Palala position

The effect of the past on the present is positively felt in a luxury Waterberg lodge

- Bruce Dennill

Driving to a remote game reserve has become a novelty again, thanks to the lockdown. I’d missed figuring out where the broadcast area of my favourite radio station ran out and switching to a playlist I’d brought along for the trip. I’d missed stopping for a cup of coffee (even if there are three sets of sanitising protocols between the car and the counter). And I’d missed buying a destination-specific snack – in this case some excellent biltong in the Waterberg town of Vaalwater. I hadn’t missed there still somehow being a gridlock where 27 trucks joined the highway – or the tolls.

I’m musing on how gratitude (for the opportunity to travel again) is still not an immediately felt emotion and that it requires a real effort – a telling comment on the state of modern living – when I turn at the only intersection in Vaalwater, an infrastructural feature that makes it difficult to get lost.

At this point, it becomes incredibly easy to feel grateful, as travelling along this stretch of tarmac, which bisects a number of game farms, is like being on a game drive before you’ve even reached your destination, with giraffe, kudu, bushbuck, blesbok, impala, warthog and ostrich all regular sightings.

Investments paying off