My walk on the wild side
Limpopo is the road less travelled, but you get to meet some real characters
THE province of Limpopo in the extreme northeast of South Africa is ‘the road less travelled’ as a tourism destination in a land renowned for its spectacular beauty and diversity that’s 15 times bigger than Ireland.
It’s my first visit to South Africa and we are exploring the most northerly of this country’s national parks remote Mapungubwe, a UNESCO World Heritage site bordering Zimbabwe and Botswana.
The remains of an ancient Iron Age culture was only discovered in 1932. Artefacts uncovered showed that 1,000 years ago Mapungubwe was trading gold and ivory with India, Egypt and China. The city of 5,000 was abandoned in the 13th century when its people migrated north to Great Zimbabwe.
The hilltop citadel, once the centre of the ancient kingdom and the largest in the sub-continent, dominates the wild landscape and can be visited on daily guided tours by all who dare mount over a 100 rickety wooden steps to reach it.
Archaeologists from the University of Pretoria made astonishing discoveries showcasing Mapungubwe’s once-flourishing civilisation, uncovering sophisticated architecture and elaborate royal graves, artefacts of gold and other materials as well as human remains. The most precious was a sculpted 12cm gold-plated rhino. Yet these finds were not made public for decades as they ran contrary to the racist ideology of black inferiority under Apartheid. In Rudyard Kipling’s cautionary tale The Curious Elephant’s Child ends up with a long trunk after trying to find out what the crocodile had for dinner. ‘I am going to the great grey-green greasy Limpopo river, all set about with Fever trees.’ A boardwalk takes us past a sign quoting lines from the Kipling story, past rare Riparian forest of the same Fever canopy trees, occasional bird song breaking the silence of a magical spot.
I hoped for a glimpse of basking crocodiles on the opposite bank of the Limpopo river but none were spotted. On a Hillside walk with sheltered look-out points we ate our packed lunches in the shade, out of the hot sun’s glare. In the distance men on the Zimbabwe side were hauling in fishing nets.
Here on the confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe rivers a trans-frontier conservation area allows wildlife – from cheetahs to elephants among a variety of animals to move back and forth across the borders between Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Werner Claassen explains ‘it’s strengthening ties between the three countries having a positive impact on poaching as it creates goodwill between communities allowed to graze and water cattle in each other’s countries’.
Later we drive down to the river bank to watch a spectacular sunset turn the sky pink and orange over the Limpopo, standing on sands turned golden at a spot where the river rises a metre-high in rainy years but now bears the consequences of a long drought.
The thrill of a game drive, viewing South Africa’s wealth of wildlife is a must-do. Before we set out in our open land rover from Mapungbwe’s main gate our park guide Tinyiko Ndlovu cocked his rifle to suggest possible dangers ahead. Small numbers of lion and leop- ards roam this park though it is a country cousin compared to its neighbour, Kruger National Park.
Mapungubwe is not a place you visit to view the Big Five unless luck strikes and lions and leopards turn up along with elusive rhinos. The upside, though, was meeting just one other vehicle on the road.
A male elephant was among the perfect photo opps, coming close while munching his daily intake of around 200 kilos of mixed grazing and curious giraffes.
Herds of zebra, quarrelsome baboons, numerous impala, spear horned Oryx and skittish waterbuck and more antelope species roamed close to the trans-frontier conservation area.
The only fence separating the park and Botswana and Zimbabwe was full of deliberate gaps allowing for free movement back and forth.
A few days earlier we arrived at Polokwane airport Limpopo at the start of our ‘road less travelled’ odyssey. Dramatic peaks and gorges of the Soutpansberg Mountains loom ahead. Passing neat roadside abodes – luxurious compared with other African countries I’ve been to – a rough track takes us to remote mountain lodge Madi a Thavha, set in forested hills. The nearest town Makhado, also called Louis Trichardt, was a whitesonly enclave in Apartheid times.
IT’S our jump-off for touring craft businesses and meeting locals at Elim Market, a contrast of shanty stalls selling home-made beers, salty dried caterpillars which some of us tried (we passed on the termites) and a nearby shiny new western- style shopping mall.
On the outskirts of the sprawling town of Makhado, we pass several schools. One is all-white, displaying a roadside board “Afrikaans is groot” (Afrikaans is great).
I ask our guide Alfred about this leftover bastion of Apartheid rule ‘we don’t have any complaints, it’s what they want’ he replies. “The school has a summer fair every year, if I tried to go to it I would be chased away”.
An afternoon dip in the pool outside my bungalow at Madi a Thavha mountain lodge is the perfect cool-down after a day in colourful markets and craft studios, watching pottery made by hand, women haggling over brightly coloured materials and talented musicians during a cultural tour.
Over dinner of stuffed chicken rollade Madi a Thavha’s (www. madiathavha.com) welcoming Dutch owners Marcelle Bosch and Aart van Soest tell how they fell for this former farm set in hundreds of hectares and set about
creating a beautiful lodge to entice foreign tourists to discover this littleknown spot.
Local staff have helped make the lodge they opened 13 years ago a place of peace and enterprise. The onsite shop sells the work of dozens of locals who make exquisite beaded jewellery, pottery and lovely textiles.
An outstanding permanent exhibition on the estate covers the history and culture of the Tsonga and Venda peoples.
The conversation turns to the hot topic of land expropriation without compensation and South Africa’s intention of fast-tracking land restitution and restoration.
Aart says “White settlers seized the people’s land here; in Apartheid times everything on the right side of the road was white and the bad land on the left was black”.
Agreeing that land should be returned, the former Dutch civil servant adds: ‘but people must know how to work the land and make profit from it, maybe by a leasing arrangement with loans to buy seed, stock and machinery; mere ownership isn’t enough, the lessons of Zimbabwe must be learnt here.”
Marcelle adds: ‘We love this country, it was never our intention to come to South Africa and make millions; when you want to know how rural people live you have to come here to our lodge, to see the new South Africa and how there’s real hope for its future’.