Exploring South Africa's Scenic & Beautiful Backroads

by Mary Ann Anderson

Early on a drizzly Sunday morning, in the shadows of a lushly green and thick grove of banana trees, a group of khaki-clad men were dancing and clapping rhythmically in a circle, while a group of women in dresses stood nearby, moving to their own spiritual beat.

“They’re having church,” explained out van driver. “Most church services around here are held outdoors.”

At the sound of the passing van, the parishioners, although in the midst of an uplifting African hymn, offered generous waves and broad smiles. The air was cool that morning in the dizzying heights of South Africa’s Drakensburg Mountains, and a damp breeze promised that rain would come soon and interrupt the church service. Within moments, the light mist turned into a roaring downpour and the rain began shaking the countryside with fury.

And then something magical happened. At just the same time, across the valley from the “church,” the sun split the sky with a silvery palette of light, carving a rainbow through the clouds and painting the heavens as if they had been touched by an artist’s brush. Sweet, raw scents percolated from these verdant peaks and valleys strewn with plantations of sugarcane and pineapple, groves of oranges and mangoes, and orchards of macadamias and cashews, promising the rain would soon end.

There is such simplicity here, but that sort of minimalism is an integral ingredient of South Africa’s soul. This is an uncomplicated land whose back roads are so subtly bountiful with color and light that it sometimes startles the imagination.

And this primitive beauty of the Drakensburg Mountains is but a small sliver of all that South Africa has to offer. South Africa, framed by Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique, is not only abundant with natural beauty, but also a diverse history, as well as culture and people.

The ancestors of the black majority, called the Bantu, have been here for thousands of years. The whites came from European ancestry, mainly the Dutch Boers, or farmers, who settled here in the 1600’s. Over time, the descendants of the Boers became the Afrikaners, and their lyrical language, influenced by a fusion of Dutch and African, became Afrikaans. And from these earliest beginnings sprang forth eleven languages, including English ad Afrikaans, and well as the spicier Zulu, Tswana, Xhosa, Sotho, Venda, Tsonga, Pedi, Shanagaan, and Ndebele.

Now South Africa, tamed since the gripping years of Apartheid is experiencing a renaissance of sorts. But even with its forward thinking notions and recent, dramatic transformations, many of the old ways still haven’t completely vanished; and, at times anyway, the country seems to be in direct contradiction with itself. While Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town are lively centers of urban life, just an hour or two away, the remainder of South Africa is still wild and undeveloped.

So absolutely know this before you go: the sobering reality is that South Africa definitely isn’t for sissies.

You’ll understand this the first time you take a bush drive and see the pale yellow, almost soulless eyes of “ngala” – the Shanagaan word for “lion” – intently staring at you from a scant few feet away. Considering you merely as another beast, his golden eyes seem as if he is burning himself deep into your soul and contemplating whether or not to make you his evening meal.

With feline grace, the lion then coughs and yawns, baring his powerful teeth that, with bone-chilling certainty, you know are as sharp as a thousand file knives. For a moment, you hold your breath in anticipation of his ensuing move, but in the next second, he turns his back toward you and then flicks his tail as he disappears – almost ghostlike – into the dense bush. Only then does your adrenaline ebb and you sigh in relief, knowing how close you were to such magnificence in nature.

Later on in the evening, you remember your encounter with ngala as you watch the rest of the African bush come alive. The sounds of the bush, marked by the staccato-like lullaby of a hornbill, the intimidating low growl of and elephant, and the crackling of the dry, high elevation air, set the stage for a remarkable sunset. As the sun begins its final descent over the Kalari Plains, a veritable circus of wildlife gathers around a watering hole during their version of happy hour, hoping for a last drink before nightfall. Watching the menagerie at the watering hole takes much patience, both you and the animal, as here time is measured not by the hand of a clock, but by the feeding patterns of wildlife.

Against the background music of chattering baboons and verdant monkeys, first come the Cape buffalo, grunting and snorting like a herd of cattle. After they have slurped their fill of the cool water, they move away deeper into the woodlands.

Next are the elephants – their prehistoric beauty no less than stunning – that have been standing patiently underneath a stand of acacias waiting their turn to drink. When they’re done, a leopardess and her cubs silently sneak to the water’s edge, watching the dense growth carefully for hyenas, one of their few natural enemies. As they lap up the water, in glide a couple of Marabou stork, their shadows almost pterodactyl-like, for they too are thirsty.

The game is but a singular reason for traveling to South Africa, and you can see the wildlife from one of the country’s private game reserves. The 37,000-acre Thornybush is a good choice, but South Africa is also home to the 5 million-acre enclave of Kruger National Park. “With a private game reserve, you can get closer to the animals,” expresses a Thornybush guide named Clinton. “There are less people, so you get much more attention. The only drawback is that there are fewer animals than in a place like Kruger.”

Most visitors opt for game drive, where you can get almost nerve-shatteringly close to the animals, but for the more adventurous at heart, you might want to try a bush walk, which clears the mind and the senses; and elephant back safari, which is slow-paced yet holds a certain air or mysticism; or even a hot air balloon ride, which makes for an unforgettable experience.

As the balloon ascends above hippo-filled streams, you might glimpse a heard of giraffe or zebra racing along underneath you, their spots and stripes perfectly blending in with the cinnabar-hued earth. As the balloon drifts quietly and gently with the wind over this incredible landscape spackled with hills, valleys, and extinct volcanoes, you are struck by just how vast South Africa is, and by the realization that life just doesn’t get much better than this.

There’s more to South Africa’s back roads than mountains and bush, certainly, but this is the very core of the African experience. Because of the conservation efforts of those who had clear vision of preserving the elements of this wonderful country’s wildlife and heritage for future generations, South Africa’s inspiration is that it creates its own beauty with a million stories to tell. But the best part is that there are a million stories yet to come.