The Tugela River had burst its banks.
Heavy rains had fallen persistently over the previous 36 hours, and there were flood warnings throughout the province. Now, with the sun out, the swollen waters showed the severity of the deluge. The river was muddy brown and twice its normal width. Broken branches flashed past like speeding cars. The water would flow on to fill Midmar Dam for the first time in four years.
‘The issue with a river like this is the danger posed by fast-moving debris,’ said Gustav Greffrath, my rafting guide. ‘And, if you get separated from the raft, you can end up swimming all afternoon.’
We were scoping out the river from an old bridge on the outskirts of Bergville. Its surging power was disquieting. A group of tourists had already cancelled their trip that morning, after Gustav told them the river was the highest he’d seen it in the six years he’s been guiding here.
‘It’s very big,’ he said in quiet awe. Then he looked at me with the crazed eyes of a young boy who’s spotted a venomous snake – the primeval mix of danger and thrill. ‘I think we should go!’
My journey had started two days before in Nottingham Road. It was intended to be a trip around the Midlands, seeking out wild places instead of the arts and crafts of the Midlands Meander. I wanted to cross the highland streams that catch the Drakensberg’s snowmelt and explore the grassy slopes of the 1 000-kilometre mountain range.
I ended up tracing a route that extended well beyond, to include Underberg and Winterton. No matter. Road trips demand creative freedom.
My inspiration came from a photograph I’d stumbled upon online: shamrock-green peaks rising dramatically into clouds on the Lotheni Road between Himeville and Nottingham Road, deep shadows hinting at the majesty of the mountains. It’s intriguing how a single image can capture the imagination and spark wanderlust.
A few months later, I found myself on that road in the photograph, leaving the fat cows and fence poles of Nottingham Road in my dust, heading for Lotheni Nature Reserve. Low clouds sagged like a waterlogged tent canopy. I drove slowly, as much to avoid potholes as to savour the mountain views.
After an hour, I turned right towards the reserve. Farmland gave way to a more rural setting and every bend produced a better view. I passed herdboys with their wandering cattle and goats grazing on the side of the road, and realised I was a world away from the Midlands of the brochures. I wouldn’t find any artisanal ice-cream here.
Nomadic San lived in this mountain paradise for thousands of years before the Nguni people started to encroach on their land. In the 19th century, the horses and oxen and wagons of the Voortrekkers arrived. Wilderness was converted to pastures, and the mountains became a sanctuary for those seeking space and quiet. Not much has changed in that regard.
‘An eland, magnificent and aloof, peered at me from under a tree in the garden’
Entering the reserve, I drove beside the Lotheni River, named by the Zulus for its ashen colour. I was the first visitor in four days, and the ranger groaned as she stood up from her slumber to greet me. On the trail to a waterfall, swallows darted overhead and the Drakensberg loomed above me like a bouncer who thinks you’ve had too much to drink.
That afternoon, I met up with Paul Cooper at Pennygum Cottages in Underberg to go tubing on the Umzimkulu River. He was already dressed in a sleeveless wetsuit, and five minutes later we were jumping into a tributary of the Umzimkulu. At Paul’s suggestion, we chose smaller tubes to hinder our balance and increase our chances of falling in.
‘I used to be a CA in Wales,’ Paul said as we floated away. ‘My wife and I travelled to 64 countries with our kids and chose to retire here. So that just tells you what a special place we think this is. Apart from being very beautiful and relatively safe, the community is so friendly and welcoming that we’ve felt totally at home since we moved here 10 years ago.’
We were carried along quickly, bumping into the banks and bouncing over shallow rocks. ‘If you like bird watching or having a beer while you float down, it can be very pleasant,’ Paul said as we spun around with our toes and fingers hanging in the cold water, staring up at the clouds.
The next morning I woke up in Elands Rust, an antique-filled stone cottage near Rhino Peak. Everything was enshrouded in mist. Wet spiderwebs looked like tiny clouds spiked on the waist-high grass. An eland, magnificent and aloof, peered at me from under a tree in the garden as I warmed my hands
on my coffee mug. The San clans who lived here were people of the eland. They hunted this massive animal using bows and arrows, and painted them on the walls of their shelters. Looking at the eland felt like I was staring into the distant past.
I headed east, away from the mountains, towards Bulwer. At Marutswa Forest, about a kilometre before the town, I met Russell Hill, who’s lived in the area since 1958. The walkways are dilapidated and this nature reserve is seldom visited, but, as Russell said, ‘A forest is still a forest.’
He pointed out yellowwoods where endangered Cape parrots nest, and signs of bushbuck along the trail. Shafts of sunlight pierced the trees, gilding the wet forest floor where grey mushrooms sprouted.
‘Forestry came to the area in the 50s and chased out the local community,’ Russell told me. ‘There used to be 74 farming families here. Today there are eight.’
I drove along the ridgeline towards Boston, overlooking pockets of forest above tin-roofed huts. Long stretches of the forest plantations Russell had referred to followed. When I reached Howick an hour later, I visited its famous waterfall, then slept soundly through the night in Lions River, unaware of the scale of the storm that had hit.
The next morning, I drove on along a misty R103 lined by white and pink cosmos towards Bergville, where Gustav, his fellow guide Godfrey Tshuma and a rampaging river were waiting. As we put on our helmets and life jackets, I asked Gustav about living in Winterton.
‘It’s the kind of place where you know your neighbour and which car belongs to whom. It’s surrounded by farmland, so it’s quiet and peaceful. And it has the landscape and natural features to make it an adventure hotspot.’
There was something else I’d picked up in the demeanour of all the people
I’d met along the way. They were open, even-tempered and calm, as if the sublime mountains had a soothing effect on their psyches.
‘Today, we won’t need to paddle much since the river will take us,’ said Gustav as we pushed off from the riverbank. ‘It’s the rapids that are the real concern.’ Red bishops watched us from bobbing reeds as we passed, hardly needing to lift an oar. At the first rapids, we pulled off to the side and bundu-bashed for a better view of the torrent. We brushed past wild aloes and, on a rise, were greeted with a view of the frothing river.
After a stunned silence, Gustav said, ‘Man, these are serious rapids.’ Godfrey chortled. We retraced our steps in nervous silence and jumped back into the raft, paddling hard into the maw and whooping like barbarians as the Tugela threw us around. The river churned on, continuing its journey to the sea nearly 500 kilometres away, leaving us and South Africa’s greatest mountain range behind.