Stone Ranger: Back in Kruger (Punda Maria)

I drove up from Tzaneen to Punda Maria in the northern end of Kruger NP today, which is ecologically quite different from the central section. It is what they call Tree Mopane Savannah (pronounced mo-par-nee), and as you can see from the photos below it has a lot more grass cover on the ground, as well as taller trees. It is the highest rainfall area in the Kruger NP, although it is very dry at the moment. All of the waterholes I saw today (three!) were all dry or virtually dry, which doesn’t make for good game viewing. Punda Maria is the Swahili word for ‘striped donkey’ or zebra. Interestingly, alsothe Afrikaans word for zebra literally translated into English is also striped donkey. The name however comes from a nickname that the locals gave the first Ranger’s wife in 1934 because she wore striped blouses.

The drive up was a bit frustrating at the Tzaneen end, as it took me 2 hours to go 26 km because of roadworks. The last part of the drive was through tribal homelands, and once again I realised there are two very separate countries in one in South Africa. You have the cities and major towns which are like any cities anywhere in the advanced world with all of the amenities that us Australians would expect. Then you get to the tribal areas and it is what you imagine the stereotype of third world Africa to be. It is a bit like venturing outside Darwin in the NT and going to a remote Aboriginal community, but with a much greater population density. Houses however vary from wood and plastic sheet shanties (relatively rare), through traditional round huts with thatched rooves, smaller government built brick houses (probably the most common) which are reminiscent of the Apartheid era, and finally quite ‘flash’ houses obviously built by locals who have made a bit of money.