Travel Tuesday: the rest of Hoedspruit/Mpumalanga

I'm still chronicling our recent trip to Mpumalanga. After Mariepskop, on Saturday, we caught up with the rugby, listened to the hippos have a sound match with the cicadas, and eventually passed out.

On Sunday, we woke up early, had another yummy English breakfast (me eating dry cereal because of diet reasons) and then hit the road. We decided to leave Hoedspruit early so that we could take the long way home, probably an extra two hour detour. But stopping at every tourist attraction along the way, we only got home about eight hours later.

The Baobab

We stopped here on Saturday afternoon, on our way back to the lodge. The baobab tree is considered one of the big five of the plant world. These trees grow to an average circumference of 28 m and live to be thousands of years old. African folklore tells us that God, in his anger with the stupidity of mankind, planted the tree upside down. It is definitely a site that you can't miss.

The Three Rondawels


What can I say besides dizzying heights and even more dizzying sites. This really had me gasping for breath at the sincere beauty of our surrounds. Flip and I trudged over rocks and clambered like monkeys, went past the "Do not pass" signs and lived on the wild side! Luckily, my parents weren't in sight, or we would have had an earful about how reckless we are.


Danger? I laugh in the face of danger. Ha ha ha ha! (If you can guess who I just quoted, without googling it, high five!)

The Three Rondavels, across the Blyde Canyon and at the end of the Panorama Route in Mpumalanga, are huge triplet rock spirals rising out of the far wall of the canyon. The word "Rondawel" is a South African word that refers to a round hut-like dwelling (usually with a thatched roof). The three well known gigantic peaks of quartzite and shale with their sheer rock walls tower more than 700 m above the surrounding landscape.