It probably wasn't a brilliant idea to follow a hippo spoor to the edge of a dense thicket, only to realise that first, the spoor did not seem to come back out of the thicket, and second, I didn't know very much about hippos.
Before spontaneously deciding to become a hippo tracker 10 minutes earlier, some research might have been in order: for example, do hippos always return to the water in the daytime or do they like to rest in the cool shade of thickets, rather like the one in front of me?
I hadn't really thought about it. I was idly following hippo spoor because of Murphy's Law of bird hides, which states that when a birder is in the hide, the birds won't come. (A crueller version states that while the hapless birder is in the hide, a rare Narina trogon will be perched a metre from the birder's veranda back at the lodge.)
Three hours in a bird hide and all I had seen was one small finch. To be correct, I had seen a reflection in the pond of one small finch, since the finch itself was behind a log. This dearth of birds was not the fault of the hide in question, but rather that there had been a lot of rain a day or two earlier, with plenty of puddles still about, and thus the birds had no need to come to the pond so thoughtfully provided for them.
The place was Kosi Forest Lodge, situated in the Kosi Bay National Park in Maputaland, just south of the Mozambique border. There was no shortage of birds in the dense thickets of sand forest around the lodge, so I left the hide and wandered through the bush to look for some interesting ones and was soon distracted by hippo spoor; something of a novelty for a refugee from Jozi.
Thus, following the tracks of a sizeable hippo and feeling rather Indiana Jonesish, I finally came to the scary thicket.
A bird hopped away in the shadows and after a quick scramble for the binoculars, I saw that it was an orange-throated longclaw, common in the region but new to me.
Something else was whirring in a nearby bush (a golden-breasted bunting) and, further away, I could hear hooting and crowing that suggested purple-crested turacos. I soon forgot all about hippos and what might be lurking in the thicket, and set off in pursuit of a mysterious bird with black and yellow plumage (possibly a dark-backed weaver).
There were birds everywhere. Many were described as "common residents" in my bird book, but that didn't spoil the fun of finding them, especially some of the shy forest species.
I have a few basic criteria for places to escape to for a short break: lots of birds; no electricity (and therefore no blaring TVs); and no hysterically barking Jack Russell terriers (the Duracell bunny has nothing on my neighbour's dog). The lodge lived up to all of these. Its eight huts are set in thickets of sand forest, interspersed by grassy areas, and thus has a variety of birds right on the doorstep. Hippos grunt and snort in a nearby lake.
Further away, beyond a stretch of dune grassland (which offers even more birds), lie the four lakes of the Kosi Bay wetland system.
The lodge is not far from the tranquil wilderness of the fourth lake and the Manzamnyama (black water) River that feeds it - so named because tannins stain the water the colour of black tea. These are bordered by coastal woodland and, along part of the lake, a dense forest of raffia palms.
This is where all the glamorous birds can be found: palm-nut vultures, trumpeter hornbills, paradise flycatchers, Livingstone's turaco and fish eagles, along with the usual suspects - jacanas, crakes, darters, pygmy geese, a variety of kingfishers, white-eared barbets, fork-tailed drongoes and plenty of others.
Serious birders are usually keen to see a pels fishing owl, but you have to be very lucky, as with the elusive trogon that calls so tantalisingly in the deep forest.
During a morning cruise in a canoe with Joseph Sihlangu, a lodge guide, on the mirror-calm fourth lake, we came across a monitor lizard sunning itself on a log, a big croc lazing among water lilies and several samango monkeys in the raffia palms. Hippos wallowed in the distance.
The canoe drifted through reeds and lilies and perfect reflections. Fishermen punted by on raft boats made of the dried midribs of raffia leaves. "I'm using a big hook," a woman on the bank told us. Her fishing rod was a line suspended from a long twig.
She was still there much later in the afternoon when I followed Sihlangu into the forest on a walk to the third lake. "There might be water," he said, explaining why he was barefoot. "What about thorns?" I asked him. Not on the path, he replied. Villagers used it all the time.
When we came to where the path was flooded, I thought, what the heck, and kicked off my shoes. Below the ankle-deep, tea-coloured water, the ground was firm under a layer of soft mud. There were no thorns. It was like walking on velvet. Around us, the forest was dim and cool and very quiet.
The effect of that mud was weird. It stirred a wild sense of elation, an unexpected freedom from all things digital, technological, urgent or stressful. Like the pleasure of an evening campfire, it awakened an old, genetic memory of a time before my ancestors put their boots on. I felt as though I was floating through the landscape, adrift on heat and sunlight and happiness.
I forgot to take pictures. Instead, I began to tune into the rhythm of the place - the last traces of a way of life mostly gone: the fishermen setting their nets, a woman walking with a bundle on her head, a man carrying raffia midribs for a new boat.
To cross the channel, we took the ferry - a raffia-palm raft with ropes attached. You simply pull the craft across the water to your side, climb aboard and then haul it back across. Sihlangu mentioned that it was the way of the Thonga people, who had inhabited Maputaland.
"I suppose you could say I'm Zulu," he mused, while I was still trying to find a way to phrase the question delicately. It's a matter of language. People have become mixed and lost their culture. I suppose I'm Zulu, but my grandmother was Thonga."
He was lucky to be alive. Three years earlier, he had been shot in a robbery in town. The bullet had travelled down his face, smashed his jaw and exited on the lower left of his neck. It had taken him two years to recover.
Back at the lodge, there were other stories to hear. A honeymoon couple told the tale of a little dog in London that had chewed somebody's £300 (R4 320) Prada stilettos. Then there was the story of the lodge owner in Namibia who, when asked if there were sitatungas - a type of buck related to the water buffalo - at his lodge, replied in all earnestness that yes, indeed, great flocks of them were often seen flying around.
And there was the matter of the 100 hippos that were moved from St Lucia to Lake Sibaya, and about which the locals were up in arms. Why? The existing Sibaya hippos came out of the water only at 9pm, but the new St Lucia hippos emerged at 5pm, thus bringing the hippo-imposed curfew forward by several hours.
A hippo curfew - that in itself was a strange enough concept and it applied to us, too. There was no going out on the paths at night to look for owls or nightjars or shooting stars because herds of hippos would be up on dry land, grazing the grass. But I found out that, yes, they do always retreat back to the water in the daytime and you won't find one resting in a thicket after all.
We tend to think it's the big events in life that change us, but sometimes it's down to the most simple ones. Back in the city, whenever I pull on my boots, I remember the way mud felt beneath my feet and how liberating it was to walk barefoot through the forest. How profoundly quiet it was. How the rich, dark smell of damp earth pervaded the air. And that a big splash nearby on the river meant that a crocodile had launched itself into the water.
Nor will I forget the tantalising call of a Narina trogon in the deep forest. But Murphy's Law of birding says that just when - finally, at long last, after sitting motionless for nearly an hour - you think you spot that miraculous flash of red and green, a samango monkey will come crashing joyfully through the trees, scattering all before it.
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(Trish Murphy travels independently and is not hosted by the establishments she visits.)