Hoedspruit and Home

Position: 24°20’42.8″S 30°57’56.8″E

Hoedspruit is not pronounced “hoed’ sprout” as you might imagine. Rather it is “who’d’ sprit”. Such are the variances between modern Dutch and Afrikaans (broadly based on 400-year-old Dutch). Twenty years ago, Indians in India were still speaking a form of Victorian English that had departed the UK in the 1960s. The quaint riches of the older dialect had given way to modern expediency in its native land. India’s towering bureaucracy had preserved Queen Victoria’s imperial tongue as a matter of social standing. I haven’t visited India recently. I’m sure the younger generation speaks some version of international English corrupted by too much YouTube.

African Flair Lodge

Carol wanted some pampering. It was, after all, her birthday. An administratively important one at that (no more questions! – ed.). With a bit of digging, she found the African Flair Lodge located inside the Hoedspruit Wildlife Estate, a private, gated community with a bit of wildlife roaming around. The African Flair is a boutique hotel, which, for the price of an average room in New York, bought us the run of the place. Opened a couple of years ago, it is already winning accolades. Consider this review another one (accolade).

The hotel consists of two buildings. A main entrance with sofas, original artworks, a breakfast room, and wine racks filling the remaining space. Heading out the large swing door towards the courtyard, loungers and chairs surround the pool area. The path leads you back towards the master bedroom in its own building. Inside the king-sized bed is piled high with pillows. The walls are adorned with huge paintings and artefacts fill every available flat surface.

The bathroom is en-suite – or rather, in-suite. Two showers, one inside and one outside and a bathtub means no waiting for your ablutions. Like the reception hall, the bedroom’s high roof is thatched and therefore well insulated. Temperatures are controlled by ceiling fans and a split unit air conditioner. A consistent ivory, fawn, brown and black theme ran throughout the décor. It was all pretty damn comfortable.

The Crux of the Matter

After a delicious dinner by the pool catered by The Hat & Creek restaurant, we retired to our suite and gazed at the stars from the comfort of a rooftop bed. The stars are different down south. Polaris is replaced by Crux, the Southern Cross. Its two pointer stars, Hader and Alpha Centauri, are two of the brightest stars in the sky. Breakfast the following morning was amazing, with eggs cooked to order and the most elegant presentation of pancakes we’ve ever seen. It was as well Carol only booked two nights. Otherwise, we might have stayed until our social security checks ran out.

A week later we returned to the estate and stayed at the almost as nice Safari Moon Luxury Bush Lodge, for the price of an average room in Topeka. In need of exercise, we decided to take a walk along the estate’s rough dirt roads. The concierge informed us that the game reserve has two predators. An elusive leopard that keeps to itself and a pack of highly unpredictable hyenas. We heard the hyenas circling the hotel at night. Their yips and snarls sound a bit like a coyote’s, only with a maniacal edge. It was mid-afternoon on a clear day.

Hyenas

Confusing a striped hyena and an aardwolf is understandable. It might also be fatal. Both animals are members of the hyena family. The former is a rapacious carnivore and the latter an insectivore. Their jaws are evolutionarily appropriate to their diets. An aardwolf will lick the ants off your ankles. A striped hyena will tear your leg off at the hip, eat it, and poop out the ants later.

Kicking up the dust along the road, it seemed like each corner had a place to feed the local herbivores. Warthogs, impalas, and kudus gathered around rubber tires filled with hay. A nearby watering hole kept them hydrated. The kudus eyed us skittishly, but the warthogs merely grunted dismissively.

Yips! Yikes!

After a couple of miles, we turned around and started heading back to our hotel. A few broken clouds passed in front of the sun, and sunset was only 90 minutes away. Behind us, off in the distance we heard the yips of a hyena. Then another. And another. Instinctively, we picked up our pace. I had just learned that hyenas are nocturnal. That their eyesight is tuned for hunting and scavenging in darkness and they are functionally blind in daylight. At least that’s what the internet told me. Striped hyenas are about the size of a large Labrador, only more muscular, more nimble, and much, much uglier.

The volume and quantity of yips increased. They were hunting something and like coyotes they get excited and call to each other. They sounded a little nearer. Looking around I picked up a four-foot-long pointed stick. Hefting it, I liked its weight and balance. It was dry enough that it would probably break in half as soon as I poked anything, but not without having done a little damage first. Perhaps, I reasoned, crippling one hyena would be enough for the others to cannibalise it and spare us. Or, like the hikers running away from the bear, we wouldn’t have to outrun the hyenas, only each other. In that scenario I was as good as done for. The yips and calls got louder and more frenetic. They’d cornered their prey and were closing in for the kill. Up ahead we saw tarmac and our route back. The yips faded a little.

Sanctuary

On our way out for our walk a family of four giraffes stood nibbling leaves on both sides of the road. Shy and nervous, they moved off as we approached, ducking behind the trees and all but disappearing. Humans are afraid of tiny creatures like mice and snakes and spiders, so I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that something 18 feet tall would be afraid of a human-sized animal. By the time we returned to where we first saw the giraffes, they were nowhere to be seen. The few dogs we heard barking for all they were worth sounded like they were safely indoors.

Back at the hotel the barman told us the local hyenas like to chase prey up to the reserve’s boundary fence and corner it. That was probably what we heard. Nonetheless, I had dropped my pointed stick near the hotel’s entrance in case we went for a walk the following morning. In the event we hired mountain bikes and my lance proved unnecessary.

Cheetahs Sometimes Win

Earlier in the week we photographed three cheetahs lounging around by the side of the road. Seeing them in the wild gave us an appreciation for the work undertaken by the Hoedspruit Endangered Species Centre. This centre focusses on rescuing cheetahs and rhinos and throws in the occasional wild dog for good measure. Cheetahs are truly beautiful animals, as any PETA member worth their paint will tell you. Lithe, nonchalant, and very, very fast, it’s not so surprising that a certain breed of human wants to wear their skins. Perhaps one of the benefits of global warming is to render such toxic whims undesirable.

The highlight of our short tour of the centre was watching staff members herd the rhinos from one pen to another. Like cattle on market day, the rhinos walked calmly in a neat line and did as they were asked. On the other hand, the vulture feeding pit resembled an open abattoir and smelled just like you’d expect a hundred rotting, dismembered antelopes to smell. Which of course reminded me of the old joke about the vulture boarding an airplane with a dead rabbit under each wing. The flight attendant apologises and says, “Sorry, sir. Only one carrion per passenger.”

Flight Risks

Our last few hours in Hoedspruit combined gift shopping and eating in almost equal measures. Having cleaned out the shops at the Kamogelo tourist mall, we moved across the street and revisited the Hat & Creek restaurant. If you’re a red meat eater, this restaurant has excellent beef filet for the price of hamburger. If you’re not, the fish is also outstanding. Dry and dusty as it is, it is easy to forget Hoedspruit is only 150 miles from the sea.

After breakfast the following morning it was time to leave. A four-hour drive to Johannesburg, an 18-hour flight to Amsterdam, and another 12 hours to Houston and on to Albuquerque. South Africa isn’t an easy place to get to. But that makes it even more special when you get there.

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