South Africa :: essays research papers

The amazing thing as you fly into Hoedspruit from Jo’burg is seeing the walls of the canyon from the air, and how the ‘highveld’ drops horizontally more than 1000 metres into a vast, flat expanse known as the ‘lowveld.’ As we drove from the airport to the Blyde River Canyon Natural Reserve, we saw how the flatness of the ‘bush’ was framed by the huge red cliff walls of the canyon. The Reserve is at the bottom of the canyon, right by its mouth. The house was surrounded by a natural ampitheatre made of the beautiful rock faces of the canyon walls. It really is a majestic and amazing place. Wherever you look, you always have a choice of beautiful mountains to look at. Right in the reserve, stands a conical mountain called Modimule. It is a strangely pointed, stand-alone mountain at the mouth of the canyon, surrounded by all the enormous cliffs. The local people have always believed Modimule is the origin of the world and modern science has proved it has the oldest rocks anywhere in the planet other than Australia. The Blyde River Canyon is the third biggest canyon in the world and it is truly imposing. The natural reserve has all types of animals and happily for us since we always walked to and from the lodge for lunches and dinners, no predators. So the animals seemed more curious about us and it was possible to have close encounters with them. My first sight when we arrived was of beautiful zebras standing by the shade of the walls to avoid the hot sun. On the first morning, as we had breakfast outside, looking at the mountains, a plethora of birds came to say hello and entertained us with their melodies. On the second day, as we had lunch in the lodge, we saw a bunch of baboons moroding and trying to break into a house and steal food. They were so funny, walking one after the other in a straight line - oblivious to us. We also learnt that they can be pretty destructive if they get into a house, as it happened to our neighbours. She described it as being the worse scenario you could ever imagine, as she entered her home and found that the baboons had paid a visit through an opened window and gone around destroying, playing and marking territory all around the house.