What a strange day. Sometimes days just don’t work out and sometimes they really do.
The previous night we had arranged a meeting for that morning with Prince Mbonisi Zulu. As a mark of thanks and respect, Jan wanted to present King Goodwill Zwelithini Zulu with a cow for the King’s breeding programme (this wasn’t a braai-food offering, don’t worry), and with the King busy, the Prince had agreed to accept the gift on his brother’s behalf.
By 8am we were parked in an official complex of some sort, perched on a low brick wall in the early morning sunlight, unsure whether this was really happening and wondering what to do with ourselves in the mean time. We didn’t have long to wait. After only a few minutes, a truck pulled in and there was our cow – and a fine specimen she looked too, if I’m any judge of cows. We stood around for a bit longer, collectively admiring the beast and trying not to look too much like the city-boy ignoramuses that we are.
The Prince was gracious and well spoken, and Jan his usual charming self. The cameras rolled and the hand over went off without a hitch. Only two takes. Nice one guys.
By 9am we were good to go and, as the blue sky rapidly faded to ominous grey overhead, we hit the road towards St. Lucia.
It began to rain as we crossed the bridge into town, hungry and looking for something to eat. Red meat is really not doing it for any of us at this stage (except perhaps for Jan, but he’s odd that way), and having returned to the coast at last we were unanimous in our desperation to get some fresh fish back on the menu.
I had the dorado, which was new to me and absolutely delicious. The other guys got platters and when it was slipped to the waiter that it was Craig’s birthday, his came out with a full staff birthday-choir in tow. Very amusing after a couple of pints I can assure you.
Thoroughly stuffed, well oiled, and feeling pretty good about life, we turned our attention to strategising the afternoon.
The original braai plan was, unfortunately, no longer an option. We had booked to have our day’s braai on the deck of an estuary boat that afternoon – something like our braai in Upington earlier in the tour, but with more hippos and fewer jetskiis. With the rain and wind, the boat braai was no longer an option and we now had the afternoon pretty much to ourselves. Time to find the guesthouse, pick up some more drinks and sort out a good spot and have a nice, relaxed braai. Most certainly involving more fish.
It was about that time that my phone rang.
Number withheld.
I thought about ignoring it, but only for a moment, and when I answered I found myself speaking to Lindy Duffield, marketing manager for iSimangaliso Wetlands Park – the very park that we were in St. Lucia to see.
One of the missions of the Braai4Heritage tour is to braai at all eight of South Africa’s official World Heritage Sites and really it’s the Wetlands Park area that has World Heritage status (in fact it was SA’s first declared World Heritage Site back in 1999). With our boat trip postponed to the morning, possibly cancelled if the weather remained bad, we had been left with the problem of finding a way to get into the park to have ourselves that all important box-ticking braai. There are designated braai spots inside the park – one at Mission Rocks and another at Cape Vidal – but these things are always easier with some inside help – and nicer with an inside track on the special places to go.
The negotiations that followed were rapid and occasionally very confusing, but, in the end, worked out perfectly. After four or five calls, a few text messages, some bewildering shouted conversation through the open bakkie windows (this with the CEO of the park who passed us out of the blue on the street), we eventually found our way to Lindy who was waiting for us at the park gates. By this stage we had also managed to pass by the guesthouse, drop of camera gear to recharge, set up and sort out freshly charged equipment to take with, pick up a braai, pick up our host Zooq and his four year old son, drive back into town to order prawns, then pick up this other cool guy we met at the fish restaurant earlier in the day, then back to actually collect the prawns, grab a cooler-box, buy beers, ice, etc, have that bewildering conversation with the CEO in the middle of the main street, and finally to the gates about 45 minutes later to meet Lindy.
Relaxing afternoon braai it was not, but without doubt thoroughly worth the minor extra effort. Lindy was a fantastic host, arranging tickets and late passes and sorting us out with a great spot to braai, all within those same 45 minutes while we were rushing around town. Catalina Bay was picked as the best braai location given our time constraints, and we drove through the late afternoon as the sun, which seemed to have won out against the rain for the moment, sank rapidly over the western shores.
iSimangaliso Wetlands Park is currently working hard to improve the public’s experience of the reserve, installing new signage, opening new roads, building new lookout decks and generally sprucing up the area. Within the year (so by April 2012) the park will be opening up the western shores of the wetlands, currently off-limits to visitors, with new roads, viewing decks, bird hides and a tree-canopy walk all currently under construction. With the drought in the area (hard to imagine with all the rain that fell on us) the estuary water level has fallen sharply in recent years and the estuary mouth has remained closed to the sea since September 2007. With the water level so low, many of the larger animals have moved from the eastern to western shores and when the western shores do open to visitors, they’ll not only be able to experience new areas of the park long closed to the public, but will also find themselves in the midst of the largest concentration of game in the entire wetlands area.
Unfortunately our sunny afternoon hiatus was not to last. We’d just managed to get the fire going and the first round of prawns were sizzling in Zooq’s nifty little “˜holey’ pan, when the heavens opened. Lindy had had some warning from town that a massive storm was on its way so we already had things more or less in hand before the full force of the rain hit, but even so it was a pretty wet drive out the park and back to our guesthouse to continue festivities.
And continue they did. More prawns, some delicious freshly speared fish, and possibly a few more drinks though it’s hard now to be sure exactly how many. We eventually crawled into bed around midnight and at 7:00am the next morning (yes it did hurt) we were down at the boat jetty ready to set sail on our postponed morning cruise.
