, and Robbie and me were so absorbed looking at small birds through our binoculars that it was a while before we noticed that everyone else was looking at a huge bull buffalo wallowing in the water right beside us. Further on we came across a whole herd of buffalo. That's three of the Big Five ticked of now. We also saw giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, impala, and nyala - a pretty antelope species we hadn't seen yet with stripes on their sides, and large ears.
Paul is a bird expert and pointed us in the direction of several new ticks. A flock of white crested helmet shrikes were one of the most unusual looking birds we saw. We stopped on a ridge with a fantastic view to watch the sun setting and had snacks of biltong (dried beef) and drank beers. Back at the lodge, once we'd escaped the half hour interrogation by the old ladies who'd been having a braii (what the South Africans call a barbeque), our dinner table was invaded by a huge beetle. It's body was three inches long and it was running up the chalet wall, falling off, climbing up the table cloth and circling round and round the table.
We both stroked the tame porcupine who comes around after dark, and fed him bread and peanuts from our hands. A porcupine does not feel soft and furry. We knocked back a bottle of red with dinner and I was so tired out from the heat I slept like a dead man.
This morning after breakfast Merle drove us down a track that's just too bad for our own car, to their bush camp, and left us there for a few hours. It's a lovely spot, about five minutes drive along a rough track from here, protected by a wire fence. It's a pretty flower-full garden with a few huts and toilets, and a hide overlooking a waterhole. We sat in the hide mostly, and saw quite a number of small birds, the prettiest of which was a chinspot batis - black and white with chestnut patches. A maribou stork landed, walked towards the water hole, looked towards the hide suspiciously then turned around and walked away before taking flight again.
We've passed the afternoon lazing at the lodge, dipping in the pool, completing our bird tick list (116 so far), and Robbie's done some sketches.
Later the same day.
We took the car down the track at 4pm. First we saw nothing and then we saw lots. Added three new birds to our list: a pair of bearded woodpeckers, a flock of arrow-marked babblers and a violet-backed starling. This latter was a beauty - snow white underneath and iridescent purple on its head and back, shimmering in the glow of the setting sun.
We also watched a flock of about twenty mousebirds having a dust bath on the track. These are really cute birds: grey-brown with bright red bills and faces, and extremely long and fine tails. They always fly around in groups but we hadn't had a good look at them before today because they usually vanish into a bush as soon as you spot them. We drove as far as the main route that has the Rhino Reserve barrier on it, and we saw a group of about twenty helmeted guineafowl further down the road. We crept back along the track before it got completely dark, and Suzanne had cooked me a hearty shepherd's pie, and Robbie a bean stew on baked potatoes. Her meals get better every day. It's relatively cool this evening, probably because it's been quite windy today. There's no insects outside but the room is full of miniscule ants, and there's little black and white plops on everything. Either a bird has flown in the window while we've been out or there's incontinent geckos in the thatch.
We took the car down the track at 4pm. First we saw nothing and then we saw lots. Added three new birds to our list: a pair of bearded woodpeckers, a flock of arrow-marked babblers and a violet-backed starling. This latter was a beauty - snow white underneath and iridescent purple on its head and back, shimmering in the glow of the setting sun.
We also watched a flock of about twenty mousebirds having a dust bath on the track. These are really cute birds: grey-brown with bright red bills and faces, and extremely long and fine tails. They always fly around in groups but we hadn't had a good look at them before today because they usually vanish into a bush as soon as you spot them. We drove as far as the main route that has the Rhino Reserve barrier on it, and we saw a group of about twenty helmeted guineafowl further down the road. We crept back along the track before it got completely dark, and Suzanne had cooked me a hearty shepherd's pie, and Robbie a bean stew on baked potatoes. Her meals get better every day. It's relatively cool this evening, probably because it's been quite windy today. There's no insects outside but the room is full of miniscule ants, and there's little black and white plops on everything. Either a bird has flown in the window while we've been out or there's incontinent geckos in the thatch.
Day 7. Wildebees Eco Lodge, near Hluhluwe.
We left Abu Madi at 9.30 this morning, and we saw many birds on the long crawl back to the comfortable tarmac of the N2. We stopped off in Mkuze town to get some supplies from a supermarket. Quite a vibrant African sort of place with lots of activity in the main shopping street. Most of the shops were large cash and carry warehouse sorts of places. It's right underneath the Ghost Mountain where the pre-Zulu tribes used to bury their chieftains. From Mkuze we drove straight down the N2 for an hour or so, enjoying some spectacular scenery. We missed the turnoff for Hluhluwe town because it wasn't signposted, and had to do a u-turn. Lucky that South African trunk roads aren't very busy. We stopped again in the town at another supermarket to get the things we'd forgotten the first time, then continued on to Wildebees which is about half an hour down a fairly good unsurfaced road.
It's been a punishingly hot day, and they didn't have our room ready till over an hour after we arrived, which caused us some annoyance. We had a wander around the grounds while waiting, which are quite wild with a good network of footpaths, and we saw quite a few birds. White eared barbet was a new one, we got good views of a pair of hoopoes feeding on the ground, and we got confused about sunbirds.
Our room is another thatched chalet, although not as luxurious as the previous one. There's a small swimming pool beside the bar. Once we'd got our room sorted we drove down the road to the False Bay Park. Paid thirty Rand each at the gate in exchange for a walking map consisting of random lines that bore no relationship whatsoever to anything on the ground, but we found our way around eventually. We drove down to the shore of the bay (part of an estuary actually) and walked along the water's edge to Lister Point.
Around the Point the sea was rough and there were signs warning you not to swim because of crocodiles. We saw a small antelope that I think was probably a duiker, and the omnipresent wart hogs. The tide was very high, and every post protruding above the waves had a large white fronted cormorant perched on it. There were caspian terns in the air - huge gull-sized terns with a big red bill, and grey herons posing picturesquely along the shore. There was one solitary cyclist camping on the waterside campsite, another couple who drove away when we arrived, and otherwise we had the whole park to ourselves. It was such a joy to exercise our legs once more having been confined to the car for so many days, and there were beautiful views across the estuary.
We came back to Wildebees for dinner. They'd lit a log fire in the middle of the dining area which was quite unecessary since it was still hot in the evening. I had steak and Robbie had beans and rice. After dinner the lodge staff put on a display of Zulu dancing for the guests. They looked very amateur and did it in their everyday clothes to drums and a whistle, but it was amusing even though we'd no idea what they were singing about, nor whether the dances were traditional and symbolic, or if they were just making it up as they went along. A couple of the girls had made "grass skirts" out of torn up woven plastic food sacks. It ended up with all the guests on their feet joining in. Did no-one ever tell them that white men can't dance?
We left Abu Madi at 9.30 this morning, and we saw many birds on the long crawl back to the comfortable tarmac of the N2. We stopped off in Mkuze town to get some supplies from a supermarket. Quite a vibrant African sort of place with lots of activity in the main shopping street. Most of the shops were large cash and carry warehouse sorts of places. It's right underneath the Ghost Mountain where the pre-Zulu tribes used to bury their chieftains. From Mkuze we drove straight down the N2 for an hour or so, enjoying some spectacular scenery. We missed the turnoff for Hluhluwe town because it wasn't signposted, and had to do a u-turn. Lucky that South African trunk roads aren't very busy. We stopped again in the town at another supermarket to get the things we'd forgotten the first time, then continued on to Wildebees which is about half an hour down a fairly good unsurfaced road.
It's been a punishingly hot day, and they didn't have our room ready till over an hour after we arrived, which caused us some annoyance. We had a wander around the grounds while waiting, which are quite wild with a good network of footpaths, and we saw quite a few birds. White eared barbet was a new one, we got good views of a pair of hoopoes feeding on the ground, and we got confused about sunbirds.
Our room is another thatched chalet, although not as luxurious as the previous one. There's a small swimming pool beside the bar. Once we'd got our room sorted we drove down the road to the False Bay Park. Paid thirty Rand each at the gate in exchange for a walking map consisting of random lines that bore no relationship whatsoever to anything on the ground, but we found our way around eventually. We drove down to the shore of the bay (part of an estuary actually) and walked along the water's edge to Lister Point.
Around the Point the sea was rough and there were signs warning you not to swim because of crocodiles. We saw a small antelope that I think was probably a duiker, and the omnipresent wart hogs. The tide was very high, and every post protruding above the waves had a large white fronted cormorant perched on it. There were caspian terns in the air - huge gull-sized terns with a big red bill, and grey herons posing picturesquely along the shore. There was one solitary cyclist camping on the waterside campsite, another couple who drove away when we arrived, and otherwise we had the whole park to ourselves. It was such a joy to exercise our legs once more having been confined to the car for so many days, and there were beautiful views across the estuary.
We came back to Wildebees for dinner. They'd lit a log fire in the middle of the dining area which was quite unecessary since it was still hot in the evening. I had steak and Robbie had beans and rice. After dinner the lodge staff put on a display of Zulu dancing for the guests. They looked very amateur and did it in their everyday clothes to drums and a whistle, but it was amusing even though we'd no idea what they were singing about, nor whether the dances were traditional and symbolic, or if they were just making it up as they went along. A couple of the girls had made "grass skirts" out of torn up woven plastic food sacks. It ended up with all the guests on their feet joining in. Did no-one ever tell them that white men can't dance?
Day 8. Wildebees Eco Lodge
There was quite a heavy rainstorm last night. The thatch is silent, but I heard it rattling on the tin roof of our bathroom. The ground was wet and cool when we went out for breakfast but the day began heating up even as we were eating.
We drove back to Hluhluwe village and on to the N2 and headed south to St.Lucia to do a boat trip on the estuary we'd booked for 10am. I'd no idea how far it was going to be - this is such a vast country, places that look close together on the map can take hours to drive, even on the motorway. I was convinced we'd missed the turn-off, there being no road signs, and we had to pull over to ask a broken-down driver if we were still going in the right direction. We passed mile upon mile of monoculture eucalyptus plantations and eventually rolled up in St.Lucia town dead on 10am. We went running down the jetty waving our booking slip and jumped on the boat just before they pulled in the gangplank.
It was quite a luxury vessel with upper and lower decks and a snack bar. The skipper was a women and she did all the commentary and was very knowledgeable about the local wildlife, identifying many of the hippos in the estuary as individuals. The St.Lucia estuary is part of the same water body as False Bay, and we learnt that the high water level we'd seen yesterday is not due to a high tide, but because the outlet to the sea silted up during the drought years that have now ended, and with the rains that have now come it has filled up. Because of this we saw not as many birds as we should have, there being no muddy shores, but we did see plenty of hippos. They live in family pods, each pod having a defended territory along a certain stretch of the river. We also saw two crocodiles and colonies of yellow weaver birds, a new one for us, weaving their nests amongst the reeds on the banks. We saw an African fish eagle in a tree and a yellow billed kite overhead.
The boat trip lasted a leisurely two hours, and then we drove around to the place where the river mouth has silted up. There were many blue cheeked bee-eaters hunting from a row of coniferous trees at the top of the beach, and a mixed group of gulls and terns on a mud-flat at the seaward end of the lagoon. We walked along the driftwood littered sand spit to where the iMfalosi river meets the sea, and saw yellow billed storks, spoonbill, avocet and two flamingos, amongst other things, on the mud-flats. It was crushingly hot out on the open sand. We were discouraged from walking any further by signs warning of sharks, hippos and crocs. Were all those pieces of tree trunk along the beach just wood...? We tried to paddle in the surf but noticed the tide line was littered with poisonous bluebottle jellyfish. All of nature is out to get us...! Some amusing shore crabs were picking up the jellyfish and scuttling up the beach to their holes to consume them. We cheered them on.
We returned to where the car was parked and walked along a boardwalk through reed-beds and mangroves until we found ourselves at the St.Lucia Deep Sea Angling Club - quite a reputable looking establishment - where we had some cold drinks looking out over the lagoon. We saw a couple of crocs in the water close by.
The afternoon cooled off and the light became soft and beguiling. We walked along a quiet road for a short way through lush rainforest vegetation, listening to birds, frogs and insects singing competitively. We returned along the boardwalk and saw a huge Goliath heron, as well as purple and grey herons, three yellow billed storks, an osprey carrying a fish, and a late afternoon abundance of crocodiles. Hippos were grunting amongst the reeds but we couldn't see them. Back near the car was a cute troop of vervet monkeys, one mother with a baby clutching her chest. On the way out of town we crossed a bridge over the estuary and stopped to look at hundreds of little swifts wheeling around it. We'd passed under this bridge on the boat trip and seen the swifts' nests underneath it, but the birds themselves weren't present during the day.
I drove back at speed along the long N2 and our bumpy back road, then there were lamb chops for dinner here at Wildebees, sitting next to the smoky campfire.
There was quite a heavy rainstorm last night. The thatch is silent, but I heard it rattling on the tin roof of our bathroom. The ground was wet and cool when we went out for breakfast but the day began heating up even as we were eating.
We drove back to Hluhluwe village and on to the N2 and headed south to St.Lucia to do a boat trip on the estuary we'd booked for 10am. I'd no idea how far it was going to be - this is such a vast country, places that look close together on the map can take hours to drive, even on the motorway. I was convinced we'd missed the turn-off, there being no road signs, and we had to pull over to ask a broken-down driver if we were still going in the right direction. We passed mile upon mile of monoculture eucalyptus plantations and eventually rolled up in St.Lucia town dead on 10am. We went running down the jetty waving our booking slip and jumped on the boat just before they pulled in the gangplank.
It was quite a luxury vessel with upper and lower decks and a snack bar. The skipper was a women and she did all the commentary and was very knowledgeable about the local wildlife, identifying many of the hippos in the estuary as individuals. The St.Lucia estuary is part of the same water body as False Bay, and we learnt that the high water level we'd seen yesterday is not due to a high tide, but because the outlet to the sea silted up during the drought years that have now ended, and with the rains that have now come it has filled up. Because of this we saw not as many birds as we should have, there being no muddy shores, but we did see plenty of hippos. They live in family pods, each pod having a defended territory along a certain stretch of the river. We also saw two crocodiles and colonies of yellow weaver birds, a new one for us, weaving their nests amongst the reeds on the banks. We saw an African fish eagle in a tree and a yellow billed kite overhead.
The boat trip lasted a leisurely two hours, and then we drove around to the place where the river mouth has silted up. There were many blue cheeked bee-eaters hunting from a row of coniferous trees at the top of the beach, and a mixed group of gulls and terns on a mud-flat at the seaward end of the lagoon. We walked along the driftwood littered sand spit to where the iMfalosi river meets the sea, and saw yellow billed storks, spoonbill, avocet and two flamingos, amongst other things, on the mud-flats. It was crushingly hot out on the open sand. We were discouraged from walking any further by signs warning of sharks, hippos and crocs. Were all those pieces of tree trunk along the beach just wood...? We tried to paddle in the surf but noticed the tide line was littered with poisonous bluebottle jellyfish. All of nature is out to get us...! Some amusing shore crabs were picking up the jellyfish and scuttling up the beach to their holes to consume them. We cheered them on.
We returned to where the car was parked and walked along a boardwalk through reed-beds and mangroves until we found ourselves at the St.Lucia Deep Sea Angling Club - quite a reputable looking establishment - where we had some cold drinks looking out over the lagoon. We saw a couple of crocs in the water close by.
The afternoon cooled off and the light became soft and beguiling. We walked along a quiet road for a short way through lush rainforest vegetation, listening to birds, frogs and insects singing competitively. We returned along the boardwalk and saw a huge Goliath heron, as well as purple and grey herons, three yellow billed storks, an osprey carrying a fish, and a late afternoon abundance of crocodiles. Hippos were grunting amongst the reeds but we couldn't see them. Back near the car was a cute troop of vervet monkeys, one mother with a baby clutching her chest. On the way out of town we crossed a bridge over the estuary and stopped to look at hundreds of little swifts wheeling around it. We'd passed under this bridge on the boat trip and seen the swifts' nests underneath it, but the birds themselves weren't present during the day.
I drove back at speed along the long N2 and our bumpy back road, then there were lamb chops for dinner here at Wildebees, sitting next to the smoky campfire.
Day 9. Wildebees.
This morning we had an early breakfast and headed off to Hluhluwe-iMfolozi national park. We got there at about 9am, which must be way too late because we were driving around for most of the day seeing nothing. We passed a herd of about sixty buffaloes not far from the park gate, surrounded by cattle egrets and jockeyed by red-eyed oxpeckers. At a riverside picnic site we got out of the car and I had a brief glimpse of the back of a wildebeest disappearing into the scrub, and at a roadside viewpoint upon a windy ridge we stopped beside a group of three zebras enjoying the cooling breeze. Apart from these, we saw no animals at all until late afternoon.
It was another horrendously hot day. Even sitting in the car driving along tarmacked roads was wearing me out. We stopped at the Hilltop Lodge for lunch and an ice cream, a very upmarket looking lodge, atop what in the UK would be termed a mountain rather than a hill. There were stunning views from up there. The park is breathtakingly beautiful - lush and green with spectacular hills, and much bigger than Pilanesberg. The problem was that the grasses along the roadside were very high and we couldn't see over the verge from our little low car.
After the Hilltop Lodge, I'd decided to drive on to a picnic site on the other side of the hill, then turn back for a leisurely late-afternoon cruise to the gate. But we were both so drowsed out by the heat and lack of sightings that I missed the picnic site and drove about 15 miles too far before we passed under a road and I realised we'd entered the iMfolozi section of the park. Our only excitement had been a hammerkop - an odd bird like a cross between a moorhen and a stork - sitting vainly preening on a rock in a fast flowing stream, right beside a road bridge. When we came back an hour later it was still in the same place, still grooming itself.
Our luck changed as soon as we turned back, when the afternoon began to cool off. First we had four giraffes, and not long after there was a huge bull buffalo wallowing in a roadside mud hole. Then Robbie spotted our first elephant, a solitary individual on a far-off hillside. Before we began the arduous ascent to the Hilltop Lodge, we came across a whole herd of elephants - about eight of them I think. I had to reverse up the road a bit when I realised they wanted to cross right where I was parked.
There was no animal life on the high ground going over the summit, but when we got down again we passed two more individual elephants, before coming upon a pair of rhinos very close to the road. Several vehicles had stopped to look at them, and they trotted across the road nonchalently between the vehicles before plunging into a large roadside ditch. One animal came up on the other bank of the ditch and stood posing for us while we could hear the other one sploshing about just out of sight due to the tall grasses. So absorbed were we with rhinos that we ignored a faint swishing noise in the grass behind us until a whole herd of elephants - at least ten of them - suddenly emerged and crossed the road just behind us. The ellies disturbed the rhinos and the whole gargantuan menagerie trotted rapidly towards the enveloping scrubland, the jumbos trumpeting as they went.
We drove home. On the dirt road to the lodge we saw several nightjars perching in the road. Robbie got a decent photo of one in the headlights, and we've identified it as a square tailed nightjar. They're a difficult group to separate - a whole page of them in our bird book and all of them grey-brown speckled.
Dinner. Eleven hours of driving today. 'tis too much.
This morning we had an early breakfast and headed off to Hluhluwe-iMfolozi national park. We got there at about 9am, which must be way too late because we were driving around for most of the day seeing nothing. We passed a herd of about sixty buffaloes not far from the park gate, surrounded by cattle egrets and jockeyed by red-eyed oxpeckers. At a riverside picnic site we got out of the car and I had a brief glimpse of the back of a wildebeest disappearing into the scrub, and at a roadside viewpoint upon a windy ridge we stopped beside a group of three zebras enjoying the cooling breeze. Apart from these, we saw no animals at all until late afternoon.
It was another horrendously hot day. Even sitting in the car driving along tarmacked roads was wearing me out. We stopped at the Hilltop Lodge for lunch and an ice cream, a very upmarket looking lodge, atop what in the UK would be termed a mountain rather than a hill. There were stunning views from up there. The park is breathtakingly beautiful - lush and green with spectacular hills, and much bigger than Pilanesberg. The problem was that the grasses along the roadside were very high and we couldn't see over the verge from our little low car.
After the Hilltop Lodge, I'd decided to drive on to a picnic site on the other side of the hill, then turn back for a leisurely late-afternoon cruise to the gate. But we were both so drowsed out by the heat and lack of sightings that I missed the picnic site and drove about 15 miles too far before we passed under a road and I realised we'd entered the iMfolozi section of the park. Our only excitement had been a hammerkop - an odd bird like a cross between a moorhen and a stork - sitting vainly preening on a rock in a fast flowing stream, right beside a road bridge. When we came back an hour later it was still in the same place, still grooming itself.
Our luck changed as soon as we turned back, when the afternoon began to cool off. First we had four giraffes, and not long after there was a huge bull buffalo wallowing in a roadside mud hole. Then Robbie spotted our first elephant, a solitary individual on a far-off hillside. Before we began the arduous ascent to the Hilltop Lodge, we came across a whole herd of elephants - about eight of them I think. I had to reverse up the road a bit when I realised they wanted to cross right where I was parked.
There was no animal life on the high ground going over the summit, but when we got down again we passed two more individual elephants, before coming upon a pair of rhinos very close to the road. Several vehicles had stopped to look at them, and they trotted across the road nonchalently between the vehicles before plunging into a large roadside ditch. One animal came up on the other bank of the ditch and stood posing for us while we could hear the other one sploshing about just out of sight due to the tall grasses. So absorbed were we with rhinos that we ignored a faint swishing noise in the grass behind us until a whole herd of elephants - at least ten of them - suddenly emerged and crossed the road just behind us. The ellies disturbed the rhinos and the whole gargantuan menagerie trotted rapidly towards the enveloping scrubland, the jumbos trumpeting as they went.
We drove home. On the dirt road to the lodge we saw several nightjars perching in the road. Robbie got a decent photo of one in the headlights, and we've identified it as a square tailed nightjar. They're a difficult group to separate - a whole page of them in our bird book and all of them grey-brown speckled.
Dinner. Eleven hours of driving today. 'tis too much.
Day 10. Wildebees.
We had a relaxing day today. We were first awoken at 6am by the loud and manic cackling of a flock of babblers outside the cabin window. Breakfast at 8am and then we went for a wander around the paths on the property here, which we hadn't explored before. We discovered a quite large pond hidden away in the thick thorn scrub. It was so coated in duckweed that it looked like dry land, with a forest of thorn bushes sticking out of it. The area was alive with birds. We saw thick billed weaver birds, quite large for weavers with huge triangular bills, which had their nests on the reeds.
The heat was stifling even from early on, so we returned to the lodge and passed midday doing what normal people do on holiday - wallowing in the pool, drinking beer, sitting under a sunshade pretending to be reading a kindle, and dozing off. It is my birthday after all. 48. Bloody hell!
When the afternoon cooled a little we drove down to False Bay Park. We walked a short way along the woodland trail there, and spotted several new bird species in the dense canopy, the best of which was tantalising glimpses of an African paradise flycatcher, a gorgeous bird with a blue head and bill and an unfeasibly long and floaty reddy-brown tail. The forest was old and peaceful, ethereal in the soft late afternoon light, full of the sounds of birds and insects. A tiny red duiker antelope trotted past like a fairytale creature, eyed us shyly and melted into the prickly undergrowth.
We walked along the flooded shore of False Bay for a while, drinking in the panorama of green forest, grey water and blue sky. Added squacco heron and little stint to our list. Driving back to the lodge along the dirt road, Robbie spotted a tragic barn swallow (that's one of "our" swallows) hanging from a giant spider's web just the other side of the electrified fence surrounding the park. We've seen these massive spiders all over, with their webs that can stretch right across roads, but we hadn't realised they could catch birds in them, especially one as big as a swallow. The poor thing was still alive and twitching, hanging by one wing. I think the spider must've paralysed it and was waiting for it to die. My darling was very upset, but my phlegmatic ecological scientific side was fascinated. Neither of us will ever look at giant spiders in the same way again.
We had a romantic valentine dinner at the lodge under the boughs of a great spreading tree, the night cicadas singing in our ears and a most satisfactory bottle of pinotage.
We had a relaxing day today. We were first awoken at 6am by the loud and manic cackling of a flock of babblers outside the cabin window. Breakfast at 8am and then we went for a wander around the paths on the property here, which we hadn't explored before. We discovered a quite large pond hidden away in the thick thorn scrub. It was so coated in duckweed that it looked like dry land, with a forest of thorn bushes sticking out of it. The area was alive with birds. We saw thick billed weaver birds, quite large for weavers with huge triangular bills, which had their nests on the reeds.
The heat was stifling even from early on, so we returned to the lodge and passed midday doing what normal people do on holiday - wallowing in the pool, drinking beer, sitting under a sunshade pretending to be reading a kindle, and dozing off. It is my birthday after all. 48. Bloody hell!
When the afternoon cooled a little we drove down to False Bay Park. We walked a short way along the woodland trail there, and spotted several new bird species in the dense canopy, the best of which was tantalising glimpses of an African paradise flycatcher, a gorgeous bird with a blue head and bill and an unfeasibly long and floaty reddy-brown tail. The forest was old and peaceful, ethereal in the soft late afternoon light, full of the sounds of birds and insects. A tiny red duiker antelope trotted past like a fairytale creature, eyed us shyly and melted into the prickly undergrowth.
We walked along the flooded shore of False Bay for a while, drinking in the panorama of green forest, grey water and blue sky. Added squacco heron and little stint to our list. Driving back to the lodge along the dirt road, Robbie spotted a tragic barn swallow (that's one of "our" swallows) hanging from a giant spider's web just the other side of the electrified fence surrounding the park. We've seen these massive spiders all over, with their webs that can stretch right across roads, but we hadn't realised they could catch birds in them, especially one as big as a swallow. The poor thing was still alive and twitching, hanging by one wing. I think the spider must've paralysed it and was waiting for it to die. My darling was very upset, but my phlegmatic ecological scientific side was fascinated. Neither of us will ever look at giant spiders in the same way again.
We had a romantic valentine dinner at the lodge under the boughs of a great spreading tree, the night cicadas singing in our ears and a most satisfactory bottle of pinotage.
Day 11. Avalon B&B, Zinkwase Beach.
I'm despairing of ever getting this blog posted online now, since we haven't had any Wifi since Mogwase, but I will persevere...
We left Wildebees at 10am this morning, stopping off in Hluhluwe village to get some cash from the ATM and a few things from the supermarket, then hit the N2 once more, heading south. We'd seen a place marked on our map as a nature reserve called Lake Eteza which we thought might make a nice stop-off on our journey to Zinkwase Beach, so I turned off where I saw a sign for Eteza. It took us into a landscape dominated by dense eucalyptus plantations, but there were brown "Tourist site" signposts pointing to a "bird park", so we followed those.
They led us to a lodge in a pleasant garden down a sandy dirt-track road. It seemed almost deserted but we found a bar/restaurant with a noisy football match on the telly and one customer, where a rather too laid-back barman told us this was indeed Lake Eteza and sold us tickets for the bird park, which turned out to be a rather dismal aviary collection of mostly exotic parrots. An ostrich got up from his resting place under a tree and paced up and down in front of us before settling down again. We returned to the restaurant where the dopey barman served me the most revolting cup of "coffee" I've yet had in this coffee-producing country (and believe me, there have been a lot of serious contenders for that title...). We persuaded him to draw us a map showing how to get to the actual Lake Eteza, which he told us was just down the road, with a bird viewing platform, can't miss it... Well, we followed his map and directions to the letter, got lost a mile up a dirt road heading uphill into a dense eucalyptus plantation and I grounded the bottom of the poor little car on a quite disproportionately large speed hump. We abandoned our quest and returned to the N2 in a huff, two hours of our day wasted.
We drove the rest it the way to Zinkwase without stopping. It's a few miles off the motorway on the coast, and we arrived at about 2pm. Zinkwase is a very expensive looking seaside village that is almost a suburb of Durban. Modern palatial houses are stacked up along leafy streets on a very steep incline up from the coast. Most of them are surrounded by high walls topped by multiple electric wires and displaying prominent notices saying "Protected by......Armed Response Unit" White paranoia in South Africa has to be seen to be believed. You'd think we were in the Baghdad Green Zone. The very occasional black people we meet walking along the pleasant lanes between these razor-wire enveloped fortresses greet us in a friendly way. Every five or ten minutes a car goes past, its occupants obscured behind tinted glass. Otherwise there is just us and the birds, which are magnificent and prolific in the trees above the well-manicured lawns and the plots for sale, the latter spilling with a profusion of rambling bushes and creepers.
The Avalon B&B is a typically large house on a steep hillside, unusual in having no protective prison-camp style boundary. Noisy hadeda ibises peck around on the front lawn. Our room is under the main house, and about as big as our whole house at home. It's got an open plan bathroom, which seems a bit kinky by our conservative English standards, and there's a huge panoramic garden window/door so that all the neighbours can watch us having a shower if we forget to close the curtains. A nice couple called Lee and Shane run it, with two small children and a couple of soppy Jack Russel terriers.
When we'd recovered from the drive we went for a walk along the beach. The sea was rough and felt cold when we paddled, and the sandy beach slopes very steeply into it, with an unstable bank of loose sand along the high water mark. We saw no birds but sanderlings and white-fronted plovers, and there were many shore-crabs scuttling about in the froth of the surf. We walked all the way along to the main "sea front" which is not much more than a little pizza shack and a Deep Sea Angler's Club quite unlike the majestic institute in St.Lucia; this one is a rather grotty beach hut type bar and hot dog counter. It seems to be the only bar in town though. We sipped bottles of Castle Lager and watched surfers riding the waves. There's a freshwater lagoon just behind a sand-bar.
We walked back through the deserted "town", and later on we had a really revolting meal at the only proper hotel in Zinkwase, which tries to look extremely posh. They served me a chunk of roast pork that was almost the size of my head, but when I cut in to it, it was raw in the middle. I sent it back and it returned fifteen minutes later, burnt on the outside and still raw in the middle. Robbie's "Sweet and sour Thai stir-fry" was a few strips of greasy cabbage on a bed of noodles with no sauce. The waitresses were not bothered whether we liked it or not. Many of the worst meals I have had in my travelling life have been in the restaurants of the best hotel in town!
I'm despairing of ever getting this blog posted online now, since we haven't had any Wifi since Mogwase, but I will persevere...
We left Wildebees at 10am this morning, stopping off in Hluhluwe village to get some cash from the ATM and a few things from the supermarket, then hit the N2 once more, heading south. We'd seen a place marked on our map as a nature reserve called Lake Eteza which we thought might make a nice stop-off on our journey to Zinkwase Beach, so I turned off where I saw a sign for Eteza. It took us into a landscape dominated by dense eucalyptus plantations, but there were brown "Tourist site" signposts pointing to a "bird park", so we followed those.
They led us to a lodge in a pleasant garden down a sandy dirt-track road. It seemed almost deserted but we found a bar/restaurant with a noisy football match on the telly and one customer, where a rather too laid-back barman told us this was indeed Lake Eteza and sold us tickets for the bird park, which turned out to be a rather dismal aviary collection of mostly exotic parrots. An ostrich got up from his resting place under a tree and paced up and down in front of us before settling down again. We returned to the restaurant where the dopey barman served me the most revolting cup of "coffee" I've yet had in this coffee-producing country (and believe me, there have been a lot of serious contenders for that title...). We persuaded him to draw us a map showing how to get to the actual Lake Eteza, which he told us was just down the road, with a bird viewing platform, can't miss it... Well, we followed his map and directions to the letter, got lost a mile up a dirt road heading uphill into a dense eucalyptus plantation and I grounded the bottom of the poor little car on a quite disproportionately large speed hump. We abandoned our quest and returned to the N2 in a huff, two hours of our day wasted.
We drove the rest it the way to Zinkwase without stopping. It's a few miles off the motorway on the coast, and we arrived at about 2pm. Zinkwase is a very expensive looking seaside village that is almost a suburb of Durban. Modern palatial houses are stacked up along leafy streets on a very steep incline up from the coast. Most of them are surrounded by high walls topped by multiple electric wires and displaying prominent notices saying "Protected by......Armed Response Unit" White paranoia in South Africa has to be seen to be believed. You'd think we were in the Baghdad Green Zone. The very occasional black people we meet walking along the pleasant lanes between these razor-wire enveloped fortresses greet us in a friendly way. Every five or ten minutes a car goes past, its occupants obscured behind tinted glass. Otherwise there is just us and the birds, which are magnificent and prolific in the trees above the well-manicured lawns and the plots for sale, the latter spilling with a profusion of rambling bushes and creepers.
The Avalon B&B is a typically large house on a steep hillside, unusual in having no protective prison-camp style boundary. Noisy hadeda ibises peck around on the front lawn. Our room is under the main house, and about as big as our whole house at home. It's got an open plan bathroom, which seems a bit kinky by our conservative English standards, and there's a huge panoramic garden window/door so that all the neighbours can watch us having a shower if we forget to close the curtains. A nice couple called Lee and Shane run it, with two small children and a couple of soppy Jack Russel terriers.
When we'd recovered from the drive we went for a walk along the beach. The sea was rough and felt cold when we paddled, and the sandy beach slopes very steeply into it, with an unstable bank of loose sand along the high water mark. We saw no birds but sanderlings and white-fronted plovers, and there were many shore-crabs scuttling about in the froth of the surf. We walked all the way along to the main "sea front" which is not much more than a little pizza shack and a Deep Sea Angler's Club quite unlike the majestic institute in St.Lucia; this one is a rather grotty beach hut type bar and hot dog counter. It seems to be the only bar in town though. We sipped bottles of Castle Lager and watched surfers riding the waves. There's a freshwater lagoon just behind a sand-bar.
We walked back through the deserted "town", and later on we had a really revolting meal at the only proper hotel in Zinkwase, which tries to look extremely posh. They served me a chunk of roast pork that was almost the size of my head, but when I cut in to it, it was raw in the middle. I sent it back and it returned fifteen minutes later, burnt on the outside and still raw in the middle. Robbie's "Sweet and sour Thai stir-fry" was a few strips of greasy cabbage on a bed of noodles with no sauce. The waitresses were not bothered whether we liked it or not. Many of the worst meals I have had in my travelling life have been in the restaurants of the best hotel in town!
Day 12. Zinkwase.
We had a lovely breakfast on the terrace, looking out over the manicured gardens and electrified fences of Zinkwase, then we went for a walk into the forest to the south of town. This was supposed to be our "day on the beach" for this holiday, but as it turned out it's rained for most of the day, so we spent it tramping through a damp rainforest instead. But it's a good forest and we saw several new birds and a gigantic nest in a tree, which I think must be of an African Crowned Eagle. We also came across a giant land snail on the path. It was about 4 inches long, and attached to a smaller snail, which itself would have been a monster at home. Not sure whether they were both the same species and mating - aren't snails all hermaphrodites? - or if the large one was eating the smaller. Whatever the case, it was a somewhat stomach-churning sight.
We got back to the B&B at about 2pm, dried off a bit and then went out again down the suburban leafy lanes to the sea front. We saw 13 trumpeter hornbills in a big conifer tree - pied hornbills with a huge double-decker bill - and a beautiful purple crested turaco. A troop of vervet monkeys were sitting along the top of a garden wall, one of the rare walls that doesn't have razor or electrified wire along it. I guess monkeys learn quickly! We had a beer at the club on the beach again, watching a grey heron stalking small fish in the surf. The sea was too rough for surfers today, but I have enjoyed the freshness and relative cool afforded by the wind and rain. We ate at the guest house after yesterday's hotel disaster. Lee is a wonderful cook.
We had a lovely breakfast on the terrace, looking out over the manicured gardens and electrified fences of Zinkwase, then we went for a walk into the forest to the south of town. This was supposed to be our "day on the beach" for this holiday, but as it turned out it's rained for most of the day, so we spent it tramping through a damp rainforest instead. But it's a good forest and we saw several new birds and a gigantic nest in a tree, which I think must be of an African Crowned Eagle. We also came across a giant land snail on the path. It was about 4 inches long, and attached to a smaller snail, which itself would have been a monster at home. Not sure whether they were both the same species and mating - aren't snails all hermaphrodites? - or if the large one was eating the smaller. Whatever the case, it was a somewhat stomach-churning sight.
We got back to the B&B at about 2pm, dried off a bit and then went out again down the suburban leafy lanes to the sea front. We saw 13 trumpeter hornbills in a big conifer tree - pied hornbills with a huge double-decker bill - and a beautiful purple crested turaco. A troop of vervet monkeys were sitting along the top of a garden wall, one of the rare walls that doesn't have razor or electrified wire along it. I guess monkeys learn quickly! We had a beer at the club on the beach again, watching a grey heron stalking small fish in the surf. The sea was too rough for surfers today, but I have enjoyed the freshness and relative cool afforded by the wind and rain. We ate at the guest house after yesterday's hotel disaster. Lee is a wonderful cook.
Day 13. Giant's Castle, Drakensberg Mountains.
We said goodbye to Lee and Shane at 10am this morning and drove south down the N2 as far as Balito, a well-to-do satellite town of Durban. Robbie had been taken by Lee's glass-domed butter dish which she thinks would be ideal for mounting her art-works in (yes...I know this sounds rather bizarre) and Lee had told her where to buy them, which was in a massive shopping mall on the edge of Balito. The butter dishes were very cheap so we bought six, then we did a big shop at the nearby SuperSpar for our upcoming six days of self-catering. The other shoppers were nearly all white or Indian people, served by Africans. I think we might've massively overshopped - we've discovered they provide free tea and coffee in the chalet here at Giant's Castle, and there's a store selling essentials.
From Balito we drove all the way to Giant's Castle in one go, arriving here about 6pm. We went through Durban without leaving the motorways. It's a very sprawling city, with many suburbs draped across rolling hills. I know it has a bad reputation as cities go, but what we saw of it looked quite smart. We continued along the N3 heading west inland, up a series of huge hills. We passed through Pietermaritzburg remaining on the motorway. On the way out of town we were held up for quite a while by an awful accident that must've recently happened on the opposite carriageway - a huge plume of black smoke, crowds of onlookers watching from the ramp of a slip road and from a bridge, at least one big truck on fire, another crashed into the central concrete barrier. Fire engines were parked on our side of the carriageway and the police were allowing cars to pass via the slip roads, but there was a queue of trucks pulled over on the hard shoulder for a couple of miles further on.
We scaled more big hills, the little car labouring with the weight of groceries in the back. We turned off near the town of Estcourt and followed a dreadfully pot-holed road through what seemed like one massive village of spaced out huts peppered over green hillsides for about thirty miles. What do people do for a living in these rural areas? There were very small numbers of cattle, goats and sheep in places, but no other signs of industry, commerce or agriculture. But the people we saw walking or standing by the roadside all looked happy, healthy and well-dressed.
We drove around the White Mountain, a huge isolated mountain with rocky crags that had been visible from the N3, and then the towering jagged escarpment of the Drakensburg loomed up ahead. The tall meadows were full of various species of widow birds and whydahs with long trailing tails and we saw a flock of huge black storks flying past as we approached the park.
We signed in at the park gate where the gate man was expecting us, and drove another 7km through stunning mountain scenery until we reached the "hutted camp". The name doesn't do it justice. More like a luxury resort. Our "hut" is a thatched house with everything - cooker, microwave, bath & shower, satellite TV and even a wood burning stove. We had a brief walk along the valley side before it got completely dark and the scenery is out of this world. Numerous wild flowers, a gushing mountain river, and baboons scampering along the ridge on the skyline above us. We've just had our first own-cooked dinner since we arrived in South Africa. And it's delightfully cool here! Paradise. Robbie has just read the literature warning of poisonous snakes, aggressive baboons and armed bandits, and I don't think she's as excited as I am...
We said goodbye to Lee and Shane at 10am this morning and drove south down the N2 as far as Balito, a well-to-do satellite town of Durban. Robbie had been taken by Lee's glass-domed butter dish which she thinks would be ideal for mounting her art-works in (yes...I know this sounds rather bizarre) and Lee had told her where to buy them, which was in a massive shopping mall on the edge of Balito. The butter dishes were very cheap so we bought six, then we did a big shop at the nearby SuperSpar for our upcoming six days of self-catering. The other shoppers were nearly all white or Indian people, served by Africans. I think we might've massively overshopped - we've discovered they provide free tea and coffee in the chalet here at Giant's Castle, and there's a store selling essentials.
From Balito we drove all the way to Giant's Castle in one go, arriving here about 6pm. We went through Durban without leaving the motorways. It's a very sprawling city, with many suburbs draped across rolling hills. I know it has a bad reputation as cities go, but what we saw of it looked quite smart. We continued along the N3 heading west inland, up a series of huge hills. We passed through Pietermaritzburg remaining on the motorway. On the way out of town we were held up for quite a while by an awful accident that must've recently happened on the opposite carriageway - a huge plume of black smoke, crowds of onlookers watching from the ramp of a slip road and from a bridge, at least one big truck on fire, another crashed into the central concrete barrier. Fire engines were parked on our side of the carriageway and the police were allowing cars to pass via the slip roads, but there was a queue of trucks pulled over on the hard shoulder for a couple of miles further on.
We scaled more big hills, the little car labouring with the weight of groceries in the back. We turned off near the town of Estcourt and followed a dreadfully pot-holed road through what seemed like one massive village of spaced out huts peppered over green hillsides for about thirty miles. What do people do for a living in these rural areas? There were very small numbers of cattle, goats and sheep in places, but no other signs of industry, commerce or agriculture. But the people we saw walking or standing by the roadside all looked happy, healthy and well-dressed.
We drove around the White Mountain, a huge isolated mountain with rocky crags that had been visible from the N3, and then the towering jagged escarpment of the Drakensburg loomed up ahead. The tall meadows were full of various species of widow birds and whydahs with long trailing tails and we saw a flock of huge black storks flying past as we approached the park.
We signed in at the park gate where the gate man was expecting us, and drove another 7km through stunning mountain scenery until we reached the "hutted camp". The name doesn't do it justice. More like a luxury resort. Our "hut" is a thatched house with everything - cooker, microwave, bath & shower, satellite TV and even a wood burning stove. We had a brief walk along the valley side before it got completely dark and the scenery is out of this world. Numerous wild flowers, a gushing mountain river, and baboons scampering along the ridge on the skyline above us. We've just had our first own-cooked dinner since we arrived in South Africa. And it's delightfully cool here! Paradise. Robbie has just read the literature warning of poisonous snakes, aggressive baboons and armed bandits, and I don't think she's as excited as I am...
Day 14. Giant's Castle.
We bought some walking maps at the camp shop this morning and booked a tour of the caves with bushman rock art for 11am. We walked along the valley side we'd started on last night, and continued until the path dropped down into a wooded ravine.
It was a bright sunny morning and the huge orange sandstone cliffs were leering down on us like grotesque faces. It took 45 minutes to reach the rock art caves where a local guide was waiting. On the tour with us were a middle aged Australian couple and a worryingly manic looking South African, who claimed to be a professional guide. He was carrying a razor sharp sword-stick "to fight off the baboons". He invited the poor guide to pull on the end of his cane. Out came the sword, which he brandished over his head and did a fake lunge at the guide, who didn't look amused at all. A nutcase if I've ever met one.
The bushman art was in shallow caves at the foot of a massive cliff. Quite detailed drawings of people and animals in red white and grey, and strange part-human beings which the guide explained represent shamans in a trance, transformed into the shapes of animals. We left the rest of the group after the caves and continued our walk along another valley towards Grysbuck Bush.
There were many lovely wildflowers in the grass on the valley side, some of families we are familiar with - orchids, ericas, willowherbs, clematis, lobelia, kniphofia, cranesbill, hypericum, protea - and some that were strange to us. The open grassland was mostly void of birds apart from swallows and red winged starlings, but the the reedy areas near the river and scrubbier areas held quite a number of small tweety things, most of which evaded identification. A fabulous sighting was a malachite sunbird that sat on top of a thorn bush in front of us, not quite long enough for Robbie to get a photo. It is iridescent green all over with the sunbird's bent-needle bill and a long fine tail streamer.
We were disappointed to find a wooden footbridge over the stream was missing in the valley of Grysbuck Bush, and the water was too fast to wade, so we didn't get as far as the swimming holes we were aiming for. We spotted a group of three elands - the giant antelopes of the mountains - grazing on the verdant mountainside above the valley. We ate our sandwiches and returned. Coming back, a thunder storm overtook us and the rain became torrential. Thank god we'd brought cagoules, but no leggings so our trousers were sodden by the time we reached our hut. This "rustic cabin" has an electric heater too!
We sat in the hut drying off for an hour or so, spotting birds through the great glass sliding door that makes up one whole wall. Robin-chats, olive backed woodpecker, olive thrush. A dassie also wandered down the garden path - a strange rock dwelling creature that looks rather like a giant rodent.
When the sun came out again we had a late afternoon stroll along the road we'd originally driven in on. Banks of rain clouds were splashed with all the colours of sunset behind the enormous rock escarpment. We watched troops of baboons from a safe distance, and surprised a whole tribe of dassies grazing at the roadside. Later we cooked ourselves a fine spinach curry in our great big little luxury hovel.
We bought some walking maps at the camp shop this morning and booked a tour of the caves with bushman rock art for 11am. We walked along the valley side we'd started on last night, and continued until the path dropped down into a wooded ravine.
It was a bright sunny morning and the huge orange sandstone cliffs were leering down on us like grotesque faces. It took 45 minutes to reach the rock art caves where a local guide was waiting. On the tour with us were a middle aged Australian couple and a worryingly manic looking South African, who claimed to be a professional guide. He was carrying a razor sharp sword-stick "to fight off the baboons". He invited the poor guide to pull on the end of his cane. Out came the sword, which he brandished over his head and did a fake lunge at the guide, who didn't look amused at all. A nutcase if I've ever met one.
The bushman art was in shallow caves at the foot of a massive cliff. Quite detailed drawings of people and animals in red white and grey, and strange part-human beings which the guide explained represent shamans in a trance, transformed into the shapes of animals. We left the rest of the group after the caves and continued our walk along another valley towards Grysbuck Bush.
There were many lovely wildflowers in the grass on the valley side, some of families we are familiar with - orchids, ericas, willowherbs, clematis, lobelia, kniphofia, cranesbill, hypericum, protea - and some that were strange to us. The open grassland was mostly void of birds apart from swallows and red winged starlings, but the the reedy areas near the river and scrubbier areas held quite a number of small tweety things, most of which evaded identification. A fabulous sighting was a malachite sunbird that sat on top of a thorn bush in front of us, not quite long enough for Robbie to get a photo. It is iridescent green all over with the sunbird's bent-needle bill and a long fine tail streamer.
We were disappointed to find a wooden footbridge over the stream was missing in the valley of Grysbuck Bush, and the water was too fast to wade, so we didn't get as far as the swimming holes we were aiming for. We spotted a group of three elands - the giant antelopes of the mountains - grazing on the verdant mountainside above the valley. We ate our sandwiches and returned. Coming back, a thunder storm overtook us and the rain became torrential. Thank god we'd brought cagoules, but no leggings so our trousers were sodden by the time we reached our hut. This "rustic cabin" has an electric heater too!
We sat in the hut drying off for an hour or so, spotting birds through the great glass sliding door that makes up one whole wall. Robin-chats, olive backed woodpecker, olive thrush. A dassie also wandered down the garden path - a strange rock dwelling creature that looks rather like a giant rodent.
When the sun came out again we had a late afternoon stroll along the road we'd originally driven in on. Banks of rain clouds were splashed with all the colours of sunset behind the enormous rock escarpment. We watched troops of baboons from a safe distance, and surprised a whole tribe of dassies grazing at the roadside. Later we cooked ourselves a fine spinach curry in our great big little luxury hovel.
Day 15. Giant's Castle.
I love this place. The "hut" in it's naturalistic garden setting is so cosy, and there's all the splendour of the Drakensburg mountains right outside the door. Today we walked to the "World's View"; a hill on the side of the valley opposite the road we drove in on. The literature has it as a 14km walk there and back (about eight miles) but I'm not convinced it's as far as that, although it's been brutally sunny today and that made it hard work.
We had a good start this morning: we walked down through the picnic area just outside the camp, and whilst crossing the river by a little log bridge we noticed seven elands grazing in a gorgeous riverside meadow full of blazing orange kniphofias (the red hot poker flower of English gardens). Then straightaway we noticed three large birds rising up over the hillside in front of us. Pale bodies and heads, dark wings and the defining diamond shaped tail...lammergeiers! The rare bone-eating vulture of the high mountains, the one we'd come here hoping to see. I saw one very briefly once when I was young, in Kashmir, and I have never forgotten it. They soared up into the heat of a perfect blue sky, wheeling around the craggy peaks until devoured by the heat of the wakening sun.
Our spirits elated, we raced up the steep footpath on the other side of the valley, then followed the contours along the valley side for a few miles. It's been a sweltering day and there was not a smidgin of shade anywhere along the route. Expecting the three o'clock thunderstorm, I'd put on sun cream before we left but not brought the bottle with me to top up, so I'm now a walking beetroot. Remembering yesterday's rain experience though, we had brought all our waterproofs and warm clothes, so I was carrying a ton on my back.
But enough of this whingeing! What a walk! The hillside pastures were on fire with wild flowers, singing with crickets and shimmering with the beatings of butterfly wings. The only serious climb was the moderate hillock of World's View. On the top there is one solitary low shrub, and a view along the entire precipitous magnificence of the Giant's Castle escarpment. We rested there a good hour and ate our sandwiches. Two other couples came and went again; otherwise we were alone all day. We watched pair of small orange butterflies aggressively defending the summit from all lepidopteral challengers. They even saw off a huge black and yellow patterned apparition, one that for weeks has been eluding Robbie's attempts to photograph it properly.
As we came back down, the clouds gathered over the Lesotho side of the escarpment, but there was no repeat of yesterday's downpour, and we did better for sightings. Cape rock thrush and buff streaked chat were sitting side by side on the same overhang, hunting insects above a rocky ravine - two stunningly patterned small birds that were both new to us. We watched a troop of baboons eating clay from the exposed banks of a depression on the hillside beside the track, and we located the park's lammergeier watching hide, where they put out food for those endangered birds. It is high up on a plateau across the valley, and we spotted it by the column of cape vultures and white necked ravens circling above. It was a long way off and we could only definitely make out one actual lammergeier.
We paddled in the ice cold water of the rushing river when we got down again, to cool off, then we went to watch the live broadcast from the camera in the lammergeier hide, which plays on a screen in the camp restaurant. Bird watching is laughably easy here! It still looked like there were only cape vultures and ravens feeding up there, but we did see a jackal rush out and chase off all the ravens.
The daily thunderstorm didn't arrive until six o'clock this evening.
I love this place. The "hut" in it's naturalistic garden setting is so cosy, and there's all the splendour of the Drakensburg mountains right outside the door. Today we walked to the "World's View"; a hill on the side of the valley opposite the road we drove in on. The literature has it as a 14km walk there and back (about eight miles) but I'm not convinced it's as far as that, although it's been brutally sunny today and that made it hard work.
We had a good start this morning: we walked down through the picnic area just outside the camp, and whilst crossing the river by a little log bridge we noticed seven elands grazing in a gorgeous riverside meadow full of blazing orange kniphofias (the red hot poker flower of English gardens). Then straightaway we noticed three large birds rising up over the hillside in front of us. Pale bodies and heads, dark wings and the defining diamond shaped tail...lammergeiers! The rare bone-eating vulture of the high mountains, the one we'd come here hoping to see. I saw one very briefly once when I was young, in Kashmir, and I have never forgotten it. They soared up into the heat of a perfect blue sky, wheeling around the craggy peaks until devoured by the heat of the wakening sun.
Our spirits elated, we raced up the steep footpath on the other side of the valley, then followed the contours along the valley side for a few miles. It's been a sweltering day and there was not a smidgin of shade anywhere along the route. Expecting the three o'clock thunderstorm, I'd put on sun cream before we left but not brought the bottle with me to top up, so I'm now a walking beetroot. Remembering yesterday's rain experience though, we had brought all our waterproofs and warm clothes, so I was carrying a ton on my back.
But enough of this whingeing! What a walk! The hillside pastures were on fire with wild flowers, singing with crickets and shimmering with the beatings of butterfly wings. The only serious climb was the moderate hillock of World's View. On the top there is one solitary low shrub, and a view along the entire precipitous magnificence of the Giant's Castle escarpment. We rested there a good hour and ate our sandwiches. Two other couples came and went again; otherwise we were alone all day. We watched pair of small orange butterflies aggressively defending the summit from all lepidopteral challengers. They even saw off a huge black and yellow patterned apparition, one that for weeks has been eluding Robbie's attempts to photograph it properly.
As we came back down, the clouds gathered over the Lesotho side of the escarpment, but there was no repeat of yesterday's downpour, and we did better for sightings. Cape rock thrush and buff streaked chat were sitting side by side on the same overhang, hunting insects above a rocky ravine - two stunningly patterned small birds that were both new to us. We watched a troop of baboons eating clay from the exposed banks of a depression on the hillside beside the track, and we located the park's lammergeier watching hide, where they put out food for those endangered birds. It is high up on a plateau across the valley, and we spotted it by the column of cape vultures and white necked ravens circling above. It was a long way off and we could only definitely make out one actual lammergeier.
We paddled in the ice cold water of the rushing river when we got down again, to cool off, then we went to watch the live broadcast from the camera in the lammergeier hide, which plays on a screen in the camp restaurant. Bird watching is laughably easy here! It still looked like there were only cape vultures and ravens feeding up there, but we did see a jackal rush out and chase off all the ravens.
The daily thunderstorm didn't arrive until six o'clock this evening.
Day 16. Royal Natal National Park.
We checked out of our cabin at Giant's Castle at 10am this morning and drove down the valley towards the park gate. We stopped off before the gate for a short walk down to the "Champagne Pools", some pools in the river that are meant to be good for swimming, but the walk involved wading the river at one point and the water was too fierce to risk it after the rains, so we had to turn back.
We drove the way we had come to the N3 at Estcourt. Stopped many times along the road to look at widow birds and whydah birds drifting across the tall meadows with their floaty tails, and we saw a big black Verreaux's Eagle overhead, with white patches near the ends of its wings. I'd not paid much attention to the houses along the road on the way in, being too pre-occupied with dodging potholes, but driving with less haste I noticed that many are built of dried mud and straw, some rectangular with tin roofs and others traditional rondavels - round houses with thatched roofs. We skirted around the White Mountain again, the impressive craggy isolated mountain which we had thought big before we'd reached Giant's Castle. Robbie spotted a black headed heron stalking through a meadow shortly before we reached the N3, another new heron for us, and one apparently that is usually found in non-aquatic habitats.
Stopped for petrol and lunch at a service station on the N3, then turned off again shortly, heading to Winterton and Bergville. The road ran straight as a die through a vast landscape of cattle plains and sugar plantations. Winterton was a very quaint, elegant looking town of colonial style wooden houses, and Bergville, where we stopped briefly to go to a supermarket, was a rough looking Wild West sort of place which we drove straight past first of all not noticing that it was a town.
Gradually the Drakensberg escarpment loomed up ahead of us again, until once more we were looking at an imposing wall of rock. We saw our first wild ostriches grazing on a pasture below the road, along with a smal herd of antelope. We signed in to Royal Natal Park at the gate, and a few more kilometres of steep winding narrow road brought us to the Thendele camp where we had a cabin booked.
We saw a mongoose beside the road just as we came in to the camp, and then as soon as we got out of the car we encountered our first problem baboon of the holiday. It was waiting on the front patio of the cabin, and almost immediately it was up on the roof of the car, baring it's fangs at us and barking in an almost human voice. I realised it could probably smell our food in the vehicle, so we had to whisk all the bags of food quickly through the back door while one of us shooed the animal away. Even when the car was empty it kept clambering onto the roof and sitting on the wing mirror, and I was worried it was going to chew the windscreen wipers. It kept peering in through the car windows as if looking at something. "We've got all the food out haven't we?" I said. "There's only a packet of mint imperials..." Robbie replied. I chased the animal away again, roaring and flapping my arms, and grabbed the mints from the front shelf. The baboon did not return.
The cabin is similar to the one we had last night, but not so clean nor well maintained. But the view is fabulous - looking out across a valley to the "Amphitheatre", a three thousand metre high, five kilometre long wall of rock. A shame we daren't have the French window open to savour the view properly, for fear of letting a baboon into the building. I realise now why all the opening windows in these places have bars on them.
In the late afternoon we went for a short walk along footpaths into one of the glens. We believe we managed to identify two different cisticolas - extremely tricky LBJs - and we flushed a spotted thick-knees from the path. We saw some wonderful flowers including a big globular blue agapanthus in full bloom. Retracing our steps, I noticed a shallow cave I'd not noticed on the way out. It was beneath a slanting rock hidden in the scrub beside the path. Just the sort of place where the bushmen would have done their pictures, I thought, so I went to have a look. Sure enough, inside I could see faint images of little stick men hunting antelopes. Dramatic clouds rolled across the amphitheatre's heights as the sun set, but we got no rain this time.
I've just killed a cockroach in the kitchen. Like I say, it's not as clean as the last place...
We checked out of our cabin at Giant's Castle at 10am this morning and drove down the valley towards the park gate. We stopped off before the gate for a short walk down to the "Champagne Pools", some pools in the river that are meant to be good for swimming, but the walk involved wading the river at one point and the water was too fierce to risk it after the rains, so we had to turn back.
We drove the way we had come to the N3 at Estcourt. Stopped many times along the road to look at widow birds and whydah birds drifting across the tall meadows with their floaty tails, and we saw a big black Verreaux's Eagle overhead, with white patches near the ends of its wings. I'd not paid much attention to the houses along the road on the way in, being too pre-occupied with dodging potholes, but driving with less haste I noticed that many are built of dried mud and straw, some rectangular with tin roofs and others traditional rondavels - round houses with thatched roofs. We skirted around the White Mountain again, the impressive craggy isolated mountain which we had thought big before we'd reached Giant's Castle. Robbie spotted a black headed heron stalking through a meadow shortly before we reached the N3, another new heron for us, and one apparently that is usually found in non-aquatic habitats.
Stopped for petrol and lunch at a service station on the N3, then turned off again shortly, heading to Winterton and Bergville. The road ran straight as a die through a vast landscape of cattle plains and sugar plantations. Winterton was a very quaint, elegant looking town of colonial style wooden houses, and Bergville, where we stopped briefly to go to a supermarket, was a rough looking Wild West sort of place which we drove straight past first of all not noticing that it was a town.
Gradually the Drakensberg escarpment loomed up ahead of us again, until once more we were looking at an imposing wall of rock. We saw our first wild ostriches grazing on a pasture below the road, along with a smal herd of antelope. We signed in to Royal Natal Park at the gate, and a few more kilometres of steep winding narrow road brought us to the Thendele camp where we had a cabin booked.
We saw a mongoose beside the road just as we came in to the camp, and then as soon as we got out of the car we encountered our first problem baboon of the holiday. It was waiting on the front patio of the cabin, and almost immediately it was up on the roof of the car, baring it's fangs at us and barking in an almost human voice. I realised it could probably smell our food in the vehicle, so we had to whisk all the bags of food quickly through the back door while one of us shooed the animal away. Even when the car was empty it kept clambering onto the roof and sitting on the wing mirror, and I was worried it was going to chew the windscreen wipers. It kept peering in through the car windows as if looking at something. "We've got all the food out haven't we?" I said. "There's only a packet of mint imperials..." Robbie replied. I chased the animal away again, roaring and flapping my arms, and grabbed the mints from the front shelf. The baboon did not return.
The cabin is similar to the one we had last night, but not so clean nor well maintained. But the view is fabulous - looking out across a valley to the "Amphitheatre", a three thousand metre high, five kilometre long wall of rock. A shame we daren't have the French window open to savour the view properly, for fear of letting a baboon into the building. I realise now why all the opening windows in these places have bars on them.
In the late afternoon we went for a short walk along footpaths into one of the glens. We believe we managed to identify two different cisticolas - extremely tricky LBJs - and we flushed a spotted thick-knees from the path. We saw some wonderful flowers including a big globular blue agapanthus in full bloom. Retracing our steps, I noticed a shallow cave I'd not noticed on the way out. It was beneath a slanting rock hidden in the scrub beside the path. Just the sort of place where the bushmen would have done their pictures, I thought, so I went to have a look. Sure enough, inside I could see faint images of little stick men hunting antelopes. Dramatic clouds rolled across the amphitheatre's heights as the sun set, but we got no rain this time.
I've just killed a cockroach in the kitchen. Like I say, it's not as clean as the last place...
Day 17. Royal Natal.
We were woken this morning first of all at 6am by a cape rock thrush, sitting on the outside sill of the kitchen window and singing its heart out to its own reflection. At 7.30 we flung the curtains wide expecting to see a glorious vista of the great amphitheatre rock face lit up by the rising sun. Instead we saw puddles, drizzle and a wall of blank white cloud. It was pretty cold too, so we delayed the start of our walk until after 10am, when the cloud was starting to lift and we could see part of the Tugela Gorge below us, where we were planning to walk. The drizzle ceased and the day became sunny and quite warm, but the clouds never completely dispersed from the top of the ridge.
We went down from the camp and crossed the nearest river by a log bridge, then started off along the gorge path. It was a very good footpath and easy walking, a steady climb along the valley side but never too steep. We walked through beautiful grasslands brimming with flowers; chased butterflies with our cameras and scratched our heads over many LBJs clinging to the reed stems. A Lanner falcon slid across the sky and vanished into the clouds around the crag above the camp. It looked like a huge peregrine.
After a few kilometres we started passing through damp kloofs - dark and mysterious wooded ravines where the cool air kissed our skin. Rivulets of mountain water softly whispered eternal melodies, singing of a world that has no need of mankind. We came upon a trickle of water plummeting down from a rock overhang hundreds of feet above. I took off my shirt and stood beneath it, letting the icy droplets rinse away my heat and fatigue.
Eventually the whole valley side was wooded, and when we broke out of it into the sunlight we were in a deep fissure between towering rock walls, water dripping off the overhangs. We had to scramble over the boulders of the dry part of the river bed to proceed, crossing the river itself once. When we had to recross it, no easy job, Robbie had had enough. I scouted ahead for a while, but it looked like we still had a long way to go before we saw the actual waterfall where the Tugela river leaps over the edge of the amphitheatre, which is claimed to be one of the world's highest waterfalls. I wasn't convinced we'd even be able to see it anyway, because of the clouds, the trees and the immensity of the rock wall, so it being 2pm already, we ate our sandwiches and turned back.
A few birds were stirring in the woods in the afternoon, and a lovely black, white and yellow cape batis, making a strange mechanical mating call to his female, became the 200th new bird on our list. We got back to the camp footsore but quite exhilarated from such stunning views, and sat on our veranda watching a diversity of small birds hopping about amongst the garden shrubs.
We were woken this morning first of all at 6am by a cape rock thrush, sitting on the outside sill of the kitchen window and singing its heart out to its own reflection. At 7.30 we flung the curtains wide expecting to see a glorious vista of the great amphitheatre rock face lit up by the rising sun. Instead we saw puddles, drizzle and a wall of blank white cloud. It was pretty cold too, so we delayed the start of our walk until after 10am, when the cloud was starting to lift and we could see part of the Tugela Gorge below us, where we were planning to walk. The drizzle ceased and the day became sunny and quite warm, but the clouds never completely dispersed from the top of the ridge.
We went down from the camp and crossed the nearest river by a log bridge, then started off along the gorge path. It was a very good footpath and easy walking, a steady climb along the valley side but never too steep. We walked through beautiful grasslands brimming with flowers; chased butterflies with our cameras and scratched our heads over many LBJs clinging to the reed stems. A Lanner falcon slid across the sky and vanished into the clouds around the crag above the camp. It looked like a huge peregrine.
After a few kilometres we started passing through damp kloofs - dark and mysterious wooded ravines where the cool air kissed our skin. Rivulets of mountain water softly whispered eternal melodies, singing of a world that has no need of mankind. We came upon a trickle of water plummeting down from a rock overhang hundreds of feet above. I took off my shirt and stood beneath it, letting the icy droplets rinse away my heat and fatigue.
Eventually the whole valley side was wooded, and when we broke out of it into the sunlight we were in a deep fissure between towering rock walls, water dripping off the overhangs. We had to scramble over the boulders of the dry part of the river bed to proceed, crossing the river itself once. When we had to recross it, no easy job, Robbie had had enough. I scouted ahead for a while, but it looked like we still had a long way to go before we saw the actual waterfall where the Tugela river leaps over the edge of the amphitheatre, which is claimed to be one of the world's highest waterfalls. I wasn't convinced we'd even be able to see it anyway, because of the clouds, the trees and the immensity of the rock wall, so it being 2pm already, we ate our sandwiches and turned back.
A few birds were stirring in the woods in the afternoon, and a lovely black, white and yellow cape batis, making a strange mechanical mating call to his female, became the 200th new bird on our list. We got back to the camp footsore but quite exhilarated from such stunning views, and sat on our veranda watching a diversity of small birds hopping about amongst the garden shrubs.
Day 18. Royal Natal.
We were woken by the beautiful song of the rock thrush again this morning. We looked out of the window and saw the view we've paid our money for: a perfect blue sky and the sun blazing on to the amphitheatre in all it's splendour.
We took the footpath around the great crag behind the camp, heading for the Tiger Falls. The path had just been strimmed and there were colourful crickets hopping about all over the freshly cut grass. It was a very hot morning already, and we were glad to reach the cool of the trees in the kloof around Tiger Falls after about an hour. The strimmer men were all lying under the trees with their machines.
The waterfall is excellent. The water hurtles down over two great horizontal slabs of jutting rock, and there is a rectangular cave underneath the lower rock which you can clamber in to and walk around behind the falling water. We saw freshwater crabs in the pools at the base of the fall. Once the strimmer men had woken up and moved off, I stripped off and stood under the pounding icy torrent. That woke me up! Robbie thinks I'm turning into a naturist, but it's just to cool down, honest!
We carried on with our walk, out of the trees and into the glaring sun of the hillside. At the next river crossing, which was only about ten minutes further on, we had to stop again for a lengthy paddle. We followed the footpath onwards, which thankfully hugged the contour more or less around the hillside, so there was not too much climbing. Fairly soon we out of the heat again and resting in the shady woodland beside yet more tumbling waters. We ate our lunch perched on a mossy boulder above a maelstrom of white water, then continued onwards. Out of the trees once more and into the hot grasslands, I decided on a left turn along a path that looked pretty flat on the map, but it took us upwards quite steeply and after ten minutes or so we both decided it was too much for such a hot day, and turned back.
Other than baboons and a few white necked ravens, we'd seen very little animal or bird life, but coming back we were lucky to see a pair of ground woodpeckers on a large rock, which were one of only two new bird ticks today. They're anomalies in the woodpecker world - brown plumaged, foraging on the ground, and they don't have very much to do with trees. At the place where we'd had lunch I scrambled up the slope some way from the path and found a nice secluded bath-shaped trough in the river bed, where I enjoyed my second ice cold soak of the day. Robbie is taking the mick something rotten, but at least I got myself cooled off.
We met a troop of baboons on the return to the camp. A mother had a baby riding on her back, and another one scampered up a dead tree to have a better look at us. They let you come quite close, but they don't bother you.
There's a lot of new people arrived at the camp this evening - it must be a popular weekend getaway. We went for a walk in the dark with torches looking for owls, but couldn't find any nocturnal life at all apart from the noises of frogs and insects. We looked at the stars through my telescope, and almost blinded ourselves looking at the moon. I've always loved to see the Southern Cross in the sky, to remind myself I'm in the Southern Hemisphere.
We were woken by the beautiful song of the rock thrush again this morning. We looked out of the window and saw the view we've paid our money for: a perfect blue sky and the sun blazing on to the amphitheatre in all it's splendour.
We took the footpath around the great crag behind the camp, heading for the Tiger Falls. The path had just been strimmed and there were colourful crickets hopping about all over the freshly cut grass. It was a very hot morning already, and we were glad to reach the cool of the trees in the kloof around Tiger Falls after about an hour. The strimmer men were all lying under the trees with their machines.
The waterfall is excellent. The water hurtles down over two great horizontal slabs of jutting rock, and there is a rectangular cave underneath the lower rock which you can clamber in to and walk around behind the falling water. We saw freshwater crabs in the pools at the base of the fall. Once the strimmer men had woken up and moved off, I stripped off and stood under the pounding icy torrent. That woke me up! Robbie thinks I'm turning into a naturist, but it's just to cool down, honest!
We carried on with our walk, out of the trees and into the glaring sun of the hillside. At the next river crossing, which was only about ten minutes further on, we had to stop again for a lengthy paddle. We followed the footpath onwards, which thankfully hugged the contour more or less around the hillside, so there was not too much climbing. Fairly soon we out of the heat again and resting in the shady woodland beside yet more tumbling waters. We ate our lunch perched on a mossy boulder above a maelstrom of white water, then continued onwards. Out of the trees once more and into the hot grasslands, I decided on a left turn along a path that looked pretty flat on the map, but it took us upwards quite steeply and after ten minutes or so we both decided it was too much for such a hot day, and turned back.
Other than baboons and a few white necked ravens, we'd seen very little animal or bird life, but coming back we were lucky to see a pair of ground woodpeckers on a large rock, which were one of only two new bird ticks today. They're anomalies in the woodpecker world - brown plumaged, foraging on the ground, and they don't have very much to do with trees. At the place where we'd had lunch I scrambled up the slope some way from the path and found a nice secluded bath-shaped trough in the river bed, where I enjoyed my second ice cold soak of the day. Robbie is taking the mick something rotten, but at least I got myself cooled off.
We met a troop of baboons on the return to the camp. A mother had a baby riding on her back, and another one scampered up a dead tree to have a better look at us. They let you come quite close, but they don't bother you.
There's a lot of new people arrived at the camp this evening - it must be a popular weekend getaway. We went for a walk in the dark with torches looking for owls, but couldn't find any nocturnal life at all apart from the noises of frogs and insects. We looked at the stars through my telescope, and almost blinded ourselves looking at the moon. I've always loved to see the Southern Cross in the sky, to remind myself I'm in the Southern Hemisphere.
Day 19. Golden Gate Highlands National Park.
Our last night in South Africa, and I'm very tired. We both slept very badly last night, Robbie because she discovered a tick attached to her leg just before bedtime, and when we incorrectly tried to remove it with tweezers the body broke off leaving part of it embedded in her skin. She worries about things like that. I was fretting about the car journey today, disproportionately I thought at the time, but quite deservedly as it turned out...
We got on our way at 10am. We drove down the sinuous mountain road from the camp, and stopped for a while around the visitor centre at the bottom. We discovered a reedbed that had a colony of red bishop birds in it, those beautiful scarlet and black balls of fluff we'd watched around the hide at Pilanesberg, possibly my number one favourite for this trip. A pretty artificial lake was surrounded by massive old weeping willow trees with six foot diameter trunks, that put me in mind of the Old Man Willow in The Lord of the Rings. JRR Tolkien lived in South Africa as a boy, you know. I have a hunch that the amphitheatre rock wall inspired his description of the gates of Mordor. The Land of Mordor is Lesotho.
In the car park of the visitor centre there was a very tame antelope trotting around, of a species that was unknown to us. The Visitor Centre had a huge gift shop and no information whatsoever about the wildlife of the park, so we'll have to look it up when we get home. The area was full of birds - it seems we've spent the previous two days at the wrong altitude for birding.
We followed the road out of the park that we'd come in on, and turned left after half an hour on to the R74 towards Harrismith. This was the road we'd followed from Bergville, and it had been newly tarmacked along that section, covered in loose, sticky chippings forcing me to drive very slowly for many miles. I'd thought that was bad at the time, but it was nothing to what was ahead...
We climbed some very steep and winding slopes, having to squeeze between a jack-knifed articulated truck and the crash barrier at one point. Then just as we approached the summit the tarmacked road effectively disappeared. It looked as though they'd dug it all up about a year ago, and then changed their minds and gone home. The road surface was just loose gravel and gaping potholes for about twenty miles. I think the point where it all went to hell was where we left Kwazulu Natal and entered the Free State. That might have something to do with it. We had views across a huge sapphire blue reservoir to our left, but I had to keep both eyes on the road, creeping along.
The highway from Harrismith to Clarens though was a good one when we reached it, and we were soon at the gate of the Golden Gate Highlands Park. As soon as we entered the park we saw a herd of antelopes with white faces. We think they may have been blesbok. There were many, many of these grazing the grasslands as we continued, and a few eland. Robbie saw some grey headed cranes and possibly a bustard, but I was having to watch the road which was winding again and not easy to stop on. The scenery was dramatic: colourful sandstone cliffs and sweeping grasslands.
Glen Reenen Lodge where we're staying is at the roadside in a mountain pass between sandstone cliffs. We're staying in a proper rondavel this time - a little round house with a thatched roof. It's got satellite TV, hot shower, cooker, microwave etc, of course.
We checked in, then drove on twenty kilometres to the town of Clarens once we'd recouped our mental reserves a little, and found a gift shop with pay-to-use Internet to do our online check-in for the flight tomorrow. There's a beer festival going on in Clarens this weekend, on a sort of large village green in the centre of town, surrounded by a genteel white picket fence. The place is full of part-inebriated white men and very fancy gleaming Harley-Davidsons and pickup trucks.
It felt strange to be amongst crowds of people again. The town is awfully quaint apart from the drunken laughter and heavy rock bands on the green. Tin-roofed mansions and pretty gardens, sort of Bavaria meets the US Deep South, and all surrounded by craggy sandstone hills. We sampled the Clarens local brew at the brewery cafe, and it doesn't taste good at all. We tried their English Ale and a Blonde Ale. Both had a rather unpleasant yeasty home-brew sort of taste, with a hint of smoke. Still, after three weeks of nothing but Castle Lager it makes a change to taste anything at all. We drove back into the park and tucked into a hearty buffet at the very posh hotel just down the road from the camp, which cost us not much more than £10. Never walk past a buffet when you're travelling in South Africa!
Our last night in South Africa, and I'm very tired. We both slept very badly last night, Robbie because she discovered a tick attached to her leg just before bedtime, and when we incorrectly tried to remove it with tweezers the body broke off leaving part of it embedded in her skin. She worries about things like that. I was fretting about the car journey today, disproportionately I thought at the time, but quite deservedly as it turned out...
We got on our way at 10am. We drove down the sinuous mountain road from the camp, and stopped for a while around the visitor centre at the bottom. We discovered a reedbed that had a colony of red bishop birds in it, those beautiful scarlet and black balls of fluff we'd watched around the hide at Pilanesberg, possibly my number one favourite for this trip. A pretty artificial lake was surrounded by massive old weeping willow trees with six foot diameter trunks, that put me in mind of the Old Man Willow in The Lord of the Rings. JRR Tolkien lived in South Africa as a boy, you know. I have a hunch that the amphitheatre rock wall inspired his description of the gates of Mordor. The Land of Mordor is Lesotho.
In the car park of the visitor centre there was a very tame antelope trotting around, of a species that was unknown to us. The Visitor Centre had a huge gift shop and no information whatsoever about the wildlife of the park, so we'll have to look it up when we get home. The area was full of birds - it seems we've spent the previous two days at the wrong altitude for birding.
We followed the road out of the park that we'd come in on, and turned left after half an hour on to the R74 towards Harrismith. This was the road we'd followed from Bergville, and it had been newly tarmacked along that section, covered in loose, sticky chippings forcing me to drive very slowly for many miles. I'd thought that was bad at the time, but it was nothing to what was ahead...
We climbed some very steep and winding slopes, having to squeeze between a jack-knifed articulated truck and the crash barrier at one point. Then just as we approached the summit the tarmacked road effectively disappeared. It looked as though they'd dug it all up about a year ago, and then changed their minds and gone home. The road surface was just loose gravel and gaping potholes for about twenty miles. I think the point where it all went to hell was where we left Kwazulu Natal and entered the Free State. That might have something to do with it. We had views across a huge sapphire blue reservoir to our left, but I had to keep both eyes on the road, creeping along.
The highway from Harrismith to Clarens though was a good one when we reached it, and we were soon at the gate of the Golden Gate Highlands Park. As soon as we entered the park we saw a herd of antelopes with white faces. We think they may have been blesbok. There were many, many of these grazing the grasslands as we continued, and a few eland. Robbie saw some grey headed cranes and possibly a bustard, but I was having to watch the road which was winding again and not easy to stop on. The scenery was dramatic: colourful sandstone cliffs and sweeping grasslands.
Glen Reenen Lodge where we're staying is at the roadside in a mountain pass between sandstone cliffs. We're staying in a proper rondavel this time - a little round house with a thatched roof. It's got satellite TV, hot shower, cooker, microwave etc, of course.
We checked in, then drove on twenty kilometres to the town of Clarens once we'd recouped our mental reserves a little, and found a gift shop with pay-to-use Internet to do our online check-in for the flight tomorrow. There's a beer festival going on in Clarens this weekend, on a sort of large village green in the centre of town, surrounded by a genteel white picket fence. The place is full of part-inebriated white men and very fancy gleaming Harley-Davidsons and pickup trucks.
It felt strange to be amongst crowds of people again. The town is awfully quaint apart from the drunken laughter and heavy rock bands on the green. Tin-roofed mansions and pretty gardens, sort of Bavaria meets the US Deep South, and all surrounded by craggy sandstone hills. We sampled the Clarens local brew at the brewery cafe, and it doesn't taste good at all. We tried their English Ale and a Blonde Ale. Both had a rather unpleasant yeasty home-brew sort of taste, with a hint of smoke. Still, after three weeks of nothing but Castle Lager it makes a change to taste anything at all. We drove back into the park and tucked into a hearty buffet at the very posh hotel just down the road from the camp, which cost us not much more than £10. Never walk past a buffet when you're travelling in South Africa!
Day 20. On the plane.
We had a brief walk around Glen Reenen Camp before we left this morning. I wish we'd been able to stay another night. There's a pleasant meadow behind the huts surrounded by sandstone crags, and a waterfall in the corner with a tempting swimming pool at its base.
We drove more slowly back through the Golden Gate park in the direction from which we'd come yesterday, towards Harrismith, stopping at every parking place to take photos and look out for animals. The cliffs are all stained by water run-off so that they look like they have supermarket bar-codes. Robbie spotted the cranes again, probably the same pair in the same place, and I stopped to have a look. They had golden sticking-up crests like a Billy Idol hairdo. We saw lots of antelopes - the one's we think are blesbok and a different type of wildebeest to the ones we usually see.
From the park we continued on to Harrismith and joined the N3 towards Johannesburg. We drove across the Free State - endless miles of emptiness, nothing but cattle plains and iron wind pumps. I passed two petrol stations at Harrismith and over an hour later I was regretting it because there wasn't a single service station along the motorway. There were no towns, not even a village, so when we passed close to a place called Villiers I pulled off.
It was like a creepy ghost town. Derelict looking tin roofed buildings and boarded up shops along a rough potholed main street. There was almost nobody about, and it being Sunday everything was shut. The only place open was a grubby Chinese supermarket where we vainly searched for some of the Rooibos tea that Robbie likes and wanted to take home. I found a ramshackle petrol station at the far end of town like the place where the psycho half-wit always works in American road movies.
Within a few minutes of rejoining the N3 we came across a service station, of course. They are not signposted at all and if Robbie hadn't've been alert I'd've driven past it. We stopped for a sandwich which we ate outside at a thatched picnic table, taking our time because we were making good speed. Other than a few stretches of speed restriction due to roadworks, the N3 is a very fast road - two lanes, 120kmph speed limit and not a single pothole. Even at the services, we spotted a pair of small doves pecking about beneath a shrubbery which we haven't yet seen. The bird list continues to grow, even unto the last day!
Another hour's drive brought us into the suburbs of Johannesburg, overhung by a haze of grey smoke. The formerly easy road became testing - up to six lanes of heavy traffic, but still travelling at 120kmph. Thankfully the airport was well signposted and we found it with no problem, handing the car keys over to a casual Hertz attendant who gave it barely a glance over for dents or scratches. All my weeks of fretting about it had been needless.
Then we dropped our bags at the Lufthansa counter, did all the security stuff and hung about, and here we are now, roaring through the night sky somewhere above the heart of darkness.
Day 21. Frankfurt airport.
I know that other people's air travel horror stories make for very dull reading, so I'll say nothing other than that my eyelids are made of sandpaper, I nearly had a punch-up with a fellow passenger a while ago over a queue jumping dispute, and we will never travel with Lufthansa again. We're looking at arriving home sometime late this evening. I feel a poem coming on. It might not be very PC with regard to Germany...
We had a brief walk around Glen Reenen Camp before we left this morning. I wish we'd been able to stay another night. There's a pleasant meadow behind the huts surrounded by sandstone crags, and a waterfall in the corner with a tempting swimming pool at its base.
We drove more slowly back through the Golden Gate park in the direction from which we'd come yesterday, towards Harrismith, stopping at every parking place to take photos and look out for animals. The cliffs are all stained by water run-off so that they look like they have supermarket bar-codes. Robbie spotted the cranes again, probably the same pair in the same place, and I stopped to have a look. They had golden sticking-up crests like a Billy Idol hairdo. We saw lots of antelopes - the one's we think are blesbok and a different type of wildebeest to the ones we usually see.
From the park we continued on to Harrismith and joined the N3 towards Johannesburg. We drove across the Free State - endless miles of emptiness, nothing but cattle plains and iron wind pumps. I passed two petrol stations at Harrismith and over an hour later I was regretting it because there wasn't a single service station along the motorway. There were no towns, not even a village, so when we passed close to a place called Villiers I pulled off.
It was like a creepy ghost town. Derelict looking tin roofed buildings and boarded up shops along a rough potholed main street. There was almost nobody about, and it being Sunday everything was shut. The only place open was a grubby Chinese supermarket where we vainly searched for some of the Rooibos tea that Robbie likes and wanted to take home. I found a ramshackle petrol station at the far end of town like the place where the psycho half-wit always works in American road movies.
Within a few minutes of rejoining the N3 we came across a service station, of course. They are not signposted at all and if Robbie hadn't've been alert I'd've driven past it. We stopped for a sandwich which we ate outside at a thatched picnic table, taking our time because we were making good speed. Other than a few stretches of speed restriction due to roadworks, the N3 is a very fast road - two lanes, 120kmph speed limit and not a single pothole. Even at the services, we spotted a pair of small doves pecking about beneath a shrubbery which we haven't yet seen. The bird list continues to grow, even unto the last day!
Another hour's drive brought us into the suburbs of Johannesburg, overhung by a haze of grey smoke. The formerly easy road became testing - up to six lanes of heavy traffic, but still travelling at 120kmph. Thankfully the airport was well signposted and we found it with no problem, handing the car keys over to a casual Hertz attendant who gave it barely a glance over for dents or scratches. All my weeks of fretting about it had been needless.
Then we dropped our bags at the Lufthansa counter, did all the security stuff and hung about, and here we are now, roaring through the night sky somewhere above the heart of darkness.
Day 21. Frankfurt airport.
I know that other people's air travel horror stories make for very dull reading, so I'll say nothing other than that my eyelids are made of sandpaper, I nearly had a punch-up with a fellow passenger a while ago over a queue jumping dispute, and we will never travel with Lufthansa again. We're looking at arriving home sometime late this evening. I feel a poem coming on. It might not be very PC with regard to Germany...