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Here was Mphumulanga, The Land of the Rising Sun, and our destination - a wild bush camp in the Balule Game Reserve. We enjoyed a hearty ‘braai’ under a canopy of bright starts and fell asleep to the strange calls of nearby zebra.
Pristine bush veld – stretching to the horizon – met our waking eyes the next morning, together with a massive heap of elephant dung near our tents! As Isaac, our tracker, was keen to point out: “If you know an animal’s shit, you know the animal!”
Thus, on our game walk, we came to examine closely the spoor of giraffe, impala, elephant, and hyena, to be matched, at close hand, by frightening spiders and some of the ‘Small Five’ - including an ant lion.
From the relative safety of open top land-cruisers, we had our first sightings of African game, with close-up experiences of giraffe and zebra. We curled through endless bush tracks and, as the sky turned pink and the shimmering heat finally abated, we returned to camp, looking for game under our spotlights: thus we had a very rare glimpse of a wildcat.
Hazy View is a lush hill ridge and, here, we stayed at a lodge overlooking the Sabi River. Hippos prevented a white-water descent of the rapids but they didn’t prevent our encounter with a very large black mamba. The lodge’s pets provided much amusement: a zebra, a bush pig called Napoleon, two ostriches and some particularly playful warthogs, called Rosie and Meatloaf.
Ever in search of the ‘Big Five’, we entered the Kruger National Park. The big cats eluded us but we still saw numerous plains’ game, and had close and intimidating encounters with a herd of elephant.
We then headed south through the Kingdom of Swaziland, which necessitated two border crossings and dealing with African bureaucracy and Afrikaaner driving at their finest. A sugar farmer rear-ended our truck with his Bakkie: the truck, now adorned with distinctive kudu horns, won.
As we passed the Labombo Mountains, we remembered the story of ‘Ghost Mountain’, scene of the horrific battle of Tshaneni during the Zulu Civil War in 1884: here, bleached bones and broken bones still jut out of the red earth.
With the sun setting, we reached our rustic camp at False Bay, situated in a sand-forest adjoining the St. Lucia Estuary World Heritage Site. Here, some slept on the deck under bright, southern constellations.
We visited a rural, Zulu school in a few rudimentary buildings which catered for just short of 1,000 pupils. We were entertained by a class of Grade 12 girls, whose vibrant voices threatened to lift off the roof.
The Hluhluwe - Umfolozi Game Reserve was once the Zulu King Shaka’s royal hunting ground. Here, we saw impressive herds of buffalo, and some ‘dugga boys’ – solitary male buffalo - and rhino wallowing in mud-baths.
From the False Bay Reserve, we watched the sun glisten over the estuary and then stopped off at the Ilala Weavers.
The further south we drove, with the blue Indian Ocean on one side, and sugar cane fields on the other, the higher the temperature and humidity rose. Our clothes began to stick to us in new and uncomfortable ways.
At Umdloti, our accommodation was right on the beach front, with lines of huge breakers, golden sands and Indian fishermen. We enjoyed a fish braai on the balcony accompanied by the constant roar of the ocean. Plunged into darkness by the Escom nightly power-cut, we repaired to the only place with a generator – the grungy surfer haunt of the Bush Tavern.
Following the trail of Norwegian missionaries, we crawled back up the coast, off the tar and off the map. We crossed the mighty Tugela River at Jameson’s Drift on a rickety iron bridge and then tumbled up a winding road into the Zulu highlands.
Women carried water and wood on their heads, children played in rivers and tended cattle, and men drank utshwala (traditional beer) at shebeens. The few cars we saw were rusted wrecks on the side of the road.
There were the beehive huts of the traditional Zulu homesteads and rondawels and cattle kraals. Children chased our truck, waving and smiling.
At the mystical Nkandla Forest, we learned of the events of the forgotten 1906 Bambatha Rebellion against colonial rule, and its tragic climax at Mome Gorge. We stopped – a poignant moment – at Ekombe hospital, which is still manned by Norwegian doctors, and visited the tattered Lutheran mission station established in 1881.
Thus we dropped down off the remote Qudeni plateau with its beautiful valleys and towards our destination, Isandlwana.
Rob Gerrard, our battlefield guide, brought the events of January 22nd, 1879 to life. We visited the ravine where the Zulu army was waiting for the day of the ‘dead moon’ to pass and visited the spectacular Mangeni Falls, where Lord Chelmsford, was enjoying his breakfast while, off the east, the main Zulu army fell upon and destroyed the British camp at Isandlwana. At Rorke’s Drift we paused where 115 men fought off thousands of young Zulus eager to wash their spears in blood.
We struck out for the Drakensburg Mountains, visiting Nqutu – a bustling African town - and visiting sites from the Boer War including Ladysmith, scene of a dramatic siege. We climbed to the top of Spionkop, scene of another tale of blundering British military incompetence.
At Ukhuhlamba (Barrier of Spears), we abandoned our trusty truck for a nimble four-wheel drive vehicle, which hauled us and our luggage up an impossible track to our rustic log cabin huts and a panoramic view of the Amphitheatre and Sentinel - the highest point in South Africa. We spent a day hiking in the berg and saw Bushmen rock painting and the nesting site of Cape vultures. We scaled Sungubala mountain and rested weary limbs in an ice-cold reservoir.
A long drive back took us back to Johannesburg with enough time for a brief visit to the evocative Apartheid Museum, leaving us to contemplate how the different histories we had encountered on our route culminated in the 20th century.
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