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Is this Africa's
cheapest bush experience?
- James Clarke
The South African side of the Limpopo Valley is
very, very different from any other part of the Lowveld.
Scenically, it is much more wild and exciting. And winter
is the time to enjoy what is probably the cheapest bush
experience - in comfort - you are ever likely to have.
Because the stream of tourists who used to go north
into Zimbabwe has dried up, people are no longer staying
over in the Limpopo valley and many game lodges have
had to clos
A few centuries ago the Limpopo River was mightier
than the Zambezi, for into it flowed the Okavango, southern
Africa's second largest river. An earthquake cut off
the Okavango in the middle of the Kalahari desert, causing
it to form the world's largest inland delta - the Okavango
Swamps. This left the Limpopo flowing thinly down a
broad sandy valley enabling giant riverine trees to
grow closer and closer into the channel. It's an exciting
piece of Africa and I have walked across the river on
foot only weeks after seeing a herd of elephant cautiously
crossing at the same place in water so deep they had
to use their trunks as snorkels.
Many of the lodges on both sides of the Limpopo have
either closed or resorted to taking in foreign hunters
to make ends meet. But, on the South African side, there
is a large section where hunting is not allowed - and
this happens to be the most interesting section of all.
It has but one "lodge", the Kaoxa Bush Camp.
Kaoxa is a little east of Pont Drift and a five-hour
drive (tar all the way) from Johannesburg.
As a result of people neglecting the Limpopo Province
tourists can now get bargain basement tariffs at Koaxa
- R1500 a night for the entire 12-bed camp. It does
not cater for individuals or couples, only for the full
camp. Even so, if you fill it with friends, it works
our cheaper than the Kruger Park. It is now self-catering
and it is best to buy ones food on the way up in Pietersburg
because many shops in Musina (Messina), the border town,
have closed.
Kaoxa is set among strange sandstone rookeries overlooking
the shining junction of the Limpopo and Shashi rivers,
4km to the north. The soil is the bright red of the
Kalahari, for Kaoxa marks the eastern extremity of this
so-called desert - botanically the richest on earth.
Because of the Kalahari habitat, gemsbok thrive and,
in the evening, under the needle-sharp stars, one hears
barking geckos that one would normally associate with
Namibia.
Kaoxa Bush Camp provides a great sense of place: it
is as far north as one can get in South Africa and one
can walk to where the Limpopo and Shashi join. We had
a hedonistic brunch at this confluence and could have
waded across to Zimbabwe or Botswana, except for the
crocodiles and hippo. The bird life is brilliant.
The camp is on a rise and from its veranda (and in
fact from one's personal veranda) one sees an immense
expanse of Africa deep into Botswana. The landscape,
redolent of John Buchan's Prester John, is studded with
massive baobabs and along the dark line of riverine
forest herds of elephant move silently among ancient
jackalbessies and mashatu trees. There's also klipspringer,
impala, eland, zebra... the occasional lion and, at
night, I have heard the quavering hoop of a hyena.
Kaoxa is the San name for the Lord of the Animals -
the ultimate power - and although the Kaoxa can take
whatever animal form it wishes it is depicted on a nearby
wall as a locust. Two beautifully defined locusts are
painted on a 2000 year-old frieze near the lodge - the
only insect, other than termites, known to have been
painted by the mysterious San artists.
There is a frieze near the lodge that rates as one
of Africa's greatest masterpieces. Archaeologists have
spent years studying its riot of figures including 16
species of animals. There are many exquisitely painted
giraffe because, just as the eland was the bushman totem
in the Drakensberg, the giraffe was the symbol of these
extinct naked hunters along the Limpopo.
Three major rock painting sites have so far been discovered
in the reserve. People less civilised than the San and
the local Tswana, have fired bullets into kudu rock
paintings and the late Professor Walter Battis chopped
out a panel from the big frieze itself for Pretoria
University.
The university deserves to be remembered for something
more positive - its work at nearby Mapungubwe. Just
as the San wall painting is one of the great gems of
rock art, Mapungubwe (the Place of the Jackal) is one
of Africa's archaeological crown jewels. Duncan MacWhirter,
owner of Kaoxa - now working as a vet in London because
of the lack of tourists - drove me there. We walked
the last kilometre or so and for part of the way we
followed a natural rock pavement with a distinct elephant
trail worn into the granite over the millennia.
Here I spent a delightful afternoon - oblivious of
the 37 degrees temperature. Mapungubwe is a natural
citadel with only one way up - a narrow cleft. One has
to use a climbing rope to scale it. The same enigmatic
people who built the Great Zimbabwe lived here for four
centuries before abandoning it around 1250, probably
because of drought. The remains of the settlement on
top of the sheer-sided hill were discovered only in
1932 when the farm owner found a wondrous accumulation
of copper and gold ornaments - the earliest wrought
gold in South Africa. He handed over the relics and
the site to Pretoria University.
One sunset we drank sparkling wine under a massive
baobab which the Zimbabwe ancients at Mapungubwe must
have known well, for it was at least 1400 years old
when THEY were around. MacWhirter told us that every
metre in a baobab's girth indicates roughly 1000 years
of growth - so this monster sprouted before Julius Caesar.
Another evening we toasted the sunset beneath a towering
cliff and watched a black eagle settle on its eyrie
just above us.
Duncan, for many years a well-loved vet in Johannesburg's
northern suburbs, and his wife Hazel, bought 1 000 ha
of the valley 10 years ago. It has traversing rights
across several more thousand hectares. They completed
the camp in 2000 and it now accommodates 12 people in
three thatched cottages and three luxury tents.
Inquiries: Hazel
MacWhirter, Box 1100 Messina 0900. Tel/fax: 015 575
1338.
E-mail: info@kaoxacamp.com
website: www.kaoxa.com
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