Mac Mac Forest Retreat

For longer walks, looking out for rare beasts like the Samango monkey and the African wildcat, make the 15-minute trip to Mount Sheba Nature Reserve, whose dense greenery also attracts African cuckoo hawks, Cape eagle owls and Gurney’s sugarbirds. If you’re more into catching the wildlife, it’s a 25-minute journey to Lone Creek Falls and its surrounding streams, hailed as the best trout fishing turf in Mpumalanga. For a spot of 3D history, make a pilgrimage to Pilgrimsrest (25 minutes), a gold rush town of the 1870s now preserved as a museum. A similar distance away, the lookout point known modestly as God’s Window has spectacular views down into a forest-clad ravine that seems to stretch to the edges of the earth. For close encounters with some of the local residents, Perry’s Bridge Reptile Park has snakes, lizards, tortoises alongside Nile crocodiles and poison dart frogs (45 minutes). It’s on the way to the Kruger National Park (an hour) whose wildlife roams free: taking game drives from Phabeni gate in the direction of Skukuza (an hour and 50 minutes), you have excellent odds of seeing bateleur eagles and leopards, buffalo, impalas and giraffes.