Camping Trip to Umtentweni : A Photographic Memoir

With the distant, gentle hush of the Indian Ocean, the haunting cry of the majestic fish eagle and the lush green foliage teeming with life, vitality, death, renewal, I feel my soul slowly settling into this breathtaking paradise, that is but an hour from home yet a universe away.

The air is like a futuristic city in the sky. Teeming with fluttering butterflies, zooming beetles, hovering dragonflies, gliding, twirling, floating, zig zagging with all manner of airborne insect.

We follow the trail of the modestly sized Giant African Land Snail up to a quaint dam setting, which invites lazy contemplation.

Later in the day, a Green Mamba drops out of the tree my son is sitting under. The peaceful day is now slightly fragmented by his distress and entreaties to return home. I suspect it was actually a harmless Green Water Snake
but in my excitement to take a photo with his phone, I missed a snapshot of the head.

An uneasy peace returns, but the fish remain as elusive as the ghostly imprint of the snake. So when I amateurishly tangled the line in the reel, and the ice is almost transformed to water, we stroll back down to the camp.

At the bottom of the emerald green path, the gigantic bamboo creak, groan and crack with mirth, at the follies of urban humans in nature.

The following morning we pack up. Our time away together as mother and son a brief, bittersweet chapter near the end of book one of my maternal journey. As preparations are under way for his uncertain departure to the UK, I will not be part of the main character list in the new book, although I know that my role never disappears completely.

On the way back we stop for lunch, the venue an erstwhile psytrance festival site; ghostly memories overlay my vision and I hear a faint beat, perhaps 160bpm...

Footnote
Whilst the origin of the name Umtentweni is cited on many tourist and other websites as being attributed to the type of grass growing along the banks of the town's adjoining Mtentweni river, I was unable to find academic or horticultural evidence to support this claim. Frustratingly too, no mention whatsoever of this type of grass anywhere, besides in relation to the town and river. The closest I came to discovering a researched origin was a transmogrification of 'umthetho' which means law, therefore 'place of law'?