Letter from the editor: October 2016

Three adventures in this issue personify the treasures this continent offers us as travellers…

 
The first time I saw the Zambezi River, I was mesmerised. It was big and wide and slow and filled with the sound of wildlife: hippos, birds, monkeys and elephants, and the occasional splash of a crocodile or leguaan. I stayed close to Livingstone, Zambia, and every afternoon the clouds hung heavy over the river, the air thick and warm as a storm brewed. It was magnificent.

So we were interested when we heard about a plan to launch a couple of boats in Sioma and ride up the river during flood season when the river escapes its banks and becomes a rambling, grand lake with channels of floating reeds. This is an adventure that can take place only at a certain time of year and had never been attempted before. How would it turn out? It was unparalleled. It was hot and the motorboats hummed endlessly, and it put Gerrit Rautenbach into a delightful state of Zen, he told us when he came into our offices to describe the journey. I was enthralled: imagine doing something like that, with a group of adventurers, long days of warmth and water and camping wild – how many of us get that opportunity? Not very many. And yet, adventures like this are still possible, especially on our continent.

 
Closer to home, my brother and I recently went back to the place we grew up, in the Jozini area. On one of the days, we took a long and very bumpy drive up to the Hlatikulu Forest, past the tiny town of Jozini up in the Lebombo Mountains. On some of the roads we stopped to look down into valleys thick with indigenous forest. We crept into Hlatikulu itself. It was dark and thick with trees, some covered in moss and vines, and it felt like we were treading where no man had stepped before. But that wasn’t the case  because after a while we got the sense we were being followed – and we were, by a poacher with hunting dogs who ran when our guide confronted him.

An old way of life is also what Niq Mhlongo found when he went to Xolobeni, that section of Wild Coast land contested for its titanium stores. One of his interviewees said that although people are poor, they are happy with their traditional way of life. People’s relationship to the land goes so much deeper than the beauty we see as travellers, coming from the outside. But the beauty is uncontestable. It won over Niq in the end – and one look at our cover image, taken there, should convince any sceptic.

 
Read these stories: Riverwhacking the Zambezi (page 88), A Summer Night’s Dream (pg 68), and The Value of Sand (page 78), and enjoy these wild spaces through our eyes. We hope they inspire you, like they did us, to travel more.

This month’s contributors

Obie Oberholzer
SA’s legendary photographer needs no introduction. This month he shares his latest journey, to Armenia, on page 62. ‘Over my lifetime, I have photographed a great deal more than I have prayed, but somehow these early monasteries [in Armenia] have touched my spiritual pixels.

Gerrit Rautenbach
Gerrit has always been fascinated by adventure travel. Including river boating. He’s done some distance on Africa’s biggies,so when he was offered the opportunity to travel 1280 kilometres up the mighty Zambezi, he was ready to rock ’n roll. See page 88.

Caroline Webb
A new recruit to the Getaway gang, Caroline considers herself a ‘travel rookie’ who hasn’t seen enough of the planet, still can’t sleep the night before a trip, is often overwhelmed by the ‘big-ness’ of the world, and is always amazed that she finds her way home. For her first assignment, she did a road trip. See page 52.

This story originally appeared in the October 2016 issue of Getaway magazine.

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