Marloth Park and the journey home

It is always such a pleasure going to Marloth Park; almost like escaping to a private, tranquil world of our own. Despite the drought we still enjoyed just being there. Listening to the bird song which starts at about 4 am makes for a gradual and peaceful awakening and sets the mood for the day. Sitting around the fire at night, listening to the sounds of lions roaring causes one to forget about the drought and everything else of concern; just for the moment…

The first thing we do when we get there is to fill the bird bath. Besides bringing welcome relief to the birds it also provides us with hours of pleasure just watching the birds come to drink and bath.

One of the activities we perform without fail every time we are at Marloth Park is to do a ‘clean-up walk’ around our property as well as the adjacent ones. There is always rubbish lying around, thrown out of car windows or blown in by the wind; sometimes even dropped by baboons after raiding rubbish bins. At the same time we remove any Prickly Pear plants we spot and everything goes onto the fire after our evening braai. It is amazing how easy it is to control invasive plants when one is consistent. Years ago we would end up with piles of plants. It gets less and less as time goes by and this time we found only 5 small plants.

During our walk we were suddenly rewarded with an amazing sight: in the midst of the dry surrounds a cluster of bright red flowers! That certainly lifted the mood…

But then there was an unpleasant surprise after the walk: a multitude of pinhead-sized ticks (not pepper ticks) all over our clothing and especially mine. One had already latched onto the skin of my torso. We spent the next hour washing our clothes and picking ticks off it! I suppose they were just too happy to find a host, much to our dismay!

Despite the heat Ufudu’s solar panel and batteries were working well again so no problem there. As you may, or may not know we have no electric power at our place; gas stove and geyser and 12V lighting system, run off the car battery, so it would have been a problem if we needed to boost Ufudu’s charge.

On the second day we decided to go for a swim in the municipal pool before popping in to Don and Trish for a sundowner.

That night we slept in the open area of our house where we hoped to have a slight breeze to cool things down a bit. It did not help much; sleep does not come easily when it is so hot…

All too soon it was time to pack up and start the journey home with a planned stop-over at Kaapsche Hoop. Kaapsche Hoop has intrigued us since our ANT year when we bought the book ‘Geological Journeys’ and we became aware of it being just off the N4 between Pretoria and Nelspruit.

About 15 km after the Nkomazi toll gate we suddenly came to a complete stop at the tail end of a backup on the N4.

A phone call to the TRAC help line informed us that there was strike action and the road is closed! So we decided to turn around and take an alternate route via Barberton. That turned out to be very scenic and most enjoyable.

Due to the electrical storm we were not able to do the walk to the edge of the escarpment, but we will be back; it is such a quaint little village set in the most beautiful surrounds! There was no camping facility so we continued along the N4 and decided to stop over at Elangeni Resort on the banks of the Elands River, near Waterval Onder. We were pleasantly surprised by the good birding, which kept us occupied until dusk.

It was a short drive to Rosebank the next day. After a brunch stop at Alzu we arrived home in the early afternoon after another enjoyable trip in Ufudu. Until next time…