You can see about a third of the world's Cape Vulture population (about 800 breeding pairs) in the Marakele National Park just outside Thabazimbi.
According to Mossie Bredenkamp, Thabazimbi is still pretty wild. Mossie has lived in this Limpopo town all his life. “There are bushbuck at the church,” he says, “and I have neighbours who feed bush pigs and kudus in their garden. There are also leopards around here… lots of them. Sometimes when I walk down to the bus stop in the morning I can hear the baboons going wild.”
Most of the locals can tell you stories about wild animals. Ewald Botha, another long-time resident and tour operator, shows me where a hippo made herself at home earlier this year at a bridge over the Crocodile River.
Ems Strydom of Wes Enterprises tells me how two lions, which had possibly escaped from the Madikwe Nature Reserve about 100 km away, killed two calves on their farm on the outskirts of town.
There are also lots of snakes: Egyptian cobra, python, puff adder, rinkhals, boomslang, night adder… Makoppa, a nearby village, is aptly named: makoppa means “mamba”.
Wooded mountainside is visible from just about anywhere in Thabazimbi. Houses sit on the Helshoogte ridge and spill down the slope of Sovereign Hill, but they’re well camouflaged by trees.
Thabazimbi means “mountain of iron” – or that’s what I always thought. I read in a book titled Thabazimbi Ysterertsmyn 1931- 2006 that a Mr Van Dalsen who worked for Iscor came up with the name by combining the word for mountain (“thaba” in Sotho) and an inflection of the word for iron (“tshipi” in Sotho and “ntsimbi” in Zulu). What he hadn’t reckoned with was that “zimbi” is the Zulu word for evil. Ouch! No wonder the iron mine struggled for a while to recruit labourers to come and work on the “mountain of devils”.
But perhaps this association isn’t entirely inappropriate, because in summer the temperature often surpasses 40 °C. To quote a business directory of the town: “Thabazimbi is as hot as hell, just prettier!”
Most tourists prefer the winter months. The town’s popular expo (formerly the game festival) is held in May, and the agricultural show in early August. This year, from 7 to 10 August is the annual Oppikoppi Music Festival.
Winter is also hunting season. More and more residents focus on the hunting industry and ecotourism now that the town is outgrowing its mining roots.
These roots lie in the beginnings of Iscor. The Thabazimbi Mine was built in 1931 to supply iron ore to Iscor’s furnaces in Pretoria West. No one lived there and there were no roads. A former chairman of Iscor, Hendrik van der Bijl, apparently got lost on his first visit to the place and ended up searching for it for 12 hours.
Today, 77 years later, the town is bursting at the seams, with nearly every second farm being turned into an “eco estate”. But just ask the wildlife who Thabazimbi really belongs to…
1. See Cape vultures
The Marakele National Park is the pride of Thabazimbi. This 670 km² (67 000 hectares) park was proclaimed in 1994. It was to be known as the Kransberg National Park. However, because this is such a common name in the region, it was decided to name the park “Marakele”, because in the 19th century it was a “place of sanctuary” for Tswanas who hid in the mountains with their livestock to escape the Zulus.
If you drive the 18 km from Thabazimbi to the park, it’s hard to believe that you can drive all the way to the radio mast on the cliffs. A narrow tar road winds up the red slopes to the top of the Kransberg. You can walk through the veld to a point where, in the winter months, you can see about a third of the world’s Cape vulture population (about 800 breeding pairs).
The views from the top are spectacular – you can see over the Waterberg range to the horizon. It’s as if the valley sucks in all the sound, leaving a silence that city ears are not used to. Set aside at least three hours for the journey from the gate and back.
Tow a caravan or pack a tent and stay over at the Bontle Camp, or stay in a self-catering cottage at the Thlopi Camp.
Cost: R17 per person for a day visit. Contact: 014 777 1745 ; www.sanparks.org
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2. Put on your hiking shoes
Hike up the Kransberg via a 10 km trail on the farm Hartebeesfontein. The trail leads to a point 2 045 m above sea level.
There’s also a more difficult trail, but that’s for people of Vernon Koekemoer’s calibre. The owners warn if you want to hike this trail you shouldn’t be claustrophobic, nor afraid of heights. If you have young children, rather walk down the valley to the Ho-Lani swimming hole, where you can braai, and swim in the clear water.
You can, of course, sleep over in Thabazimbi and do both.
Where? Carry on straight past Marakele. From where the gravel
road starts, it’s another 16 km to the farm gate, on the right. Cost: R25 per person per day plus R5 parking. Contact: 014 772 1270 (if there’s no answer, call 016 451 1407 )
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3. Go iron-ore mining
“Tlhokomela di tyre – R140 000,” is written on a giant tyre at the exit of the workshops at the Thabazimbi iron-ore mine. The lorries that cart iron ore and waste at the open-cast mines each use six of these R140 000 tyres; one lorry weighs almost 300 tons when fully loaded.
“That front-end loader weighs 600 tons,” Ewald Botha of Ewaldtie Tours tells me where we’re standing in the Buffelshoek quarry. My head spins: That’s the weight of 600 small cars. Ewald started working at the mine in 1966 and knows how to get you through all the checkpoints
into the quarries, not easily done with today’s high safety standards.
Ewald first took me to the vulture restaurant in the Ben Alberts Nature Reserve (which is managed by the mine), where we saw Cape, lappet-faced and white-backed vultures, as well as about 100 marabou storks.
In the reserve Ewald will show you iron-smelting “ovens” dating to 1450 (they are small, thigh-deep hollows). And he will take you to a cave covered in shimmering, needle-like aragonite crystals that they say looks like a snow-covered scene (it’s only open to visitors two days a month).
Cost: R100 per person. Hours: Every other Saturday (you have to book). Contact: 014 772 1556 ; 082 878 1275
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4. Float down the river
Floating on an inner tube on a farm dam or down a river is the stuff of childhood memories, and it’s something you can experience on a farm called Inibos, owned by Francois Badenhorst.
Slap on the sunscreen, get comfortable on your tube and float down the Crocodile River, which runs along the border of the farm. The farm is so big you can drift for more than an hour. It’s very popular with families.
Call ahead to make sure the water level is high enough (it fluctuates according to the opening and closing of sluices at the Hartbeespoort Dam upstream). The water is clean by the time it arrives at Inibos, having passed through the Rooikoppies Dam.
Where? 50 km from Thabazimbi on the R511. Cost: R35 per person (plus a R50 day visitor tariff). Contact: 082 465 3737 ; www.inibos.com
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5. Visit a taxidermy studio
Take a walk through the biggest taxidermy studio in the region, Derek Robinson Taxidermists. On the walls of the reception area there isn’t room for a mouse – literally. A pangolin is wedged between fish and a giant elephant’s head. Standing next to the slender neck of a giraffe, for the first time I get a true sense of the animal’s size.
Christo Schutte, who does the wood carvings, looks flummoxed when I ask how many animals they stuff in a year. “A thousand, easily?” he speculates.
You can see all the steps in the process, from where the skins are prepared and cured to where they are mounted on a frame and get their “make-up” to ensure a neat finish.
Hours: 8 am to 4 pm. Contact: 083 227 3241 ; www.drtaxidermy.co.za
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6.Meet the king of the animals
Mike and Chrissy Hodge, who moved to the Waterberg from the UK 10 years ago, breed white lions at Acacia Lodge. “It’s been the best 10 years of my life,” Mike says. They’re hand-rearing Shamba, who was born in April. Visitors may play with him while he’s still small, and watch bigger lions being fed.
Where? About 30 km outside Thabazimbi on the Lephalale road. Cost: R75 per adult and R25 per child under 12. Contact: 082 853 0124 ; 082 323 2456
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7. Shoot with a bow and arrow
Archery is a hugely popular sport in Thabazimbi; the town has three clubs.
I pop in at the Pro Bow Club one evening. It’s a family affair: First Mom and Dad take their turn placing an arrow in the bow, drawing the bow string and releasing the arrow by just moving a finger. Then it’s the children’s turn to aim at a rubber panel on which a picture of an animal is projected. You aim for where you think the heart and lungs are.
“People who tend to rush things quickly learn to concentrate here,” says Nico Engelbrecht, chairman and owner of the Pro Bow shop. “For the same reason, children do betterat school.”
Nico offers archery lessons. Who knows, perhaps you have a hidden talent?
Where? Next to Build It on the Lephalale road. Hours: 8amto 5pm (Mondays to Fridays); 8amto 1pm (Saturdays). Cost: R100 per person. Contact: 084 713 6603 ; 073 674 9956
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8. Find the stray tree
President Paul Kruger spent some time in this part of the Bushveld. He used to hunt on his farm Gannahoek outside Thabazimbi.
Gannahoek is also home to the southernmost known naturallyoccurring baobab. The name of Dwaalboom, a hamlet 60km from Thabazimbi, is said to refer to this “stray tree”.
During the Anglo-Boer War the tree was used as a postbox, and there’s lots of historical graffiti on the trunk. It would take eight large men with outstretched arms and holding hands to enclose the trunk.
“The earliest date I could find on it is 1907,” says Ronel Taljaard. She and her husband Juan now own Gannahoek.
Where: Drive 9km out of town in the direction of Dwaalboom. Turn right on to the gravel road and continue for 28km. (If you care about your car, take the tar road through Sentrum.) Contact: 082 455 307
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