Looking at the dark rocks strewn across the veld and the sparse sun-beaten shrub in-between, I thought to myself people must have been crazy shooting at each other over this merciless place.
The terrain was the land between the Orange River and Kimberley, and the event the British advance on the diamond fields under the command of General Lord Methuen at the start of the Second Anglo-Boer War in 1899.
The conflict had far wider purposes than possession of that particular tract of land. Still, I could not help wondering as I drove around those battlefields, starting at Belmont near Hopetown and ending at Magersfontein, site of the most horrendous slaughter of all.
Happily, I was diverted from my sombre reflections when, after a 21km stretch of bone-jarring Northern Cape provincial dirt road, I arrived at the gated entrance to Mokala National Park. I pressed the intercom button, said I was a day visitor and was heartily welcomed in the melodious lilt with which the region’s folk of Griqua descent speak Afrikaans.
The 19 611ha park is 57km south of Kimberley on the N12 to Cape Town on the opposite side of the battlefields. SANParks was forced to go hunting for a new reserve when their Vaalbos Reserve to the west of Kimberley fell prey to a land claim. The replacement park is now bigger and ecologically more diverse than its predecessor.
This makes for an excellent stop-over for travellers between the north and south, especially now that the Kimberley route is being fixed and could again become the feasible alternative it once was to the Bloemfontein route.
Mokala is a good holiday destination in it is own right. It does not have lion and elephant, and it is better so. It means the camps do not have to be fenced in, contributing to the Karoo atmosphere of open spaces. It has also made guided horse and mountain-bike trails an option.
The park is an important breeding and conservation area for disease-free animals which are fed to other parks. It is probably why they strike one as particularly handsome specimens. They include rhino, buffalo, eland, gemsbok, roan antelope, kudu, wildebeest, giraffe, zebra and springbok.
Mokala is the Setswana word for camel thorn, and it is this brooding tree, typical of those semi-desert parts, that lends the park a particular African charm. They stand among the rocky outcrops, and on the grassy plains of the valleys like age-old sentinels. Pull into their shade and you’ll see why the old people were fond of having their meetings under them. It somehow instills a sense of tranquillity and inspires deep thoughts.
The accommodation caters for a variety of needs. There are luxury self-catering executive and family suites with fire places and air-conditioning, both of which come in handy in a region that can become bitterly cold on winter nights and scorching hot on some summer days. The main camp, Mosu, also offers self-catering bungalows, and a number of living units with ceiling fans. Outlying camps called Haak-en-Steek and Lilydale offer more holiday units and camping sites.
Mosu has a classy thatched restaurant, a conference centre and a swimming pool, pub, pool table, rolling lawns where the warthog feed, and reclining chairs on a stoep. The restaurant has a good menu and friendly service.
Hopefully, the Northern Cape administration will do something about that atrocious stretch of road from the N12 to the park. It is a national asset deserving of better treatment.
We stayed overnight at Thomas’s Guest Farm, off the N12 on the way to Hopetown. It is a working farm belonging to Ella and Lieb Liebenberg and is interesting in its own way. It was the site where several thousand British troops camped and frolicked in the fountain pools before they engaged the Boers in their first major battle, at Belmont. Their commander, General Lord Methuen, slept in the house that dates back to the early 19th century and is named after its owner at the time of the war.
The accommodation is fairly rustic – in our case it consisted of a milking shed that was converted into a room, with a cobbled stoep covered by a corrugated-iron roof. But it served the purpose and was quite pleasant.
If you go:
Book at SANParks Central Reservations, [email protected] , or tel. 012 428 911, or fax 012 343 0905.
www.sanparks.org for more info.
For Thomas’s Guest Farm, phone 053 204 0049 or 082 749 6685, or fax 053 204 0049. - Saturday Star