6th November 2006, Moholoholo Forest Camp

Our favorite lodge is snuggled up against the Eastern edge of the Mpumalanga Drakensberg Mountains, with the tallest of them, Moholoholo –"the very great one"- towering over the property. The place is named for the mountain and is a fully catered lodge with very private accommodation in wooden or reed-built houses that are set into thick forest. The lodge is on a game farm that also incorporates a Wildlife Rehabilitation Center that has greatly impressed us since we first visited in 1996.

7th November 2006

I had set my cell phone in lieu of an alarm clock, but exhausted as we had been, we didn’t need it. The reason was a troop of baboons that took up residence on our roof at 5 AM and carried on a very acrimonious argument at the tops of their lungs. If I’d had a shotgun I think there would have been a big and "unexplainable" hole in the thatched roof that day... We tried to doze for a bit longer but the baboons progressed from shouting verbal abuse at each other to jumping up and down in what seemed like collective tantrums and shaking the reed-built house to its very foundations. We gave up on sleep, showered and went up to the main house for tea.

7th November 2006

As I greeted the manager, Brian, I heard a little grunting squeal to my right and there was a tiny baby rhino galloping clumsily towards me on the slippery concrete floor, head lowered and in full charging mode. Brian said, "Quick, he can give you a nasty bruise, spread your legs, he’ll run right through." Seeing that I was wearing a calf length skirt, that would have been a very silly thing to do, so I moved aside and the baby rhino slithered past me, crammed on the brakes and just avoided hitting the wall. On closer inspection, my new pal had quite a few abrasions on his funny little nose that proved he didn’t always manage to judge the distance to the wall correctly. Brian led the little chap out of the hospital and into the yard where he had much better footing and began to run around on the lawn. He became quite friendly with everybody after a short while and came up to us where we sat on the grass, indiscriminately drooling all over us and wanting his ears scratched.

7th November 2006

We left the little rhino to his nap and climbed onto the back of Brian’s pickup along with three sacks of hay and a bucket of horse pellets. The pellets gave the game away: We were off on another visit to the famous "Tinkerbell" a huge hippo that had been had reared in the rehab centre from when it was a tiny calf. Tinkerbell came out of the water, approached us, rested her chin on the tailgate and opened her gaping maw. We were expected to shovel the horse pellets into this yawning abyss and we did... Hence the hippo slobber that got added to the rhino drool on our clothing that was getting grubbier by the minute. This is one of the things I love about Moholoholo, there is always a surprise in store for the visitor. Sitting in the shade and getting slobbered on by a rhino, having a broody pigeon decide that your hair is exactly what is needed to line the nest or holding a quicksilvery, feather-light young bush baby in your hand are perfectly "normal" there.

08th November 2006, Nyalaland Wilderness Trail, Kruger Park

We all grinned with delight when we reached the Nyalaland Wilderness Trails Camp. It consisted of four huts with two beds each for the guests, one slightly larger hut for the guide. One bigger building off to one side housed the bathrooms, one each for male and female, another was the kitchen where the cook, Thomas, presided. There was no electricity but, we were all very happy to see, two large, gas powered fridge/freezers and Thomas cooked up a storm on a wood-burning stove. In the middle of the yard was a thatched dining area that we used only during the day when the sun burned down on us. In the evenings we preferred to sit and eat around the fire under another massive Baobab tree. We spent our first late afternoon and evening getting settled in, listening to Christopher, the guide, as he informed us about the do’s and don’ts of the bush in general and this camp in particular, and swapping stories around the camp fire. Thomas’s excellent dinner made us all drowsy and David’s promise to wake us up at 4.30 AM propelled us to bed at an unusually early hour. The beds in our tiny huts were narrow, the mattresses had little hollows in the middle and there were mice in the roof, that much registered with me before I dropped off to sleep.

9th November 2006

At the summit of the hill, we stood beside a tumbled-down wall of granite stones that reminded us strongly of the style in which parts of Great Zimbabwe was built. David and Christopher climbed onto the remains of the outer wall and explained that they would now ask the ancestors for permission to enter the site of the ruins. Christopher said that it was not necessary, but that they wanted to show us how it was done properly in the Shangaan culture. In his deep voice, David started speaking in Shangaan and Christopher would answer at intervals. What I managed to understand was that they introduced themselves by name and the rest of us collectively as "guests". I am a rational person and have no patience with superstition, but I shivered up there in the boiling heat of mid-morning. The way these men spoke to unseen powers sounded so primal and respectful it gave me goosebumps, made me wonder what forces they were invoking.

9th November 2006

Even after David and Christopher fell silent, nobody else spoke for over a minute. Then Christopher began to explain what we were looking at. The ruins were called the Makahane Ruins after the ruler by that name who lived upon this hill roughly 700 to 800 years ago. When we explored a little, we found that the walls were built around the top of a hill that overlooked the Luvhuvhu river, giving Makahane a stunning view from his front door. When we had had a good look around and taken some pictures, Christopher told us a few stories about Makahane that were enough to let anybody’s blood run cold. He was a very cruel ruler who demanded the utmost respect from his subjects at all times. Apparently he never did anything for himself, not even get up and sit on his chair, he would be raised and lifted into the position he demanded. In my imagination, a grossly fat man sat on an ornately carved wooden chair and bossed people around. The story goes that he would punish people for the slightest infrigement by making them fetch his favorite food, the chicks of Black eagles. These are large and beautiful eagles that nest on small ledges in the faces of sheer cliffs. So, with my fear of heights, I vividly imagined the state of the poor person who was sent to climb down the cliff and plunder the eagle’s nest!

9th November 2006

Half way down the hill, we could see a herd of buffalo wandering slowly to the river for a drink and Christopher said we would try and get near to them. With that goal in mind, we hared down the rest of the slope and walked along parallel to the river bank as quietly as we could. Soon, we reached the general area where we had seen the buffalo and Christopher gestured for silence. We crept closer and closer to the river, hidden from the animal’s view by a huge termite mound that tottered on the very brink of the riverbank. Christopher had chosen this approach because the shore on this side of the river was about four meters above the water, that carved its way further into the earth every time it flooded. When Christopher bent forward to look around the termite mound, I saw several of the huge black buffalo standing in the water up to their knees, heads lowered and drinking greedily. Our guide gestured for us to come closer, and at that moment, the buffalo caught sight of him. The massive heads shot up one by one, water dribbling from the muzzles and dripping back into the river, the animals stared at us for a split second, then they bolted. Part of the herd thundered through the river and out on the side where we were, but about twenty meters away. The rest galloped back the way they had come, hooves crashing on the submerged rocks and water splashing in rainbow arcs as the large bodies forced their way through it. It was a breathtaking moment and Christopher, who must have seen this and similar sights again and again was grinning with delight. He caught me watching him and grinning back, so he said, "Isn’t it a wonderful sound? Like thunder."

9th November 2006

The afternoon drive was fun, we saw quite a lot of antelope and several species of eagle on our way down to the river. The light was soft by the time we got there and Christopher asked whether anybody wanted a swim. Nobody except one person was interested, and even he was skeptical about bathing in a river that contained crocodiles. Christopher picked a pool between some rocks where there was a strong current and made sure that there were no submerged beasts by the simple expedient of lobbing a few large rocks into the middle of it. Then he said, "It should be safe now." The intrepid swimmer climbed in and very obviously enjoyed himself. Then, while he sat dripping to himself, the other guys unpacked the cooler boxes and handed everybody their drinks. We sat chatting quietly as an elephant strolled along the far bank of the river and the sun set beside a picturesque Baobab tree. It had been a very exciting and interesting first day.