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Adventures with Kingsley Holgate - Afrika Outside Edge 22

Adventures with Kingsley Holgate - Afrika Outside Edge 22

Author: Kingsley Holgate
Date: 2017-09-14

Mashozi is playing her scratched ‘Take me home, country roads’ CD again as we cross the Southern Mozambican border at Farazala into KwaZulu Place of Heaven, it’s a wonderful feeling as down comes the final outside edge border stamp. We go down on our knees and kiss the tar. Somehow we’ve made it home. Chief Tembe and his tribal indunas have come to welcome us.

A Zulu choir sings a welcome song below a sign that reads Kosi Bay Border, above which flutters a South African flag. But our outside edge challenge is far from over. With only 28 days to go to meet the deadline of emptying the calabash back into the cold South Atlantic on Madiba’s birthday. It’s a race against time. The joy of being back in South Africa is unbelievable.

It’s good to hear Zulu being spoken again and oh my goodness, the beauty of our own coast, so clean and pristine, especially compared to some parts of

Africa’s overpopulated coastlines where the sea is used as a toilet and a dump for stinking litter. By boat we explore the beautiful Kosi Bay lake system where the Thonga have developed an ingenious method of harvesting the fish by way of communal traps intricately woven from indigenous plants and creepers. These are set up in the shallow, sandy channels, which wind through the main entrance to the Indian Ocean through which the fish must pass. We tie the boat to a fish kraal.

Kraals such as these have been in existence for over 700 years, handed down from father to son. Nowadays, it’s a wonderful example of community working hand in hand with nature conservation. The lakes are beautiful. Crocodiles, fish eagles, Egyptian vultures, hippo and raffia palms, the frond stems of which are used to make small rafts allowing the AmaThonga to cross the reed fringed channels.

Down on the beach close to the mouth a World Heritage Site, a breeding ground of the leatherback and also for smaller loggerhead turtles – another piece of outside edge paradise. Back in the Landies we head south along some of the highest forested sand dunes in the world, beautiful places with names like Bhanganeg, Rocktale Bay, Island Rock, Lake Sibaya, Sodwana Bay, Lakes St Lucia and Bhangazi, Cape Vidal and Mission Rocks. All part of the Isimangaliso Wetland Park, rich in bird and wildlife and some of the most spectacular coral diversity in the world.