The Mac Mac Falls is 13 km from Sabie on the R532 road towards Graskop. The turnoff and parking area is at the curio stalls and a nominal entrance fee is charged. A steep walk along a cement pathway (with many steps) takes you to the viewing platform above the falls.
There are actually more waterfalls around Sabie than anywhere else in southern Africa. Regarded as the most stunning of the lot, the 65 m high Mac Mac Falls in the Mac Mac River is a declared National Monument. This waterfall was originally a single stream, but gold miners blasted it with dynamite to divert the river in an attempt to work the rich gold-bearing reef over which it plunges. Mac Mac tends to revert to one fall during the dry season.
There are also a series of pools at Mac Mac falls – great for swimming – and a braai and picnic area, so timing your visit for lunch time and an afternoon swim is not a bad idea. A 3km Secretary Bird Trail takes you through the bush in which, if you are lucky and quiet, you will hear the calls of the robin, thrush, cuckoo, greenbul and even the odd Secretary bird.
Best time to see the falls, say visitors, is during summer when the falls are full and the surrounds green and lush.
Highlights include God’s Window, Wonderview, the Three Rondawels, Blyde River Canyon, and the Bourke’s Luck Potholes, among others. Tumbling 70m in two double streams with water rainbows, white spray and a deep, dramatic pool, this is what waterfalls are supposed to look like.