Black water
I wake with a start at 4.30 am. It’s light already. My Cape Town body clock hasn’t adjusted yet.
After a hearty breakfast of muffins, muesli and juice we meet our guides, Richard Bonambi and Simanga Zulu. They’re actually turtle monitors for Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife. They count the breeding turtles and make sure they’re not disturbed during the hatching season. They guide the hiking trail in their spare time.
We start hiking at 8.30 am. Rory and Mulley walk barefoot and Kim tries to keep baby Matthew interested by pointing out things. “Look: grass, flower, bugs… songololo.”
We hike mainly along grassy plains, punctuated by palms. Simanga walks in front of me and his arms make schweep-schweep sounds as they move in his rain jacket. I wonder how he can bear it in this heat.
It’s not long before Matthew is fast asleep, his arms flopping over his mother’s shoulders.
After an hour on the trail we arrive at a settlement with about five huts. We rest for a while and drink some water.

A few mongrel pups come to sniff at our feet. Their mother hangs around in the background, growling protectively.
Simanga tells us that at settle­ments like this you’ll always find a pot or bottle of whisky in a tree as an offering to the ancestors. If you want advice, you kneel before the bottle. “But it has to be whisky,” he says. “The ancestors don’t like brandy.”
Ten minutes later we enter the forest. It’s lush, dense, hot and green, and makes me think of the Knysna forest. After the good rains the path is muddy. The trees close in above us, and it feels like the inside of a sauna.
And then the Siyadla River lies before us. It’s not much of a river; more like Winston Churchill’s “Mighty Apies”, a stream with two logs forming a bridge that we have to shuffle across.
On the other side of the river things get really rough. The mud is so deep you risk ending up knee-deep in it, so we walk next to the path. Sticky leaves of lantana, a noxious weed, cling to our clothes.
Mulley sinks into the mud so deep you can’t see the Bob Marley tattoo on his leg. “That’s why tats are value for money, Boet. They don’t wash off.”
We struggle for about 40 minutes to get through the forest, and then we walk all along its fringe. An hour later we enter the aManzamnyama Forest, which means “black water”, named after the river that is a good 30 m wide.
We cross the river on a raft made of raffia palms. You either pull yourself across with a rope or someone on the opposite bank has to pull you. And you have to balance carefully or you could end up in the water. Mulley gets around the problem by swimming across in his red undies.
Two minutes later we arrive at the aManzamnyama Camp, where we’re greeted by our hosts Arie and Helena van Wouden, and three-year-old boy Dylen and his best friend, Valie the dog.
After a hearty lunch of lasagne we head back to the river. At every place there’s some or other fun activity you can do, and here it’s paddling. We set off in four kayaks to explore.
I admire the palm trees, the breeding ground of the rare palm nut vulture. It’s also in this river where baby crocodiles come to turn into grown-up crocodiles.
We paddle to deeper water. A trumpeter hornbill shouts its plaintive waaaa-weeee-waa and the rest of the group sees a 2 m-long crocodile. Greg and I arrive too late and are a bit sceptical of their story.
And then it’s back to the camp, where our host Arie is cooking a few chickens over the braai. “This is the real African wild,” he says. “This and Mozambique. Not Namibia or Botswana.” He spent years driving on overland 4x4 expeditions.
Valie, possibly the friendliest dog in KwaZulu-Natal, comes to lick my hand. Arie tells us that he picked her up at the Moolman Hotel in Piet Retief and called her Valie, because she was so “vaal”. Some ancestor in her gene pool gave her a grey saddle.
As I fall asleep, I hear a hippo’s “nurk, nuurk, nuuurk” in the distance.

Invasion of privacy
We’re not walking very far today. That’s good news, as I’ve got a rash. I’m beginning to walk a bit like John Wayne before entering Dodge City. A little Johnson & Johnson baby powder helps.
Just before 11 am we set off, walking along Fourth Lake. Kosi Bay’s four lagoons are connected to one another like a string of beads, and then there’s the mouth too. The first two are salty and shallow. The third is the largest – about 3 000 hectares – and the water is fresh. Fourth Lake is small and surrounded by thick bush.
In places, Simanga has to hack open a path using a panga. He tells us his surname is Zulu. Yes, as in Shaka. Although he’s not a direct descendant, he is part of the extended family.
After about 10 minutes we encounter a spider as big as the palm of my hand sitting in a yellow web. Simanga jumps back when he sees it. “I don’t know this spider!”
Fourth Lake looks deceptively peaceful – we know hippos keep to the lake, and they’re dangerous.
Simanga has to wield his panga again. He says the paths have become completely overgrown in the month since the last time people walked this way.
We hear the call of an African fish eagle sound over the lake.
Then we’re past Fourth Lake.
We can hear the water of Third Lake lapping on the banks before we see it. And then it comes into view. I wonder why they didn’t give it a more descriptive name, like “Giant Lake”, or “Os du Randt Lake”.
We encounter an impressive grove of tall waterberry trees – perhaps as high as 25 m. They’re surrounded by a profusion of palms.
Some distance further we pass a snare that could have been set for bush pigs. Simanga nudges it out the way, and we pull it apart.
The path becomes sandy and hilly, but the sight of Third Lake in the distance makes it seem like less of a slog.
Our second overnight destination, Ukuthula Adventures, comes into view about 20 minutes later.
Victor Ngubane, who grew up in the area, is in charge at Ukuthula. He tells us we’re going for a boat ride on the lakes this afternoon. “And tonight we’re going to look for turtles.”

THE WIND IS BLOWING and I try to keep my hair out of my eyes. Wil­lie is with us on the boat on Third Lake. In places it’s up to 25 m deep.
The channels between Second and Third Lake are full of twists and turns, and we have to go slowly in the boat. Two pied king­fishers take off right in front of us.
The grass on the lake shore is burning. Willie explains the grass is burnt to make it more suitable grazing for the Thonga community’s cattle.
Second Lake is considerably smaller than Third Lake – a bit like a fish pond next to an Olympic pool. Here we encounter a hippo, which occasionally lifts its head to see what we’re doing.
We can’t motor all the way through to First Lake because the water level is too low. We stop so Mulley, Kim and Rory can swim – until our hippo friend starts showing too much interest.
It rears its head and opens its mouth wide, just like the hippo on the Chomp wrapper. Everybody is back on the boat in no time and we turn back to the camp.
After dinner we head to the beach to look for turtles laying eggs, with Victor as our guide. He warns us that torches are like chocolate-chip muffins at a Weigh Less meeting: taboo.
Our search begins. Sometimes you see a turtle immediately, but luck is not on our side. Only after an hour-and-a-half’s walk does Victor spot tracks in the sand. I hope it’s a leatherback, because Willie had told us earlier that seeing one of these coming in from the surf is rather like watching a small car come ashore.
It turns out to be a loggerhead, about 1,5 m long – easily a metre shorter than a leather­back. The females return to their birthplace to lay eggs, and about 60 days later the babies hatch and hope to make it past the waiting ghost crabs into the sea and adulthood.
We wait at a safe distance until she’s finished digging her hole. She uses her flippers to shovel the sand away. Once the female starts laying she goes into a kind of swoon. Only then can we start taking pictures. 
 

Introspective behaviour
Everybody battles to get out of bed after the late night, but a cold shower helps.
Greg and I booked for only two days and have to head back today. The others have planned to hike for another day. We drive to the Maputaland Lodge with Willie to get our baggage, and then we say goodbye and head for Durban.  On the way home I think back to what Helena told me at aManzamnyama: “All you need to be happy is hot water, great food and a good night’s sleep.”
She was talking about her guest­house, but it’s true of life in gene­ral. One can even do without the hot water.