"Tites hang down..."

Sunday 14th September

Sudwala Lodge, Mpumalanga

Today got off to a less-than-successful start, mostly spent getting lost.  We had set off for Nelspruit in search of a church, armed with directions given to us by the lodge receptionist.  Despite following them to the letter, and spotting all the other landmarks he's mentioned, there was no church to be found.  Unless of course there is another meaning to the "invisible church" being talked about at the moment!

After two hours of trying, we gave up and headed to our other planned activity for today - a waterpark - only to find it closed and not re-opening until October.

Deciding that perhaps Nelspruit wasn't for us, we headed up a mountain, and the scariest road I've ever had to drive on, to Sudwala Caves, the oldest known cave in the world.

Sudwala Caves

The caves featured an impressive array of stalagmites, stalactites and floorstone formations, the sheer scale of which was breathtaking.  Considering that they grow at a rate of around 2.5cm per year, billions of years must have been staring us in the face.

The caves are also home to several thousand bats, each of which consumes up to 600 mosquitoes per hour, a fact which gives me a whole new appreciation of bats.

With temperatures unseasonably high, the visit to the caves 80m below the surface offered a welcome cool, and the chance to sample some of the spring water flowing through them.

We had been disappointed not to find the church this morning, but billions of years of history and awe-inspiring beauty hidden deep underground provided an opportunity to worship God in a different way.