Dwesa

there are two annoying things about dwesa nature reserve: 1. the vervet monkeys 2. the rules. the monkeys i dont mind so much.

dwesa nature reserve is found just south of madwaleni hospital and is fairly isolated from the rest of the coast. the mbashe river to the north and a scarcity of road routes to the south ensure that you will have a quiet, relaxing weekend in nature. experience will teach you that ensure is a bit of strong word to use in the transkei... our hard working OT, after some faffing about, booked for four of us to stay the weekend in a 4 sleeper bungalow. she was ensured that it contained four single beds. so off we set, arriving at around 7 o' clock in the evening on friday at the nature reserve, good start. the gate was locked and the surrounding houses were dark. after some hooting a guard arrived in his jocks and after informing us that were in fact at gate 6, not gate 1 where we should be, he let us in and told us to follow the signs to gate 1. after a short drive, during which we saw lots of trees, we arrived at a boom gate. it too was locked and no hint of where the key may be was to be found. as we shortly found out we had arrived at the bungalows. they all seemed to be uninhabited. fortunately a short 5 minute walk took us to gate 1 where two very helpful gentlemen provided us with keys for our bungalow and for the boom gate which blocked our way. we had finally arrived

an inspection of the bungalow revealed a smart wooden structure with a small kitchen, a balcony equipped with a weber, a bath, two singles and a double bed. oh great. problem. no extra mattress could be acquired, even with only four guests in the entire park. long story short, rob and donne got to know each other a little better over the weekend. rob said that she spooned... i can neither confirm or deny.

the next morning rob awoke and opened the bungalow door. minutes later a troop of vervet monkeys were inside stealing the rolls. one short chase later and we settled down for some breakfast and monkey photography.

later we went for a walk on the beach. the best thing about going to a nature reserve in the transkei is that you are alone. there are no huts on the hills, just trees. there are no mamas searching for oysters, just empty rock pools. get up before your friends and you can have the entire beach to yourself.

after some lunch a game drive was attempted. now i may be naive, stranger things have happened, but surely when you are staying at a game reserve, going for a game drive should be easy, right? wrong. the boom gate we had encountered the previous night was locked. a visit to the front gate elicited the following conversation with an unsmiling gate lady: "Hi, could we have the key for the boom gate, we would like to go for a game drive" "No, you cant go for a drive without a guide." "Ok, how much is a guide? can we get one?" "No, the office is closed." Seriously?! first off, this game park arent exactly kruger, what the guide would be doing is a bit of a mystery. regardless, we didnt mind getting a guide... maybe by making people take guides it provides employment for the local community, i dont know, but then she just flat refused to help us further. thats one less guide getting payed if i calculate correctly, not that higher grade. and the office? closed on the weekend? when the hell else are people going to come to a game park in the off season? at the very least some effort should have been made to inform guests that they have to book a guide before they have even arrived at the park. so much for the afternoon. some of the group decided to go chat with mary jane. i went back to bed.

to add to our misfortune the bakkie had a flat tire the next day. not a big problem, it was promptly changed. however, i neglected to tighten the nuts tightly enough and a few kilometres outside the park we lost the wheel and came skidding to somewhat of a halt. things werent as bad as they looked fortunately and we managed to get roadworthy for the trip back to the hospital.

funny thing is that i would definitely go back to dwesa, perhaps just a little more prepared next time. deserted beaches are pretty cool