ROUTE CAUSE

The next time you head to Kruger, take a slow drive along Route 71. Melanie van Zyl did, and discovered culinary gems born of lockdown, craft whisky, Bao Mayo, hand-harvested salt and soulful fine dining

THE STICKY FINGERED BLISS of luscious mango eaten straight from the skin. Sweltering heat. Splashing into a lukewarm swimming pool and washing the golden pulp from my little hands. These are my earliest memories of subtropical Limpopo.

My family would leave Johannesburg before dawn and by mid-morning we would be on the R71 sweeping past roadside stalls bursting with fresh, brightly coloured fruit. I recall my dad pulling over to stock up on litchis and exchanging cash for trays of mangoes and paw-paws. These would require careful guarding during the Christmas holidays, during which we crisscrossed self-catering kitchens in the Kruger National Park. Vervet monkeys were enemy number one (children covered in mango juice make soft targets) but even at night, our goods weren’t safe because thick-tailed bushbabies would descend from the trees to get their marauding paws on our ripening stash.

Route 71 is a 200 km stretch of road between Polokwane and Phalaborwa, ending at the Phalaborwa Gate at South Africa’s favourite wilderness destination. Like my family, most visitors eager for sightings of the Big Five rush straight to Kruger – and miss out on so much along the way.