The Lion & Elephant

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That's the name of the beautifully rustic collection of thatched rondavels on the banks of the Bubye River, where the Great North Road crosses the sandy river bed of the Bubye Well, ninety-nine percent of the time. The other one percent of the time the Bubye can be a raging torrent, easily submerging the old bridge that use to cross it in the time of the strip road. The surging, muddy waters can reach the height of the present day bridge, whole trees come sailing down from up river and get trapped against it.

At the age of three, I made my first stop-over at the Lion & Elephant, in an old Vauxhall station wagon with my father. The rest of the family, being my mother and two siblings, flew while we made the Great Trek, in reverse, all the way to Cape Town. On that occasion the river was the 100% sand, as usual, but I had my father all to myself.

He had already made the journey to the Cape and back again, a number of times and in the years and journeys that followed, he recounted how the road down to the border had been a " strip road ", in the early days. A strip road has two strips of tar, one for each set of wheels. The rest of the road is gravel and when a car appears coming in the opposite direction, both parties move to the left, using only one strip each until the pass each other.

He also spoke of how when the Bubye River did finally appear, on those odd occasions, the L&E became a haven for stranded motorists. The bar, aptly named the Bubye Trap, for more reasons than one, became a place where time stood still and the beer flowed. Almost, perhaps, matching the river. On occasions the river would rise as high as the bar itself and once the guests had to climb onto the roof.

These many years later, we found ourselves at the Lion and Elephant Motel, after crossing the border from South Africa to Zimbabwe, at Beit Bridge. We had traveled a long way since leaving the Karoo, with its underground caves and solitary windmills. We spent days journeying up the N1 through farmlands that were once rolling savannahs, teeming with large herds of antelope and other beasts that now live in remote parts of the sub-continent in "game parks". At last, we had reached the Limpopo River and the steel bridge that led us into The Promised Land.

It is surprising that Beit Bridge is still named after a white colonialist who was one of Cecil Rhodes's partners in the Kimberly diamonds enterprise. He was also a philanthropist, leaving his fortune to the development of infrastructure in Southern Africa, which included a far more impressive suspension bridge in Zimbabwe, called the Birchenough Bridge. Most bridges and roads that once bore the names of the colonial past have been renamed in honour of current day heroes. Ironically, most of them seem to be politicians.

On arrival at the L&E we were delighted to see, even on a dark winter's night, that the pool was full of water. The Bubye Trap was surprisingly full of patrons, considering that the river was in its usual sandy condition. Being winter, it was cold enough for a fire to be burning in the pub and we gathered around that for our supper.

The Lowveld is hot and dry for most of the year with a short rainy season and there is no real winter, on occasions a sudden cold snap can catch everyone by surprise. Plans were laid to swim in the pool the next morning, regardless. Swimmers from The Cape were not about to be deterred by a chill in the air.

Most of the travelers staying that night were on safari headed for Gonarezo, a game park in the south east bordering the Zim/SA border. A wild lowveld conservation area where the elephants fear humans and are known to charge at the slightest provocation. This is because they have been hunted, read poached, due to the remoteness of the area and the fact the borders of Mozambique and South Africa border the park and the elephants move between these borders and so do the poachers.

While the Elephant has pride of place at the entrance, the poor old Lion has been stuck behind the bar looking as if he has had too many drinks.

When we were youngsters we were not allowed in the Bubye Trap, winter or not. When I was a bit older I did get a look in and on the wall there was a photo of a man who had shot a baboon. I knew he had shot the baboon because there was a rifle in his hand and although the baboon was staring into the camera with the same fixed stare as the man, he was obviously not alive. If he had been he would have been a lot more uncomfortable about being that close to a man with a gun. Adding to the incongruity of the photograph was the fact that the man wore an immaculate safari suit, his hair was stuck in place, probably with Brylcream and he wore a pair of dark rimmed spectacles; the type worn by people like Rolf Harris (if you are old enough to know who he was) and the current coach of the French rugby team. Bryclream, by the way, was a popular brand of what they now call hair gel.

At dawn, the next day we were out of our thatched rondaval and exploring the river bed, searching for tracks of creatures that had been on the move in the night. Giant trees grow along the banks, testimony to the fact that the river still runs deep below the sand.

After breakfast, the swim in the same old pool that I had swum in with my father on my first stay at the L&E. There have been many swims in between, one of them I recall was during the solar eclipse of 2001, when my father was dying of a blood disorder. The best place to view the eclipse was said to be just south of the L&E, so some of the family drove the 300 clicks down to the Lowveld. As the moment of the eclipse arrived we heard the sound of a helicopter and in the half dark of the eclipse it thundered overhead, like a scene out of Apocolypse Now.

Since I can remember there has been a sign board at the pool that said "Be Happy, Don't Worry ". I used to think that they had that the wrong way round, but perhaps that is the best place to start.

I noticed, as we splashed around in the pool, that the sign had gone.

Happy, I was, nevertheless.

Elephant skulls