Holiday expectations change with age. When you are childless you do not want to hang out with families, particularly those with noisy children in hyper-drive brandishing melting ice creams. But all that changes when you start to reproduce.
Then you welcome the presence of other children, because it diverts the attention of your offspring away from you for a while. This is the appeal of Dikhololo.
The name means Place of the Klipspringer. It is a private game reserve-cum-timeshare resort that is conveniently situated near Brits, about two hours away from Johannesburg and even closer to Pretoria. This means exhausted parents can pick up the children from school on Friday and still make it there before sunset — even with several stops for toilet breaks and cleaning up after your car-sick toddler.
Dikhololo somehow manages to cater for just about anybody. When we arrived at our chalet in Piet My Vrou camp, our impatient children, who were desperate to swim, had to wait for a herd of six kudu to finish drinking from the pool. One obviously pregnant female wandered on to our stoep, staring at us benignly while we stood behind the safety of the stable door. The camp remained quiet and relaxing the whole weekend, with occasional visits from banded mongooses and squirrels.
A short distance away was an entirely different world. The accommodation was high-density by game reserve standards — a bit like a cluster development — and the social people gathered here. ÂFamilies swarmed to the main pool area on Saturday morning to listen to a band called Touch of Class play timeless Afrikaans favourites.
This Noot vir Noot in the bushveld might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it was clear that many visitors loved it. If you did not want to listen to the music, you could simply pop in to buy cupcakes from the ladies who had set up a tuisnywerheid (home industry) table to tempt the enthusiastic musiek lovers.
The real attraction for the youngsters was the super tube, a giant water slide that children of all ages love. The speed of one’s descent appears to increase exponentially with one’s weight, which probably explains why the experience is terrifying for adults but not for children. At R15 for 10 slides, the slide is something you will have to ration lest your children spend the money meant to buy petrol for the trip home.
Koppies to climb
There are roads to ride bikes on and paths through the bush along which you can go on long walks. There are koppies to climb and a dam with little boats that you can take out. There are tennis courts and squash courts and a heated pool full of mommies and babies.
But if all you want to do is spend a quiet weekend away from traffic and malls, roast marshmallows over the flames at the end of a braai, listen to the distant yelp of jackals and watch the mad whirl of insects around the stoep light until your eyelids grow heavy — well, you can do that too.