TRAVEL Thulamela
The cool balm of dark after a fiery day, the forest illuminated by the tiny pulsing andomems of flirting fireflies. We're sitting in the game vehicle, waiting. Minutes ago, a leopard crossed the track, its pelt gleaming in the headlights before melting into the undergrowth behind the small clearing where the impala huddled. The perilous wait for dawn is long. Except, perhaps, for one.
We are in a reverential mood. Earlier, we ascended the rocky hill rising from the floodplains south of the Luvuvhu River, stepping over baobab roots thick as tree trunks to reach the medieval stonewalled citadel of Thulamela, a remarkable archeological site that is easily accessible for the first time.
‘When you head into this far northern corner of the Kruger, there is a sense you are escaping to the far forgotten corner of the country,’ Professor Peter Delius explained on the morning preceding our departure. ‘In fact, theimperialism, colonialism and plunder. But what we forget is that in the 17th century, Cape Town was simply the bottom of Africa – you only went there to get to somewhere much more interesting: the Indian Ocean Trading System, the dominant economic system that connected India, the Persian Gulf, China, the Spice Islands and Africa. And it was operating at least a thousand years before the Portuguese rounded Africa's tip.’
