Johannesburg, South Africa
After we finished our last show in Cape Town, we had a few extra days before we were scheduled to fly to Nairobi. The plan was for everyone to hang out in Cape Town and enjoy the city. I could have easily done that. We spent more time in Cape Town than anywhere else in all of Africa. I could have spent a few extra weeks or months in Cape Town. But an opportunity came up that I knew I had to take.
Four of us flew back to Johannesburg. Not because we liked Johannesburg more than Cape Town. Far from it. Cape Town is an objectively better city. We flew to Johannesburg because we wanted to go to Kruger National Park. There are closer airports to Kruger, and even one in the park itself, but we decided that something larger, like Johannesburg's Lanseria International Airport, would probably have safer planes. More importantly, I heard good things about the drive to Kruger and I wanted to take it.
We rented a car at Lanseria, which was just as easy as renting a car anywhere else in South Africa. The only thing they cared about was making extra drivers pay an extra fee. Once again, the car we rented had a manual transmission and I was the only one who could drive it. Even if it had been an automatic, I doubt anyone else would have wanted to drive.
We rented a light gray 2018 Mercedes-Benz W463 5 speed. Though older than most rental cars, this one was in excellent shape and had surprisingly few miles. At least before I got my hands on it. People in my country think of Mercedes as a luxury car. South Africans have a more European view. This was a utility truck that was not designed to turn heads. It looked like a big jeep. We chose a truck over a sedan because we figured we might need something that could go off-road at Kruger. We also knew the drive through the Drakensberg Escarpment would be rugged, though any car could have made it. Most of the roads were every bit as paved as any major highway in Western Europe. A few were even brand new.
From Lanseria Airport, we drove half an hour up into Pretoria where we took a sharp east turn onto highway N4. After about two hours, we turned north onto R36 and drove for an hour to Lydenburg, which was a good place for a pit stop. Lydenburg is to the Drakensberg Escarpment as Merced is to Yosemite. A small town with little to offer, it had enough fuel for the car and our bodies.
From Lydenburg, we took R37 east to Sabie. This was where the drive got interesting. Lydenburg is more or less flat. R37 gradually goes uphill for 13km, at which point it becomes a standard mountain drive of endless ups and downs. R37 is nothing but nature until about 18km from Lydenburg. Right off the road is an entrance to a farm. There is no way to tell how large the farm is, but you see nothing from the road besides the entrance gate and miles and miles of grazing cows. Five or six kilometers from the farm gate is Long Tom Pass, the beginning of the Panorama Route, so called because the scenery immediately gets more impressive than farms and fields. It is like Chapman's Peak Drive, only with valleys and mountains instead of city and ocean. Long Tom Pass is the first point where you can really see how high up in the mountains you are.
Deep into Long Tom Pass is Long Tom, a large canon that was used against the English during the Second Boer War. It could not be more out of place, sitting on a hill and facing an endless natural view of mountains and the valleys below.
Photograph by Mariaan Buys
Sabie is home to more than a few waterfalls. The Sabie River covers some rugged terrain. Sometimes that river has no choice but to plummet down a gorge or into a valley. The closest waterfall from the city of Sabie is, appropriately, Sabie Falls. It is easy to get to and not all that impressive. My last real boyfriend was from Cape Town. One of the reasons I wanted to take this drive was to see all the things he talked about, and promised to show me, when we took the someday trip to Kruger National Park that never happened. He talked about a few waterfalls. Sabie Falls was not one of them.
From Sabie Falls, we drove five or six kilometers west to Bridal Veil Falls, an exceptionally thin waterfall that drops about 70 meters. The area is surrounded by hiking trails and is probably an excellent place to walk around all day. We had less time.
Lone Creek Falls is less than three kilometers from Bridal Veil Falls, but the drive is three times farther. Lone Creek Falls is another thin waterfall, about the same height as Bridal Veil Falls. Where Bridal Veil Falls drips into a tiny puddle, Lone Creek Falls fills a pool.
It took pretty much the same amount of time to get From Lone Creek Falls to Horseshoe Falls as it took to get from Bridal Veil Falls to Lone Creek Falls. They are conveniently spaced out evenly from north to south, with Sabie Falls a more or less equal distance from Bridal Veil Falls to the east. Horseshoe Falls are either three separate waterfalls right next to each other or one waterfall divided by plants and birds and rocks and things. Though short as waterfalls go, the area is completely natural. There are no wooden walkways or guide rails. Without the hiking trails, it would be impossible to find.
A little more than ten kilometers north on R532 from Sabie is Mac Mac Falls, another tall, thin waterfall. The big difference with Mac Mac Falls is that your vantage point is a higher elevation. Instead of looking up at the water crashing down in front of you, you look down at the water plummeting deep into a gorge that can only be reached with climbing equipment. Another difference is that Mac Mac Falls is incredibly close to the main road. The others require a quick hike through the wilderness. Mac Mac Falls is a short path away.
Photograph by Freya Muller
There was far more to see on the Panorama Route and beyond, but everything was getting harder to see as the sun began to go down. Ideally, we would have started our drive early in the morning, but we left from Cape Town, not Johannesburg. Everything else would have to wait until the drive back to the airport.
Our hotel for the next few nights was in Hazyview, a small town next to the Phabeni Gate at the southwest end of Kruger National Park. Hazyview was 60km from Mac Mac Falls. In the time it took to get there, we could have seen some amazing sights on the Panorama Route, but we wanted to get to our hotel before the people who ran the place were asleep.
In broad daylight, the hotel was pretty easy to find. From R536, turn left on Tarentaal Lane and follow it as it curves around, turn right on Eagle Street and follow its curve, make a sharp left on Blue Jay Crescent and keep driving almost until the end of the road. Turn left into a driveway and there you are. Easy as punch.
After the sun goes down, it gets a little trickier. There are no street lights beyond downtown Hazyview. Worse, street signs are few and far between. Those that exist are small with black lettering and unlit. You have to know which streets you want to turn on. We had GPS and the internet, neither of which were reliable in the rural suburbs of Mpumalanga. R536 is a main street. Tarentaal Lane is a tiny road in between trees and a small fruit stall. As it goes uphill, it borders a wall and more trees. Even in daylight, it was like driving with blinders on. Eagle Street is an equally tiny road in between trees and more trees. At least it has a few houses here and there. Blue Jay Crescent is the most difficult turn. There is a sign that is barely visible at high noon. At night, you would never guess that is the correct street. Rather than a paved road, it is dried mud. We passed it several times thinking it could not possibly be the street we wanted. Not only is the road not really a road, it looks like it goes deep into the woods. From Eagle Street, all you can see are trees converging. We called the hotel owners a time or two to confirm that we were in the right place. They seemed to think it would be a good idea if a group of women who had never set foot in the area and barely spoke the language should drive an unfamiliar car down the pitch black, empty road to nowhere in the middle of the night. So we did. The farther we drove, the more convinced I was that we were going the wrong way. Eventually, we saw a gate and a small sign that told us we were at the right place. Deep into the night, the gate was closed, but the owners were wide awake and expecting us. Not surprisingly, foreigners get lost on the way to their hotel all the time.
When you drive up to Blue Jay Lodge, day or night, it looks like you are driving up to someone's house. All you can see from the street are trees and a gate. Inside the gate, it looks like a small resort or wilderness lodge with a lot of trees all over the place. We stayed in a rondavel, a round South African style house with a high, conical roof. The roof is probably a great relief in the summer, trapping heat several feet above the rest of the room. The temperature never got above the mid-20s while we were there, so the high roof never mattered to us. Each two story rondavel was divided in two. With four people in two rooms, we took up an entire floor. Each room had a kitchen, which was kind of a waste since we only used one and only rarely. We ate most of our meals inside Kruger National Park. The lodge provided an enormous breakfast spread every morning. Since we always left for the park before sunrise, we only had their breakfast when we checked out.
All of our accommodation before this point was at houses where we were on our own and hotels that had standard hotel food. This was our first bed and breakfast situation. In addition to our made to order breakfast, there was a variety of exotic cheeses, breads, and the freshest fruit I have seen in years. None of it was exotic to South Africans, but Taiwan is not a cheese or bread culture, so pretty much anything beyond cheddar, mozzarella, and white toast is a treat. Fresh fruit is rare too, for some reason. Plenty of tropical fruits grow on the island, but no one seems to sell them until a few days after they have been picked. The Blue Jay Lodge had some fruits commonly found in Taiwan, like kiwi, pineapple, and strawberries, but everything looked like it was brought in from the farm that morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment
No hate, please. There's enough of that in the world already.