Whalesharks on Saturday, Elephants on Sunday.

I was supposed to work this week-end but the rota was amended to my advantage and we found ourselves wandering what to do. Friday night got gobbled up pretty quickly with an excellent session at the Sodwana Lodge with a crowd from the hospital. We braai’d in true Safrican style with buckets of steak and cases of beer and ranted at Bafana-Bafana in their opening World Cup game. Reluctant to risk the roads and wandering cattle we booked in at the Lodge and enjoyed a bit of comfort and a real bath, which doesn’t exist in our Park-home. The morning was bright and clear so we negotiated child care and rushed off down to the beach to join one of the local dive operators. They were off to 7-mile reef, touted as one of the top ten dive sites in the world. The dive was good. The usual array of impossibly bright, coloured fluorescent fish, exquisite nudibranchs, honeycomb speckled morays with gaping mouths and a green turtle gliding by, calm and serene. Busy clown fish defend their anemones and slide between succulent tentacles and a massive, curious Potato bass, drifts up to us to see what we’re up to. We get back in the boat, raving, but the fun has only just started. A pod of dolphins beckons us into the water and we swim with them briefly only to be distracted by a massive submarine-like shape beneath us. A huge whale-shark glides gracefully along the sandy bottom, her massive mouth gaping and pilot fish fussing about her. We swim along above her, mesmerized and humbled by this spectacular site, literally at our fingertips. She rises up briefly towards us as if to say farewell and then plunges away into the blue depths leaving us numb and ecstatic.

After a delicious pancake brunch in Sodwana we drive west to the Ubombo Mountains. A dusty, rutted road takes us to the spectacular Jozini dam and from there we climb along the spine of the range with spectacular views down over Swaziland. We pass the grave of Dingaan, the great Zulu king, and continue to the high hamlet of Ingwavuma. Here we are hosted by Afrikaans locals who have lived here for more than 20 years, he running the local hospital and she starting, firstly a school, and then a world-renowned tapestry business to provide work and income for destitute women, victims in this Aids ravaged area. We continue onto the next range and there camp next to Border cave and enjoy crystal clear night sky and shimmering bright stars. The next morning we find a guide at the local store and for a mere R20 are guided to the cave, tour the little museum and learn how this is the site of some of the oldest human remains in Africa. We enjoy breathtaking views over Swaziland again and revel in being up high again.

We start our trek home and our route takes us past our much-loved Tembe Elephant Park. It is late but we have about an hour to enjoy the nearest hide. We are lucky to see a massive bull enjoying a sand shower and then a number of antelope come down to the water for their evening refreshment. As night settles in we leave the park to make the short drive home, glowing in the memory of these beautiful creatures with whom we are privileged to share this amazing world.