A few lovely dogs I met on my travels

What’s for breakfast? We’re just sitting down to a long, lazy beach side breakfast, when this curly tailed guy comes trotting along to see what’s on today’s menu. We’re at Villa n Banga, a laid back rustic spot tucked into jungle greenery right on the beach at the far end of Nyabanga village, about 20km from Bilene in southern Mozambique. I’m pretty sure he went for the peixe grelhada and frangos. Villa n Banga has spacious tents, a fabulous outdoor bar and restaurant with first class island-style kitsch. www.villanbanga.co.za

Miro from Pleasure Bay Miro the archetypal insatiable Duracell Jack Russell joins us on a sunrise walk along the beach at Pleasure Bay, near Paindane in southern Mozambique. He chases the waves, he swims, he frolics, he body surfs, he digs the sand, he chases seagulls, he pees on flotsam and jetsam, he greets the fishermen – and that’s just in the first five seconds. As we return, exhausted, hours later, Mira dashes excitedly off with the next lot of beach goers. Pleasure Bay has lovely self-catering chalets and if you really want to escape Miro go diving and check out the famous Manta Reef and Lighthouse Reef sites. www.pleasurebay.net

Say cheese, actually don't worry, just lie there Pedro lies in a sunbeam in a near comatose state of bliss at the lovely Klein Rivier Cheese place in Stanford, near Hermanus in the Western Cape. He and his brother Pancho just love their life on this beautiful farm. Almost as much as they love the cheese here which is made using age-old artisanal methods. Locally sourced, pasture fed cows, no hormones or antibiotics. Mmmm. I spend a very happy day here drinking wine, nibbling on delicious cheeses and admiring Pedro and Pancho's attitude. www.kleinrivercheese.co.za

Chocolate box cuties Both rescue dogs, Missy and Django, now live it up in total paradise on a glorious organic farm on the outskirts of Haenertsburg village in Limpopo province. Their mother is the lovely Marloe Scott-Wilson who rescues everything. Missy and Django share their paradise with other dogs, cats and two horses. Sometimes there's even room for Marloe's husband! The village of Hanertsburg and the surrounding Magoebaskloof has many dog friendly spots. www.mountaingetaways.co.za

Jock of the Bushveld Every time I visit Barberton in Mpumalanga, I go and say howzit to Jock of the Bushveld, one of the Lowveld's most famous four footers. His story is told in the classic Jock of the Bushveld by James Percy Fitzpatrick. It's the true story of his bush adventures with his Staffie, Jock, during the 1880s, when Fitzpatrick worked as a storeman, prospector's assistant, journalist and ox-wagon transport rider. It's a violent book. Jock does a lot of fighting and killing. It's also sad 'cos he gets run over in the end. But hey, Barberton is a cool place and there's loads of bars. www.barberton.co.za

Do they know it’s Krismas? I just love Krismas, this complete gentleman of a hound who looks after my lovely cousin Vanessa. They live in Port Alfred in the Eastern Cape. Vanessa is famous for her daily sunrise shots on East Beach and so we get up at dawn and walk with Krismas. It’s winter and fah-reezing. But Krismas is happy. We jump and get our paws wet. Port Alfred is the friendly heart of the Sunshine Coast, famed for its wide, clean beaches and warm Indian Ocean waters. There are gorgeous self-catering beach cottages up and down this coast. www.sunshinecoasttourism.co.za

Finally I meet the famous white wire fox terrier Snowy, Tintin's faithful hound - and would you believe, it's in the middle of Khao Sok National Park, deep in the jungles of Thailand? Khao Sok is like the Amazon of Thailand. Think dense virgin jungle and surreal limestone formations, a deep lake and exotic flowers. But Tintin won't let Snowy come walking with me. www.khaosok.com

The Rockster This is Rocky. He is in his favourite place - on the lap of his mother Nina van Heerden, the creative brains behind the amazingly beautiful Sequoia Garden Retreat in Magoebaskloof. Go now for their spring spectacle as the azaleas and cherry trees burst in blossom. www.sequoiastay.com

The beast from the east Two Pack lives in Cradock in the Eastern Cape but we meet briefly this time in Port Alfred. He’s a travelling hound on the road with his owners Chris and Julie Marais. They are storytellers extraordinaire, bringing us tales of the Karoo in their books and wonderful website. I walk one wintry morning in Cradock with Two Pack and then he comes and watches me bath. www.karoospace.co.za  

Loving the licks If I remember correctly, this delightful hound gatecrashed our beach party at Praia de Peixe, a fabulous getaway in Macaneta, a short hop from Maputo. With the Indian Ocean on one side and the Incomati River on the other, the Macaneta peninsula is the charmer of Mozambique’s Maputo province. Think white sands, blue waters, friendly people and a laidback island vibe. And friendly dogs. www.praiadepeixe.com

Sex, spring, mountain gardens

Hopeful shoot, bursting bud. Wicked, wicked anthurium (yes that’s the rude pink one in the photo). It’s impossible to ignore the arousal of spring out here in the mountains of the Magoebaskloof, Limpopo. Everywhere I look there’s a flirtatious azalea, a blossoming cherry, the sweet smelling jasmine. I cannot stay at my desk, I have to get out and explore.

Marloe’s Garden I head for the jardim of the fabulous Marloe Scott Wilson. Soft view, tall trees, horses, dogs, cats, delight. We sit on the porch and drink wine and talk gardens and life. Marloe got into urban gardening in London in the 70s and is passionate about edible gardens, companion planting, making compost, planting at the new moon, talking to your seedlings and using available resources. All the things that make me go zing. I leave with bunches of greens and packets of heirloom seeds.

Oh me oh my, the clivias I go completely weak kneed at the sight of a flowering clivia which is making morning walks a wobbly affair. Every shady garden pocket in Haenertsburg village is lit with the clivias flowering in peach, apricot, orange, yellow-orange, vermillion, tangerine. I grow them from seed for pleasure, and think of my mother and the fabulous Lisa Atherstone who has a clivia nursery in the dreaming heights of George’s Valley near here. www.wholsesale-nursery.co.za

Hello Cheerio We walk gently as friends in the afternoon under the pin oaks and crab apples; gaze greedily at the outrageous spectacle of azaleas, cherry blossoms and water. Cheerio Gardens are the mountain’s most famous English exotic gardens and were started by the pioneering Box Thompson after the First World War.  

www.cheeriogardens.co.za

Sequoia Another treasure of Magoebaskloof is the gentle, gracious Sequoia Gardens, lovingly tended over the years by the delightful Jack Holloway. I do slow pans across calming dam views, close ups into the erotic blue iris. I may never be the same again. See Jack’s blog on https://sequoiagardens.wordpress.com

Albie’s Orchid I drink a whisky with Albie Leiding, pharmacist, philosopher, gardener and gentleman. He lives in Agatha in Tzaneen and the orchids in his house and on his veranda delight us every spring and summer. He tends them carefully. He knows their Latin names, their daily mood swings, their favourite songs. Pure plant porn.

My grandmother’s tibouchinas Like ballerinas in pink tutus these trees prance across the garden stage, frilly and delightful. They were my grandmother Elsie Tooley’s favourite trees and they’re flowering early this year. Wander with a G&T www.kingswalden.co.za

Horse shit I head for the fabulous Denise Tooley at Minas and load up 100kg of compost and horse and sheep manure. The horses, Tigger, Amber and Naledi are very beautiful, especially when sun kissed, but they can be unruly if not downright anarchic. Denise shouts at them when they get into the veggie garden but we are still grateful for their help in enriching the Minas gardens and my very own. www.minas.co.za

Ten reasons to visit Magoebaskloof now

The spring show is about to begin “In the spring time, the only pretty ring time, when the birds do sing, hey-ding-a-ding ding, cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, ta-witta-woo!”  Come and see the astonishing spring spectacle on our mountain here in Limpopo province as the azaleas and cherry blossoms do their wild pink, purple, peach thang and everything is reflected in silver dams. It’s completely outrageous. OMG, sweetmotherofmary, hawu, yona yo, faints with delight. The annual Spring Fair is on from the 24^th of September to the 2^nd of October.  www.mountaingetaways.co.za

There’s fabulous soul food Mina’s Neighbourhood Food Market is happening on the 4^th of September and it’s the best food jol on the mountain featuring gourmet burgers, trout platters, sushi, curry, bliss bowls and more. All in a glorious farm setting with cool people and hot music. www.minas.co.za

The cemetery has views to die for Set amongst old gardens and ancient trees at the top of the hill with far reaching views, Haenertsburg has a fabulous cemetery and everyone visits it all the time: happy hikers, sentimental relatives, cooing lovers, groping teenagers, day trippers, weekenders, the whole lot. Pack a picnic or sundowners and head up the hill www.magoebasklooftourism.co.za

The beer is flowing There’s a new brew rising here on the mountain. Zwakala Brewery, Limpopo’s first organic craft brewery has opened its doors and its taps. The name Zwakala means ‘come closer’ and people from all over the world are pulling in, including a couple in a small car who drove all the way from Germany. Seriously. www.zwakalabrewery.co.za

There’s a brilliant bookshop Go for a long slow book browse followed by breakfast and a moerkoffie or a lazy lunch at the Pennefather bookshop in the main road. They’ve got a great selection of second hand books, Africana and collectibles. www.pennefather.co.za

The cheese is organic Blessed are the cheesemakers as Monty Python said. Wegraakbosch Farm produces a delicious range of totally, like totally, organic cheeses. And milk and veggies and chourico sausages. Take a tour of the farm and cheese factory and end it all with a lunch platter overlooking the blue mountains. wegraakbosch.wixsite.com/wegraakbosch/organic-dairy

The people are crazy Nice crazy. Friendly and eccentric and upbeat now that the spring is springing. Take a stroll down the main street – yes there’s only one – and meet assorted locals who are more than happy to ply you with food, hooch, craft, trinkets, plants and good conversation. And you can put unruly children in the village stocks! www.magoebasklooftourism.co.za

The scenery is incredible The Magoebaskloof area is Scenery Central. I’m talking wild mountains, thick indigenous forests, rolling endemic grasslands, happy waterfalls, chortling rivers, silver dams…

There are amazing places to stay Take your pick from farm cottages, village B&Bs, mountain hideaways and country hotels. www.limpopobookings.co.za

The pub is feckin fabulous Named after the highest peak in the area, the local pub the Iron Crown is the place for good food and cheer - try their delicious Haenertsburger. If you ring the bell inside you have to buy the whole pub a round – you have been warned!

My beautiful crazy cage

In some Freudian, Pink Floyd-ian way, I guess I did exchange a walk on part in a war for a lead role in a cage. Last year I fell in love, took eighteen aeroplanes, travelled nearly 80 000km, went to New York, Hawaii, Malawi, Ilha de Mocambique, Thailand, Maputo twice and Jozi about ten times. I moved house, packed up the family home, wrote another book (watch this space September!), suffered heartbreak and ego’s sorry defeat, moved house again and now here I am, completely exhausted and living in this beautiful crazy cage.

A sun flooded porch enclosed by metal and roses. Burglar bar baroque, art in the face of adversity. It’s at the front of my house on village edge, Haenertsburg heart of the Magoebaskloof in Limpopo, and it overlooks distant mountains and soft green hills and a little school with a very loud bell. I don’t have a fence just a tumble of lawn and shrubbery, nor do I have an actual house number so I am considering making a sign outside: 69 Mandela Corner. 

Being South Africa, fucked-up-cowboy- country, even in this mountain paradise we must live in cages these days, not realising the worst are in our minds, but at least my cage is pretty. My ex-neighbour doesn’t like it. He’s more of a Trellidor kinda guy, and he also has a home security system. At least he doesn’t have a white picket fence.

“These things are bloody horrible”, he said furling his lip at the metal roses. But I think they’re fabulous. Okay they do tend to snag tights, tear jeans and shred shins if you approach the cage too fast under the influence of tequila but hey, at least I’m allowed out. 
And there is astonishing eccentricity beyond my cage. 

I’m new to village life. In between gallivanting, I’ve been based on a remote farm for the past decade or so. Now I can walk to the bookshop and coffee shop, chat to the locals, pop in at the watering holes, you know, generally, stroll around the grounds like Mrs Robinson until I feel at home. 

Love this bookshop

Me being a thrower of pots and this being a village, everyone knew of my sorry heartbreak within about five seconds of it happening and since I moved to the crazy cage I have been showered with typical village loving. You look so sad, said a man in the trading store the other day, let me give you a big hug. You look cold said my new neighbour, here’s a hot water bottle. You look like you need a tequila said a new best friend, here’s a tequila. I may have overplayed the pity card a bit, but this little village has given me so many kind things, from hangovers and takeaways to heaters, hot gossip and colourful tales of their own lives. I am deeply grateful. 

Tired Rasta mop

And since I’m still so tired and yet starting to have fun again, I'm in no real rush to, you know, actually sort out my cage. It's currently a nest of blankets, unpacked boxes and badly stacked books. Only today did I stop using my ice bucket as a fridge and borrowed a real one. I’m not particularly known to be a domestic goddess – I only have one very tired mop that looks like an emaciated Rasta – but I don't care. It's my cage.  

A tragic comedy

Perhaps it is as Charlie Chaplin said that life is a tragedy in close up, but a comedy in long shot. Here I lie weeping because a man I truly loved has lied, betrayed and left me. I run out of toilet paper. I get an electricity  bill from the Greater Tzaneen Municipality for R 1 546 426.80.  Then there is a power failure. 

Edison, Edison give me the medicine.

I head for the local bottle store. It’s the fulcrum of the village in which I live, it's a daily news source, informal bush telegraph and modern confessional booth all rolled into one. Obviously very little is secret. Not for us hushed voices and delicate sips of communion wine, this is Jagermeister bomb country, plus brandy and coke; tequila, shooters if you must.  

The bottle store can tell by the nature of my purchases not only that I am having one moerse pity party but which friends I am rallying to my side. She likes a Springfield, she only drinks a Cab Sauv; he prefers that brand of Scotch. Don’t even think about dooswyn for that one! 

In exchange for baring my soul-pain and vulnerability, I get to hear all the local news and cross paths with couleur locale. On Monday, I heard about a young man who died after being beaten up at our local pub a few weeks ago. By cage fighters from Polokwane whose fathers are apparently lawyers and make dockets and hospital files disappear. On Tuesday I chatted to a local Alzheimer’s resident about her former love of breeding Beagles. On Wednesday I heard that a rich old man who was recently robbed and beaten by a gang, is recovering well. Yesterday I heard that the local schizophrenic, a beautiful woman of 47, blew her brains out with a gun. Today I got the number for a guy who delivers firewood at good prices.

You can read two things into this. Either I am visiting the bottle store too much as I dance on the hell-coals of heartbreak. Or that the country is caught in a bad magic and we are all going crazy from apartheid’s sequelae - the aftereffect of the disease, or we're going crazy at the sheer disbelief that things have gotten so Zumalarly fucked up. Or maybe it's just cold and wintry and as the country loadsheds and dims its lights, we all stare down our own darkness. Perhaps it is as Robert Ardrey said: It is not in our powers but in our paradox that we should search for the essence of man. 

The Pothole That Got Filled

The little pothole that could 

It’s good news in Limpopo when a pothole gets filled. Not only does it helps avoid accidents, it makes us feel like someone cares and our tax money is being spent wisely. 
I am happy to report that I witnessed an actual pothole filling in our hood the other day.

I was sitting working on the porch, ducking the swooping swallows which nest in the eaves, when outside on the road up pulled a white bakkie from one direction and a yellow municipal maintenance truck from the other. I couldn’t see much from behind the May bush and the azaleas on my porch, but I heard a lot of talking and discussion, some laughter. Tea break and a bit of quiet, then some general commotion for about two hours, then quiet.

I went outside to see what happened, and there it was. The pothole that got filled. The little pothole that could. It may be the smallest pothole in Limpopo – I hadn’t actually noticed its previous existence – but it got filled. Er-mazing. Right here in our street, in our little village, Haenertsburg, where there are only 200 odd houses and our neighbour is a pig. I don’t mean Linda or Louis, I mean an actual pig.  

Our neighbour Mathilde is a pig  

Sailing the Straits of Salamander

Smooching girl sailors                                        

It’s not often one gets invited aboard a yacht called Salamander by a lesbian sailor with a bottle of whisky. “She’s an ace skipper”, said her girlfriend, a journalist, so I armed myself with a stiff Hankey Bannister and climbed on.

We started our adventure with a hearty breakfast at the Yacht Club at the Ebenezer Dam which is near Haenertsburg village in Limpopo. Not many people have heard of Haenertsburg, never mind the Ebenezer Dam, which is one of the area’s most beautiful and underrated water holes. Deep, clean, crowd free and encircled by moody mountains.  

“But the Yacht Club is for members only”, I began my witty repartee with the lesbians…  Yes indeed someone has to be a member haha, and so it turned out that Ace Skipper was, and had borrowed the yacht from a friend. Full of of faded photographs, not-so-shiny trophies and the odd needlepoint painting, the clubhouse has been around forever and is an old and somewhat shabby Deco style building overlooking the dam. But with a fringe of creeper and the right light on the distant bobbing yachts it feels vaguely European, possibly even Eastern European. 

Gracious views from the yacht club terrace

It took quite a long time for us women to get on to Salamander who is a rather small girl herself. But we did eventually set sail, with assorted cooler boxes, cameras, cell phones, ipods, speakers, sarongs, hats, sunblock and nary a man in sight. Sadly I am from that rather old-fashioned school that thinks sailing is something men do for you while you worry about your hair and your wineglass. This time however, my skills were going to be required and Ace Skipper was very patient and explained carefully what a cleat was and also why we all needed to sit at the back of the yacht on take-off.

A good breeze, a sunny day, we headed out towards the waterfall which is at the western end of the dam. We chugged past the old community hall, various holiday homes and newer developments on the shore. I have to say there’s not a lot of taste going down here, and there are a bit too many clubs for my liking - the boat club, the yacht club, the trout club, the angling club and so on. I am a bit Groucho Marx about clubs (won’t belong to one that will have me as a member) so I settled into the Monaco Position (lying on top of the yacht with a drink) and just chilled out.

Reflections on a sailing salamander                                            

What a glorious day. It scored very well on my Whisky Index - proper short glasses, endless ice, soda water – which is always a good thing. We loved the mountain view, swam to the waterfall, endured a brief cloudburst, shared a lot of stories about boats, yachts, sailing. My sailing skills are abysmal but my story was impressive thank goodness– I had recently sailed the bay of Waikiki in Hawaii which is part of some wanky Conde Naste magazine bucket list, so we drank a bit more and decided I should do a story on Yacht Clubs in Africa, starting with the Ebenezer Yacht Club. 

I have already done the Maputo Yacht Club, as it were, which is jaunty and retro-nautical and has a steel band in floral shirts that plays Afro-Mediterranean beat as the waiters prance around dispensing plates of prawns and cold beers . So that's two. And Ace Skipper’s lovely friend’s husband has a yacht in Lagos apparently, so it looks like I may be onto something ... 

Wild times at the Ebenezer Yacht Club in Limpopo