There is very little of interest between Johannesburg and Waterval Boven in the middle of winter. Aside from the change in landscape at the N1/N4 interchange after Pretoria, the dry brown scrubby highveld is broken only by the smoking towers of power stations and the angular electricity pylons marching away importantly to the cities west of them.
We took the N14 past Pretoria to the N4, where signs pointing to eMalahleni temporarily confused us. Unfortunately Witbank’s more exotic modern name has done nothing to improve this hard little coal-mining town where we were confronted by large signs on the outskirts warning us not to stop. Hi-jack hotspot! High crime area! Complete with a 10-foot wall down the center of the highway (apparently an attempt to stop pedestians crossing and lower the fatal accident rate).
But at Waterval-Boven the road drops into the lowveld and the air is warmer. The trees are taller, flat-topped acacias and lime-green fever trees start to appear. Further east, past the flamboyants and bright purple bouganvillas of Nelspruit (where we stopped to buy groceries and had very good sushi in a local Super Spar) the inselbergs I associate more with Zimbabwe than South Africa dot the landscape. It is only the lack of baobabs that reminds me I am south of the Tropic of Capricorn.
Inselberg ahead.
Throughout southern Africa these are referred to as koppies. The best examples I’ve seen are in Zimbabwe, with Matopos, outside Bulawayo, providing us with hours of fun as children, where we ran shrieking from the blue-headed agamas (or blouskops as we called them) sunning themselves on the rocks.
