March | 2014 | lucypoppins

Honeymoon part one

The first part of our honeymoon, was a few nights at the Old Oak Manor, where we were the only guests. This is quite a quirky guesthouse, with antique soft linen, a beautiful plunge pool surrounded by roses and a restaurant next door which does delicious scrambled eggs with salmon – Cafe Felix. We spent our time there talking about the wedding and the weekend, and all the things that had happened and swimming. We ate at the one restaurant which was open, luckily it is a great one, and waved at the locals as if we belonged. Kloovenburg treated us to delicious wine tasting, and afterwards we went to Riebeek West and realised why we have never been there before. One lady told us “Riebeek Kasteel is empty in the week, you won’t find anyone here” and that suited us just fine.

We met mum, dad and uncle Graham at the airport for breakfast with me still unaware of where we were off to. They took our car and off we went to Durban. We drove up through green KZN to Manguzi, where Jerome our driver picked us up in an ancient Land Cruiser, well beaten up by ‘rural’ living. He took us through a network of roads with small subsistence farms on the road side, to the isolated Kosi Forest Lodge, in the tropical thunderstorm light. We were welcomed with champagne (as we would be along the way) and went for a swim overlooking the lake and hippos.

The room was beautiful, with a explorer feel, set in the trees with an outdoor bath and shower, built into the trees. The food was unbelievable, and featured strongly (we had four delicious meals a day). In the morning we were woken up by a chorus of forest birds and fluttering butterflies. We went swimming in the morning before heading out to explore the forest, river and estuaries. We saw a sunbird’s nest up close, a malachite kingfisher and legavaans. Our river guide made me necklace out of a waterlily and said I would be an African Queen while wearing it.

Dan had planned our honeymoon, so that we could see turtles laying eggs which is something I have always wanted to see. So we drove off across the landscape of hills and trees towards the sea. This was our sort of luxury which was luxurious and still real and African, with snake paths, scorpions and ax head cicadas. The Land Cruiser traversed the undulating hills brushing trees and scaring animals out for us to see. Jerome set out a picnic dinner on the sand dunes before dusk fell and our turtle searching began.

We walked a long way to see our first loggerhead turtle (we did actually see one that decided to turn back before laying). We walked to the Mozambique border and back and saw her about 500 meter from where we started. The wind was blowing and we weren’t allowed torches so walked hand in hand down the east coast beach searching. I thought the turtles would be much smaller than they actually are. The loggerhead we saw laying was a meter long. She doggedly dug her pit and began to lay, which was very special to see in the red torch light. A crew of BBC film makers arrived while she was busy and provided some entertainment, asking us for information about the turtle, the presenter was no Attenborough. Our guide was very good and knowledgeable, and was clear with the crew that everyone coming to view the turtles is the same, no one gets extra privileges. The tired loggerhead ambled back to the sea and it was quite something to think that her clutch will return to that very spot in 30 years time to lay the next generation. We headed back to our mosquito-netted luxury, seeing an owl flying on the way back.