On subsequent occasions, I have had no one to blame but myself. In my defence, however, driving through Mpumalanga can be very disorientating. Take the famous Mac-Mac Falls, for example. ‘Follow the R532 and you can’t miss the signs,’ locals will tell you. That’s exactly the problem – there are signs by the dozen, all of which point to Mac-Mac, but only one of which refers to the actual falls. If you’re not careful, you can end up (as I have) at any or all of the Mac-Mac Pools, the Mac-Mac Forest Retreat, the Mac-Mac river upstream of the falls, or the hamlet of Mac-Mac itself. To be fair, these are all pleasant enough stopovers, but the 65m cascade of the falls is the main attraction.

Mac-Mac is by no means the highest waterfall in the area; this title belongs to the 92m high Lisbon Falls. Be careful not to get your European capitals muddled – the Berlin Falls and the London Falls are also nearby – or you too might spend hours on the back roads of Mpumalanga. Then there are the Horseshoe Falls, the Bridal Veil Falls, the Maria Shires Falls, the Panoramic Falls, the Elna Falls, the Lone Creek Falls, the Sabie Falls ... well, you get the point: whatever you do, don’t try and complete a fifteen-waterfalls-in-one-day extravangaza.

Another sure-fire way of confusing yourself and your fellow travellers is to enquire about the Jock of the Bushveld Memorial. As with the Mac-Mac question, the answer comes in plural form: there are many Jock of the Bushveld memorials around these parts. For the uninitiated, Jock was the trusty canine companion of Percy Fitzpatrick, whose career in the 1890s included forays into journalism and politics, but who spent the bulk of the 1880s as a transport rider along the supply route to the port city of Lorenzo Marques (present-day Maputo) in Mozambique. Jock was the runt of his litter, but went on to become a champion hound, immortalised in Fitzpatrick’s memoirs for his faithfulness and courage – their adventures together included fighting off crocodiles and even the odd reptilian human being. The tricky thing is that, after Fitzpatrick died, his daughter had the idea of commemorating the route that he and Jock travelled together so often; she arranged for “Jock of the Bushveld Waymarks” to be placed at various points throughout the area, where the old transport road intersects with more modern thoroughfares. Be warned: there are plenty of them!

Jock and Percy weren’t the only ones criss-crossing the Lowveld all those years ago. As a would-be history buff, I’m a sucker for the towns of Pilgrim’s Rest and Barberton, which were established soon after the discovery of gold in 1873 brought thousands of diggers to the area. The boom didn’t last long, but some of the luckier and more shrewd entrepreneurs managed to get very rich very quickly. The fine houses they built are now museums, containing all the relics of late-Victorian fashion and folly; still, I think I prefer the more humble wood-and-iron dwellings of the less successful miners – the architecture may not be as impressive, but the fact that they are still standing after all these years is.

If the “historical” side of these historical villages isn’t quite your thing, fear not: the more modern tastes (or, more specifically, modern tastebuds) of the twenty-first century tourist are catered for. Pancakes are a particular speciality, and local restaurants battle it out for prestige in this art, although Harry’s Pancake Bar in Graskop also remains a firm favourite. When we ate there, Harry – or, at least, someone pretending to be Harry – came bustling up to our table to find out where we had come from, where we were going, what car we were driving and, finally, what we would like to eat. I’m not sure if Harry still makes the pancakes himself, but in my experience, nobody can make flour and milk taste as good as he does. I highly recommend the butternut-and-mushroom combo as a savoury starter, followed by mixed berries-and-cream for desert; if you feel that you’re missing out on a main course, ordering two of each should do the trick.

I have to say, much as I enjoy visiting the old mining towns, I’m very happy that I wasn’t around circa 1870. Most of those who came to the reef with gold-dust in their eyes found none of the promised riches. Indeed, “Bourke’s Luck Potholes”, one of the more popular natural features in the region – where the Blyde and the Treur rivers crash into each other, swirling and carving perfectly spherical holes into the dolomitic rock – is a perpetually mocking reminder of this fact. Standing on one of the bridges over the tumbling water at Bourke’s Luck, I struck up a conversation with a man declaring himself to be a descendant of Tom Bourke (he of the potholes). It turns out that Mr Bourke staked his claim nearby in the early days of the gold rush, confidently predicting that the area was rich in gold deposits. He was right, of course, but his own claim was entirely barren. It didn’t produce a single ounce of gold. Bad luck, old chap, I thought; but, on reflection, it seems a pity that more of those who came to exploit Africa’s resources didn’t quite have things their way.

Then, as now, there were other ways to make money – especially for those with no moral qualms. What would a pioneer town be without its scurrilous villains? Just outside Pilgrim’s Rest, “Robber’s Pass” recalls the days of highwaymen (hijackers in breeches). Legend has it that, on one occasion, over ten thousand pounds’ worth of gold bars were stolen from a stage coach and never recovered. Some day, I promised myself when I first heard this story, I’ll come back to Mpumalanga with a metal detector ... there’s gold in them hills!

On a more sombre note, one of my favourite spots in Pilgrim’s rest is the cemetery. Rather morbid, you may think – and you’d be right. For one thing, the gravestones bear witness to many lives foreshortened by malaria or Tsetse fly. But what attracts me, like most people, is one grave in particular. It’s unusual because, whereas almost all the tombstones face east, this particular one faces south. It belongs to a robber who was apprehended and put to death by the local townspeople, then buried facing the wrong direction to indicate his damnation. There’s something fascinating (albeit a little macabre) in this punishment; I’ve visited the gravesite three times now, and I can’t quite put my finger on what it is that draws me back. I do feel a little guilty about it though, knowing that I am one of those who, as poet Arthur Attwell describes it, are ‘complicit with the day / that no one knew him, when they stood around / and stone by stone secured him in the ground.’

There are other reminders of the sometimes-violent history of Mpumalanga. Long before oversized beer cans were dubbed “Long Toms”, the term referred to the heavy artillery guns used by the Boers during the war of 1899-1902. Nowadays the empty guns are mounted at the top of the Long Tom Pass. Driving up to the top of the pass, climbing out and breathing the crisp air, I find that somehow the spectacular view helps to put human events – however important they once were, or however unpleasant the memory of them may be – into perspective.

The scenery doesn’t always have such a comforting effect, however. Apart from getting lost in forests, the other abiding memory I have of family holidays to Mpumalanga (although in those days it was the Eastern Transvaal) is an overwhelming sense of vertigo. Everything was either tremendously high or terrifyingly low. I had to strain my neck to stare up at great ridges of rock; at other times, I stood gingerly at a cliff edge, peering into huge canyons as they plunged deep and wide, narrowing to river beds that were so far away they seemed below sea level. It didn’t help much when, at school, geography teachers explained away the fear by referring to “techtonic shift” and other imponderables; all I knew was that an enormous escarpment ran right through the landscape, like a lazy but powerful giant ripping the plateau hundreds of metres into the air and thrusting the plains of the Lowveld down below. Whenever I visit Mpumalanga, that childhood sense of wonder comes back to me.

It may seem a little arrogant that that the lookout points in this part of the world have names such as “God’s Window”, but that is no exaggeration. For me, the most remarkable of these vistas is at “The Pinnacle”, a huge column of quartzite rock that juts out from the escarpment above the void of the Blyde River Canyon – although, here again, I am prejudiced by a curious form of nostalgia: I remember an episode of the TV programme Treasure Hunt in which beauty queen-turned-media personality Melanie Walker, impossibly blonde and impossibly brave, was lowered from a helicopter onto the Pinnacle in the quest for yet another clue. She survived the ordeal, but I don’t think they found the treasure that week.

Make no mistake. The official stats might claim that (even though it’s the gateway to the Kruger National Park, which covers more terrain than a country the size of Israel) Mpumalanga is South Africa’s second smallest province. But believe me – or go and see for yourself – it’s big. Very big.