Backpacker’s Lodges
Backpackers lodges are by now a fairly common phenomenon worldwide, but in Africa they have long been the backbone of the independent traveller movement. Most started out as rough converted suburban houses on the outskirts of African cities where the first trans-Africa overland trucks could shed their pax for a few days and restock and recharge. Sometimes there was a pool, but if not there was always a bar, plenty of booze and good music. Typically they were run by ex-overland drivers or couriers, and what might have been lacking in facilities was always more than made up for in atmosphere. As the overland truck travel industry boomed and diversified through the 80s, so did the numbers and styles of these ad hoc lodges and truck stops. In due course they developed a variety of groovy angles, often of the didgeridoo and djembe variety, and moved out of the cities and into the tourist areas where they evolved themselves into what we now take for granted as the backpackers lodge.
Continent Wide
These days the network is spread deep and wide across the subcontinent. While overland trucks still make up the bread and butter of a lot of lodges, from Nairobi to the Cape, from Windhoek to Maputo, there is a huge choice for the independent traveller, covering just about anywhere that it is reasonably possible to access. With South Africa’s re-entry into the world community in 1994 the movement took instant root and exploded. South African capital and the South African capital mindset quickly grew the concept from a simple cottage crash-pad in a picturesque location into a multi purpose entrepot for travel venture, information, fellowship and exchange. Despite this the concept is still wrapped up in many shades of cool, and the basic services are still cheap, safe and clean accommodation, with internet access, valuables deposit, local information, approved tours and excursions, plenty of alcohol, and usually an angle or two on how to score some pot.
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Giant’s Castle Game Reserve
Continuing on with the theme of gracious accommodation and civilized pursuits, I am returning to the Drakensberg, and this time to Giants Castle Game Reserve. As with the Royal Natal National Park, and Cathedral Peak, the dominant themes here are walking, climbing and horse riding, with the usual emphasis on bird-watching and gorgeous seasonal floral displays. Also, of course, there is the celebrated vista, which differs within the Giant’s Castle Game Reserve only inasmuch as it is characterised this time by a grassy plateau among deep river valleys pressed up against the sheer cliffs of the escarpment.
Again the walking trails allow for the participation of just about anyone from the very occasional stroller to the maniac death marcher. For the sake of the latter there is a magnificent contoured trail that runs from south to north, pressed tight up against the escarpment, and continuing up almost the entire length of the reserve. On a clear day, and sometimes even on a cloudy day, this trail offers sweeping views of the diminishing perspective of foothills that run, it seems at times, into the deepest blue infinity.
For the rest of us there are about 285kms of varied footpaths that traverse the reserve with the two main focus’ tending to be in the south and the north. Scattered around the reserve there are four mountain huts as well as a handful of caves that are suitable for overnight camping. The huts are equipped with bunks, a gas stove, cooking oddments and a flush toilet. Reservations for both caves and huts should be made with the Officer-in-Charge of the reserve.
How To Get There
There are two main routes into the reserve, north and south, the first being to the Injisuthi Camp to the north via the 331 from Loskop (a dorp with the lovely name, translating from the Afrikaans as Loose Head, or Space Cadet in contemporary parlance) which is reached via either Winterton or Ennersdale, both off the N3 near Estcourt. The second route in is through the Witteberg Gate via the 391 from Mooiriver/Nottingham Road, also off the N3. Here you will find the main KNZ Wildlife Office, and the Giant’s Castle Main Camp.
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Ecotourism
The concept of ecotourism in Africa has many facets and interpretations, but at its most fundamental it is an effort to ensure the long-term viability of vulnerable and threatened ecosystems through the medium of the tourist dollar. The term applied is high yield, low impact tourism, which is obviously bad news for the low yielders amongst us, however in recent years potent lessons have been learned in this regard throughout Africa. In particular this is true in east Africa where budget tours sold on the street corners of Nairobi have tended to fill the key wild life preserves with hordes of mini buses, often obliterating any authenticity in the experience of wildlife Africa.
A secondary factor that has often preceded irredeemable environmental destruction is the fact the local communities living on the fringes of established national parks and wildlife areas are isolated from the ebb and flow of tourism, and rarely see any material benefits. Competition for grazing and hunting rights also tend to negate any goodwill towards the conservation movement, which is in many ways a battle lost for the hearts and minds of the common people.
Community Involvement
A combination, therefore, of selective, high return land use with a discernible return to local communities is a no-brainer if poverty is to be defeated and the environment preserved. It is an idea that has gained much currency over the last 20 years or so, with a variety of project types such as the Zimbabwean CAMPFIRE (Communal Areas Management Program for Indigenous Resources) movement. At its core this includes local communities in projects related to commercial hunting or ecotourisim in their areas, but tends on the whole to be donor supported, which is an inherent defeat of the concept of sustainability.
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As with the Royal Natal National Park, the area of Cathedral Peak is dominated by the Drakensberg escarpment, and similarly offers the two distinct walking zones of hill country above, and ridges and gullies below. Cathedral Peak is also the first realistic point of descent from the escarpment after Mont aux Sources, for although there are some 6 or 7 passes that leak off the face in between, none will deposit you anywhere near a hotel or KNZ Wildlife facility. Thanks also to the fact that the Cathedral Peak Reserve and its surrounds are well serviced by accommodation options and other general facilities it is one of the most popular hiking destinations in the Berg. However, although there are a variety of easy and pleasant trail options available to service the regular flow of day trippers, there are also some very cheeky and little used byways that might take you by surprise, and will severely challenge your leg muscles while leading you into some of the most majestic and beautiful scenery in the entire range.
Trail Options
The area of Cathedral Peak (32 000 hectares) is essentially three separate conservation areas: Mlambonja Wilderness Area to the north, Mdedelelo Wilderness Area to the south, and Cathedral Peak State Forest in between. Notable here is the potential for those without the physical means or inclination to walk, to gain close vehicular access to the escarpment. Some 10,5 km long, and climbing some 500m in altitude, Mike’s Pass was named after Mike de Villiers, forestry research officer circa 1949, who is credited with the establishment of the local Cathedral Peak Research Station, and the eventual construction of this road. The road itself begins at the main KNZ wildlife office, and at its conclusion is found the trail head for a series of peaks known as the Organ Pipes, and to the escarpment itself. Also accessible from this point is the renowned Didima Gorge with its extraordinary proliferation of some 3900 individual examples of San rock and cave art.
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A trip to South Africa can be the trip of a lifetime, but there’s no reason you have to spend a life’s savings on it. Staying in hostels in South Africa is a great way to stretch your travel budget, and you’ll also stand a better chance of meeting up with locals and other travelers and making unique travel memories, too. When you’re trying to book your hostels, however, it can feel a bit overwhelming. All those hostel booking sites look alike and offer the same property listings, right?
Well, yes and no. Many …
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We are proud to announce a greatly improved hotel search function on this site, which we think you will like because it adds a modern feature that you won’t find elsewhere. Finding a hotel in South Africa should be much easier now because you can get search results from multiple travel-booking sites all at once.
Once you see the new page you can select the city for your hotel, and after you click on that name you’ll see a complete list of hotels that are listed in that area. But better …
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The Global Crisis
When I was a child, picking up a National Geographic magazine at the school library was a journey into a larger than life, multi-chromatic kaleidoscope of mankind and nature. It was a glimpse into the future of what an inquisitive mind could expect from a limitless world. These days, no less splendid in its presentation, when that signature yellow banded periodical drops into my mailbox I feel the sort of reluctance to break the seal as I might if I was looking at an angry red final demand for an overdue car payment.
Currently the feature stories tend to dwell almost exclusively on the global environmental crisis, with florid warnings of catastrophe in picture and print, be it a matter of diminishing ice masses, the waterless southwest of the USA, the slaughter of Congolese mountain gorillas, bush-meat, bushfires, e-waste, imploding biodiversity, diminishing rainforests, poisoned rivers etc, etc, etc.
As the great eco terrorist himself, Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil, once wrote in a stark and despairing lyric: The river runs red, black rain falls, dust in my hand…..! In this age the entire global environmental issue is indeed such a multi-faceted tragedy that it prompted one similarly Malthusian commentator to remark that the only may to mentally survive our common and downward trajectory is to strangle the last giant panda with guts of the last blue whale. If it is all inevitably doomed, then why not just let it all crumble, and afterwards work to rebuild with what is left.
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A signature feature of African travel is the concept of luxury wilderness and game lodges. This approach to touching the wild in Africa is usually not for the faint of pocket, but in exchange for this a high degree of exclusivity can be expected, coupled with the work of celebrated interior designers, and the attentions of accomplished hospitality professionals against a backdrop of one extensive private wildlife reserve or another. There are certain destinations that are better at this than others, but arguably the crème de la crème of luxury wilderness hospitality establishments anywhere on the continent are currently to be found along the Botswana/South Africa/Mozambique axis.
Touch the Wild in Style
In the area of the Kruger National Park, for example, there are some two dozen high profile game lodges clustered on the fringes of the main reserve. The usual fare of game walks, bird watching, relaxation and Haute Cuisine can be selectively combined with spa facilities, aroma therapy, health & wellness, and a variety of sporting options, all within, against or upon the raw bushveld that defines the region; and all feeding easily into the vast facility of Kruger National Park itself. In KwaZulu/Natal, associated with the St. Lucia (iSimangaliso) Wetland Park and the Hluhluwe National Park is the themed Hluhluwe River Lodge, and further north the superb Pinda Lodge situated on a 22 000 acre private conservation area in the Maputaland region, and also associated with the greater St Lucia Wetlands reserve.
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The Drakensberg Mountains, or uKhahlamba (Barrier or Spears) in Zulu, is a place of profound practical and symbolic importance to South Africa. It is the central watershed that gives rise to the three iconic rivers of the Vaal, the Tugela and the Orange; it is the physical landmark that split the Bantu Migration into the Nguni and Basuto subgroups; and it was the parameter of settlement between Briton an Boer during the tense years leading up to the great Anglo/Boer War. Besides that it was the last fortress of the San, or Bushman people in the central region, who were ultimately pushed to the fringes of viable existence both by white and black expansion, and who left in their wake a sweeping legacy of cave art, not just in the Drakensberg, but throughout the region. Currently the highlands make up most of the independent state of Lesotho, with just the leading approaches of the escarpment falling into the territory of the South African provinces of Mpumalanga and Kwazulu/Natal.
From a travelers point of view the Drakensberg provide something of a break from the routine of lowland game parks and wildlife preserves that tend to define and make up so much of an average southern African journey. Those parts of the escarpment that permit public access are defined largely by the escarpment, and are subdivided into a series of national parks and areas of forestry or state land. Above the escarpment lies the high and open hill country of Lesotho that is public land only inasmuch as it is communal to the pastoralists and herdsmen who husband their animals there. Technically, broaching the escarpment and walking in this area represents and illegal boundary crossing, and although the national parks personnel will let this fact be known, the provision is rarely enforced, and free movement within a reasonable distance from the escarpment is permitted.
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This new release and first book by South African author Sihle Khumalo, details his travels from Cape to Cairo by public transport.
‘I had always wanted to write a book but I had never known what type of a book I would write. As my 30th birthday was getting closer I thought, why don’t I do the Cape to Cairo – which I had always wanted to do - and then after the trip attempt to write a book based on my travels and thus kill two birds with one stone. As they say, the rest is history.’
Read Pete “the meat” ’s review below:
From Cape to Cairo - that’s the intention, and that’s the span of the book. Shades of Kingsley Holgate and extended family, with Land Rover engines rumbling and belching, and loads of red rum around camp-fires at night! Maybe a lion roaring, or some hyenas yelping in the distance!
Well - not so, when Sihle Khumalo describes his real-life encounters. Same route, by and large, that many have traversed over the “dark continent”, but somewhat unusual, and a great deal more stamina required by the writer! Because, when the perspectives are flowing from an obviously suave, worldly-wise African graduate of Uni and sometimes life, choosing to get down and dirty on the roads and buses that span this large and complex continent we call home, this make for excellent reading, as well as some good laughs
So, sit back and travel tightly with our friend Sihle, as he buses through most of southern and eastern Africa’s states, backpacks through some very odd places, joins queues for hours at border crossings, gets mildly irritated at fruit and food vendors, becomes furious when he isn’t offered a lift in an air-conditioned 4×4 (with a license plate not far from where he started, two months prior!)………..and you find that he has crept right under your skin, whether it’s superficially black or white! Recall as you read, the personal resolutions he vows to keep, on his return to normality in SA (be worth finding out how our friend is doing on those, I suspect!). Chuckle at the ladies he tries half-heartedly to hook up with, en route, more out of curiosity, it seems, than serious intent
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