Mutale River – Crocodiles, Hot Weather & Huge Baobabs in the Remote Northern Region

Wednesday morning 12 March 2008 and Luke Longridge and I were back in his car and on our way up north again. Our journey through South Africa’s northern most regions wouldn’t take us to the Zambezi this time, but to a little known and rarely paddled gem in the furthest corner of the Limpopo province. The Mutale River has only been paddled a handful of times and the majority of kayakers have never even heard of it. That is probably because it exists in a low rainfall region that is very remote and is also home to some monstrous crocodiles!

The plan was that Luke would pick me up at around 11:00 but we left a little later than that. That wasn’t a problem as we had loads of time and a quick pit stop at Dischem to stock up on pain killers and away we went. The drive had only just begun when it almost ended. As we were cruising on the R21 towards Pretoria (opposite those two Engen garages) we must stumbled onto a probable cash in transit heist! It looked like the truck that was a few cars ahead of us rammed a Fidelity Guards vehicle and the green van hit the anchors and flew off the road and onto the island separating the two sides of the highway in an attempt to do an emergency u-turn. Luke stomped on the brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of us and the back door flung open wildly of the van as we passed it. I jumped out of my skin as we had almost come short, both of us had jumped. Yip, another day in Johannesburg. It’s not billed as one of the most dangerous and violent cities in the world for nothing!

For the full article and loads more photos, click HERE!