GETAWAY MAGAZINE – June 2002 – page 106

Where the wild things are – Wild Coast Pondo Walk
Written by : David Rogers

In my student days I once lived in a car I called home on the top of a hill near Mbotyi. I walked down endless beaches, swam in the warm waters and explored deep into the forests. It was the start of an enduring love affair with the Wild Coast, particularly the remote areas of Pondoland to the north. So when an invitation came to sample a set of new day hikes from Mbotyi River Lodge, my boots and bags packed themselves.

It was a suitably sticky, subtropical afternoon when Jenni Saunders and I wound our way off the N2 through hut sprinkled hills and down the escarpment into the small coastal settlement. It seemed much the same, although the steep muddy section where we used to push our cars had been replaced with concrete slabs and on top of one of the small hills – with commanding views of the river and ocean – there was the lodge. It had been re-opened – the structure dates back to the early 1990’s – by two energetic property developers, Peter Gilliespie and Peter Christodoulou, and sported timber chalets, a pool, bar, restaurant and colour television.

It struck me as an excellent spot for families to spend a few weeks some what lazily, with fishing rods and buckets in hand. But we had more energetic things on our minds and prepared ourselves for four days hikes that would take us inland and up and down this idyllic coast.

On the first morning, and led by the liquid calls of black headed orioles, our expedition – myself, Jenni, William Ross of Wild Coast Holiday Reservations, our guide Lennox Philani Mkhanywa, and two young kwidinis – set off through the forest to the Ezinxenxesini Falls. We followed a narrow, muddy path inland over grassy knolls, past traditional settlements, and into the humid depths of a forest, which clung to the steep escarpment.

It was bewitchingly beautiful, with towering yellowwoods (Pdocarpus latifolius), stinkwoods (Celtis africana), Natal figs (Ficus Natalensis) and thick nests of hanging vines. Thoroughly wild, we had to pick our way carefully past delicate forest-floor flowers, cycads, ferns, lichens and fungi. I was saddened to learn that an illegal logger had recently “bought” a similar forest for R15000 from a local chief. By the time he was caught, the trees had been chopped into logs.

What makes these forests particularly interesting and worth preserving is that they mark a transition between the temperate Cape forests and the sub-tropical forests of KwaZulu Natal. Many species occur at the limits of their distribution and some are unique. Mammals include baboons, monkeys, small antelope and otters. There are hundreds of bird species including Nerina trogons, somber bulbuls, spotted forest thrushes (a big tick for twitches), red-billed wood hoopoes, trumpeter hornbills and Knysna louries as well as many butterflies and insects.

The waterfalls were equally extraordinary. Ezinxenxesini Falls, which was the dramatic climax to the first day hike, plunged over the sandstone escarpment in three giant leaps, each more than 50 metres high. Magwa Falls, which we explored on our second day via a sprawling tea plantation, was even taller, plummeting over the escarpment in one 400 metre drop.

The area around Magwa Falls, which is part of the Pondoland Endemic Centre, is a hotspot of botanical diversity, with at least 130 endemic plants. It was not far from the falls that Raspalia trigina was discovered after having been though extinct. The specimen was duly uprooted and taken to Kirstenbosch Botanic gardens in Cape Town where ten more plants were propagated. Since then two more “natural” specimens have been found along the nearby Umtamvuna and Mkweni rivers. This plant is a member of the Bruniaceae family which, with this exception and one other, is found only in the Cape Floral Kingdom.

Our explorations also took us southwards along the coast to Colliers or Litye Lentaka (which means bird rock) to see what we could find. Beaches, interrupted only by headlands and rivers, plus rolling green hills, just begged to be explored. The rocks were carpeted with oyters, mussels and sea grasses; soft corals laced high upon the shore were colourful clues to the life beneath the waves. Along the Wild Coast shores there is also a good chance of coming across broken bits of pottery and small orange carnelian beads from ships wrecked in centuries past.

Lennox led us into a hut in a settlement near Colliers. Once our eyes adjusted to the gloom, we could make out a fire in the centre, smooth mud floors, a roof made of reeds and sticks, and seven people sitting on low stools. One man with a faraway expression was a miner home on a holiday. It appears very little has changed in the past few hundred years and the Pondo still make their life from subsistence agriculture, supplemented by migrant labour.

The walk to Waterfall Bluff, 12 kilometres north of the lodge, was a challenge worth every blister. Where else can you see a waterfall plunge more than 100 meters off an escarpment straight into the ocean? There were also many shallow streams that tumbled down watery staircases dotted with delightful pools into the sea. In summer it’s possible to see the sardine run, plus attendant schools of predators, from the high hills, and there’s always a good chance of spotting dolphins and whales.

Waterfall Bluff is at the southern limit of the Egosa Fault – a massive rift that runs north from there towards Durban. Also associated with the fault is Cathedral Rock, a tall pinnacle of sandstone which has been cut off from the mainland by the sea. Such dramatic landforms should not, however, distract you from the treasures secreted away in the grassy ridges. Many unusual plant species occur on these Pondoland sandstone soils, including four types of watsonias found nowhere else.

The improverished communities along this pristine stretch of coastline need the employment opportunities created by places such as Mbotyi. The lodge is likely to become a node of development within the proposed new Pondoland National Park, which will stretch for 80 kilometres from Port St Johns to Port Edward and include other exceptional areas such as Mkambati and Ntafuf. But can the upliftment of the region happen without destroying it?

On the last night of our stay, Eskom power was finally delivered to Mbotyi River Lodge, routed from the nearby Magwa tea plantation. I poured myself a long drink, took off my boots and, while watching the waves through the toes of my blistered feet, thought about thick forests, endless beaches, waterfalls that plunge into the sea. I had to admit that after a long day on the trail the lodge was a much more comfortable option than settling down for the night in a jalopy parked on a hill.
 

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