Mpumalanga road trip: the drive to Sabie can be a great holiday in itself

It begins with a photograph. Two people - the boy in '80s-chic scants - holding hands and jumping forever into a mountain pool. The picture, which I took of two friends on the last day of a weekend spent hiking up the sun-blasted flanks of Mount Anderson, is a snapshot of freedom.

After seven years of having people tell me what to do, when to eat, when to shower, when to work, it was a moment on my first-ever road trip on which I drove the car.

True, it was my mother who, with a thirst for taking obscure turnoffs in the Karoo "just to see where we end up", sparked in me the love of hitting the open road. But that weekend was mine and the hike was only one part of it.

The other was the road trip, which began in Melville early on a Friday as we bunked lectures, piled into a Ford Escort and headed east to Lydenburg and over the Long Tom Pass over the Drakensberg to Sabie.

Of all the many road trips I have done - and in my 15 years of writing for this paper, there have been a few - the road to Sabie remains my favourite.

Thirty years later, the smell of Sabie - pine plantations and sawn wood - and the fiery glow of the sawdust burner at the mill as we rolled into town at dusk are still stamped on my heart.

A few weeks ago, I did it again. This time, though, the road trip was the journey.

So my girl and I added some refinements. One: there would be no rushing over the mountain in a fit of "get-there-itis", that urge to make the drive as short as possible. Instead, we would dawdle eastwards and stop to explore whatever roadside attractions took our fancy. It helped that this time we had sweet wheels - a test car in the form of a shiny Land Rover Discovery, which I was to put through its paces like a racehorse.

So it begins at 9am on a rainy Saturday morning. We amble through soaked suburbs and onto the airport highway. Traffic is sparse. I set the groovy speed control - a yellow indicator needle on the speedometer - to 120km/h and feel the Disco kick under my feet like a jet fighter. I like it.

The trick with this road is to eat the miles through Witbank. Maize. Power stations. Copses of stunted gum trees. There are odd glimpses of draglines hiding behind mountains of spoil. Witbank appears as a hazy smudge - and fades just as fast in the rearview mirror.

Now the road begins to undulate, rising up and over the hills. The mountains are coming. We stop at the Belfast Wimpy for breakfast and coffee. Then it's down the hill to Waterval Boven and its graceful arched railway bridge. We ponder stopping to see our friends who run a rock-climbing business in town but the rocks are slick with rain and we press on.

The road leaps into the tight and twisted embrace of the Eland's River valley, holding hands with the river almost all the way to Nelspruit.

A brief pause to drop our bags at the suitably road-trip-retro Fortis Hotel Malaga and then it's on to Kaapsehoop, a place of spooky rocks and wild horses.

THE END OF THE ROAD IS NEIGH

Kaapsehoop is an old forestry village, parked in time. Pine plantations press in on all sides, and it is often blanketed in mist, making ghosts of the people and horses.

The horses really are wild. The story is that they escaped from a travelling circus but the only thing we know for sure is that there are a lot of them living happily in small herds in the hills.

They come to graze on the sweet grass in the village, although some have also figured out that there's a guy in town who gives out horse treats over his garden fence at certain times of the day. The forest of rocks at the edge of town are the other attraction. Some say they have special powers. I'm not so sure. They are beautiful to be sure, but the horses are more fun to hang out with.

We have an excellent late lunch at Silver Mist - a proper lamb curry - before rolling down the hills and heading back up to the Malaga Hotel.

CAVES AND DINOSAURS

In the morning we go back up the toll road towards 'Boven to get onto the Schoemanskloof section of the N4. The road leads to a place called Bambi Country Lodge - which a long time ago, apparently, was part-owned by my girl's grandparents - and then to the Sudwala Caves and the dinosaur park.

Some people love the dark, clammy caves where Somquba, a Swazi royal, once hid with
his followers and hundreds of cattle while he battled his brother for the throne. I am amazed at the size of the underground chamber in which they hid, but I'm not big on caves (it's a thing I have about bats).

The Dinosaur Park, with its excellent, life-size concrete dinosaurs, should be much more famous than it is. Here, the animals graze - and occasionally bite each other - in a subtropical rainforest on the side of the mountain next to the caves.

The park is owned by Philip Owen, who inherited it from his father more than 20 years ago. Owen studied geology and geography and knows his dinosaurs, the gripping human history and the tangled, bursting plant life that covers the mountain. He is an engaging guide and alone is worth the price of admission. Soon, it's time to drive on, for the beautiful part is still to come.

LET THE LINE WIGGLE

Some road trippers get all teary eyed over the thought of Robert Pirsig's classic "travel" memoir Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance. While light on travel - or even bike repair- there is a paragraph in its opening pages that is my road-trip mantra.

"If the line wiggles, that's good. That means hills," Pirsig writes. "If it appears to be the best main route from a town to a city, that's bad. The best ones always connect nowhere with nowhere."

It's true that in SA sometimes the back roads are also the main roads, but the road to Sabie and the Great Escarpment is full of such swooping delight that you will forgive its occasional lack of rural character.

The Panorama Route is one of the world's most spectacular drives. Officially, it begins at the western side of Long Tom Pass, near Lydenburg, and rolls off the escarpment to Nelspruit. Unofficially, it starts anywhere you like between Long Tom, the Blyde River Canyon and the N4.

The road gives you all the best of this part of the province, from the canyon and Bourke's Luck potholes, to God's Window and the living relic of Pilgrim's Rest.

For me, though, the magic of the route is in the waterfalls - the beautiful, slender Lone Creek and Bridal Veil falls near Sabie, the beautiful Mac Mac falls nearby, and the splendid cataracts called the Berlin and Lisbon falls near Graskop.

My girl and I turn off at each and get as close as we can, until we can breathe the spray of those mountain streams. The cataracts thunder like that '80s Don Henley song, The Boys of Summer.

Ah, freedom, how I love you so.

 

LISTEN | Paul Ash chats to Dinosaur Park owner Philip Owen

WHERE TO STAY

FORTIS MALAGA, WATERVAL BOVEN

Spanish-style hacienda in beautiful gardens (read our hotel review). From R750 per room. Visit fortishotels.com

SABI RIVER SUN

Two hundred hectares of resort with a stunning golf course on the Sabie River (read our hotel review). Special "Sunbreaks" rate from June 15 to August 15 2019, with standard and family rooms from R2,600. Visit tsogosun.com