A weekend trip to Marloth Game Reserve, wild animals and bier-drinking hashers!
This week-end we traveled to a game reserve (wildlife habitat) in a joint hash arrangement with the Matola and Maputo Hash House Harriers, inviting also hashers from the Pretoria and Johannesburg associations. To make a lang story short; a hash organisation is a traditional english phenomenon, bringing expats together for socialization in the spirit of beer, running, singing and traditions! Tradition is culture, and culture is different, and for a norwegian, perception of this phenomenon is something between russetid (high school graduation), blot (vikings party) wrapped in english costumes.
The weekend was quite exciting! The Marloth Game Reserve is located somewhat 100km west of Maputo, just across the border of South Africa, next to the Crocodile River. The game reserve has a fenced in area, in which the predators are located. Outside the fence, it is possible to move freely without guides or vehicles. And this was where the hares had put out the two trails. Both Saturdays trail and Sundays trail were fantastic! Different antelopes jumped and ran across the path in front of and around us. The drinking station (bier-stop), was located at a fantastic view-point overlooking the banks of Crocodile River, and – with no shame of the name – on the banks were lying crocodiles, herds of elephants and a couple of buffalos!
Due to Espens recent arrival to Maputo, we were a bit late signing up for the trip, so we were accommodated in a nice lodge like 2 km from the rest of the bunch, together with a representative of the Jo’brg hash, Roger. The rest was located in the Phumula Kruger Lodge.
Our lodge was nice, and it was good to be able to retreat for some privacy and to have breakfast for ourselves 🙂
Oh… I hardly forgot… Sunday morning another hash couple woke up and met a buffalo just outside their bungalow… escaped through a hole in the fence! The guard was called for, and the buffalo was shot dead… I wonder about those lions that were also heard early that morning.. on which side of the fence were they?
More pictures from the trip are found in the Photo Archive on top of this page, or by clicking this link.
[…] or to some place in Mozambique. The previous trip we joined was to Marloth Game Reserve (found in thispost), and in September last year we also we joined the Ponta d’Ouro trip in incredible nice […]