INTO THE BUSH – HLUHLUWE-IMFOLOZI, SWAZILAND, & KRUGER NATIONAL PARK

May 14, 2018

After a 5:30 am wake-up call and a 6:00 breakfast that my stomach wasn’t awake enough to face, we were hustled onto the bus and driven to the Cape Town airport to catch an 8:30 flight to Durban.  The flight had encountered difficulty in Johannesburg and we didn’t get off the ground until after 9:00.  Security for domestic flights was easy.  We didn’t have to remove our shoes or take computers out of bags.  We were even allowed to bring liquids on the plane.  It was quite refreshing.

The Durban airport was quick and convenient.  We collected our bags, used the bathrooms, and then dragged our bags outside to our waiting coach.  Our new coach was much smaller than the previous one and two people with backpacks didn’t fit comfortably into a pair of seats because the overheads were too small for the backpacks and there wasn’t enough foot room to put them on the floor.  Electra and I had to separate once everyone got settled.

Boarding Our Boat in St. Lucia

Crocodile

We drove north from Durban, paralleling the coast, until we reached the St. Lucia estuary.  At this season, the estuary was not open to the sea, so was forming a large fresh water lake.  We boarded a pontoon boat called the Born Free to cruise on the lake in search of hippos and crocodiles.  We did see some crocodiles, but the water had been stirred up by the wind and was very muddy, so we could only see a few bumps on the top of the water as they passed.  The hippos, however, were quite visible.  We saw about two hundred of them gathered in numerous family groups of as many as twenty hippos of varying ages.  There were a lot of young ones and a few tiny babies that had to stand on the backs of the mothers to avoid drowning.  Hippos are too heavy to swim, so they stand or lie in shallow water during the day and only come ashore at night when the sun doesn’t dry their skin.

Family of Hippos

Baby Hippo Standing on His Mother's Back

Hippos are vegetarian, but they are aggressive and can apply a ton and a half of pressure when they bite.  Just the week before, a man in the town of St. Lucia went outside to see why his dogs were barking and had his leg bitten off by a hippo.  We cruised around the estuary looking at hippos for two hours until the sun set and the hippos started climbing out of the water.  In addition to hippos, we saw several African fish eagles roosting in the trees by the banks.  It was cold and threatening to rain, but watching wild hippos was endlessly interesting.

African Fish Eagle

We were tired by the time the cruise ended and we piled back onto the bus.  We drove for another hour to the Protea Hotel in Richards Bay, arriving well after   dark.  We could tell that the hotel was beautiful, but we never got to see it because it was pitch black when we arrived and still dark when we left again.  We were shown to our rooms and then convened in the hotel restaurant for a buffet dinner.  Everything was very spicy and I didn’t eat much because I was still feeling slightly nauseated.  It was all I could do to stay awake long enough to get back to our room and hit the sack.  We were asleep by 9:00 pm.

Sunset on the St. Lucia Estuary

May 15, 2017

The 5:00 am wake-up call was brutally early and there was no time to wake gradually because we had to have out suitcases outside by 5:20. There was coffee in the lobby, but my stomach wasn’t awake and all I could do was sit like a lump on the couch until the bus left at 6:00.  The hotel packed each of us a box lunch to take with us.

We drove out of town as it started to get light and arrived at the Memorial Gate of the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve at 7:00 am.  The Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve was founded by the king of the Zulus in 1895. The only older park in the world is Yellowstone National Park in the USA.  At the time of its founding, rhinos were already endangered (there were only about 20 left) and the park was founded to protect the rhinos.  The park encompasses 96,000 hectares and today has a population of around 2,000 rhinos.

Safari Vehicles at Hluhluwe-Imfolozi

Rhino poaching is still a very serious problem because rhino horn brings $10,000 per kilo on the Asian market.  Poachers climb the fences, drive in disguised as tourists, and even arrive by helicopter.  Today, the only creatures hunted in the park are human poachers.  The government has given the rangers permission to shoot poachers on sight.  We saw a group of three armed rangers patrolling for poachers as we left on our game drive.

Family of Warthogs

Cape Buffalo

Warthogs gathered around the entrance to the park, rooting in the drainage ditches.  Our group loaded into three Toyota Land Cruisers set up as open-air safari vehicles.  Each row of seats was elevated slightly above the one in front so that everyone had a good view.  Our guide’s name was Sabelo and he was a personable and knowledgeable fellow.  The three vehicles set off in different directions but the drivers stayed in contact via radio.  We drove slowly through the veld, in search of animals.  The first thing we saw was an old Cape buffalo lying by the side of the road.  Then we saw a number of graceful impala.  When one driver spotted something interesting, he informed the others and then we went tearing off down the dirt track, hoping to reach the spot before whatever had been sighted disappeared.

In Africa, if something looked like a rock, it was a rhino or an elephant.  If something looked like an antelope, it was a dead tree.  We saw several groups of rhinos hiding in the bushes and also a few groups of elephants.  It was cold and windy and the animals were mostly hiding in ravines or bushes to keep out of the wind.  When we finally came upon a lion, he was lying under a bush right next to the road.  Although he was no more than ten feet away and we could smell him, we couldn’t really see him.  The best photo I could get was of a tuft of fur through the bushes.

Male Impala

Rhinos at Hluhluwe-Imfolozi

Elephant at Hluhluwe-Imfolozi

Lion Sleeping in a Bush

We drove for an hour and a half and then stopped at a rest camp for breakfast.  While most of our group went to the restrooms, I headed for the buffet and encountered two beautiful striped female bushbuck that looked as though they had been drizzled with icing.  They were curious and came to check out the food but left before the rest of the group 

arrived.

We had a nice breakfast of eggs, sausage, and muffins with juice and coffee.  The employees were selling handmade, stuffed rhinos and elephants as a fundraiser to help protect the

Female Bushbuck at the Rest Camp

rhinos and we were all so enamored of the rhinos that we bought their entire stock.  I had wanted to see rhinos before they became extinct but had never considered them one of my favorite animals until I actually saw them in the wild.  They were just majestic and so prehistoric looking.  The thought of someone killing one for its horn nearly moved me to tears.

After breakfast, we drove to the other side of the park where we saw more rhinos and elephants and also saw a giraffe and a herd of zebras.  The zebras came right up to the jeep.  They were very cute with dainty black muzzles and black, white, and brownish stripes.  There were lots of babies and they were adorable.  

The Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve

Handsome Zebra

Herd of Zebra Checking Us Out

Giraffe

Baby zebra are born with legs as long as those of an adult so that when a predator looks at a herd of zebra clumped together, they cannot identify the young.  We stayed in the park an extra half an hour and the three and a half hours that we spent there flew past.  I could easily have spent all day driving around and looking at animals.  The scenery was beautiful, as well.  I had not expected the countryside to be so lush and green.  Herds of game in South Africa are generally small because there is always plenty of food and the animals do not need to group together to undertake long migrations.  Water was plentiful, so the animals did not gather around watering holes.  The only creatures we saw near the water were a big crocodile and a tree full of weaver birds.

African Crocodile

Tree Full of Weaver Bird Nests

Resting Rhino

It was sad to leave the park but we had a lot of ground to cover.  We left the park and continued north until we reached the border with Swaziland.  At the border, we got our exit stamp from South Africa and then walked across no man’s land to where we were stamped into Swaziland.

Swazi Scenery

Swaziland was a much poorer country than South Africa.  Two thirds of the country lives on $1 per day.  The king takes most of the revenue of the country for himself and was said to be worth $200 million.  In Swaziland, the king is the most powerful person and the second most powerful person is his mother whom they call the “she-elephant.”  Together, they decide who will be the ministers who rule the country.  The king had something like 13 wives and had been known to kidnap women he found attractive.  We were warned to keep an eye on each other, although we were all much too old for his tastes.

Condom Dispenser in Swaziland

Swaziland has a terrible problem with HIV and 28% of the population was infected.  Unlike South Africa where the government provided free medication to those with HIV, Swazis were on their own.  The United States provided some aid and funded the free condoms (both male and female varieties) that were found in dispensers in the restrooms.  The king did not do much to help prevent the spread of HIV, although he did ban sex for those under age eighteen at one point.  He then married a sixteen year old girl, broke his own law, and had to pay a fine of one cow.

Coffee Shop at the Swazi Candle Factory

Batik Artwork

Giraffe Sculpture in Swaziland

We drove across the Swazi countryside for a couple of hours until we came to the city of Manzini.  Then we headed up into the hills before stopping at a roadside shopping area attached to the Swazi Candle Factory.  We spent an hour and a half perusing the shops and craft items displayed by vendors or sat to drink a beer or coffee.  I had intended to buy nothing and just drink a coffee, but there were colorful batik wall hangings back lit by the sun and glowing like jewels.  Business was slow and, though I only had 100 rand, I still managed to purchase one of a group of giraffes that had been priced at 150 rand.  That left me nothing with which to buy coffee, but I wandered around, took pictures, and 

then sat with Jan while he had a beer.  It was nice to get off the bus and the sun had come out and felt pleasantly warm.

View from the Mountain Inn

After leaving the shopping area, we drove for another hour to the town of Mbabane and then up the hill to the Mountain Inn overlooking the valley.  The hotel was a little past its prime, but adequate.  It was very cold once the sun went down.  We arrived before 5:30 and I had a couple of hours to try to catch up on my blog before Jan, Ramona, and I went out for dinner in the hotel restaurant.  Jan and Ramona had steaks and I had baby chicken stuffed with chicken livers in a mild curry sauce.  It was very good, but the chicken livers were quite rich and I could only eat about a third of it.  I was back in the room by 9:00.  Electra went to sleep but I stayed up to write.

May 16, 2018

The Ngwenya Glass Factory

Our 6:30 wake-up call felt like we were sleeping in.  We didn’t leave the hotel until 8:00 but had to have our suitcases out by 7:00.  That gave us plenty of time to enjoy breakfast and some rather awful coffee.  If the hotels didn’t have as espresso machine, the coffee was generally quite poor.

Blown Glass Zebras

We drove for an hour or so through the rain to the Ngwenya (crocodile) Glass Factory where they make beautiful blown glass vessels and animal figurines from recycled glass collected by the local children.  I loved the blown glass zebras but had to settle for a picture of those and a small glass rhino.  The zebras, with their mix of black and white glass, didn’t come in the smaller sizes.  We climbed upstairs and watched the glassblowers at work.  They were mostly making animals, so were doing more forming than blowing.

There was a small group of shops clustered around the glass factory, but nothing that piqued by interest.  I enjoyed watching the peacocks and met an adorable spotted kitten who wanted to be my friend.  We spent a little more than an hour there before climbing back on the bus and driving for another couple of hours through the mountainous portion of Swaziland to the South African border where we passed into the South African province of Mpumalanga.

Kitten at the Glass Factory

We checked out of Swaziland and back into South Africa and then returned to no man’s land where there was a Matsamo Swazi village for tourists.  We got there just before lunchtime and just in time to catch the local show.  The show began with the young girls singing and dancing, followed by the married women.  The young girls were allowed to kick their legs high when they danced, but the married women weren’t even allowed to run and had to dance more sedately.

Following the women’s dances were the dances of the young men who kicked their legs very high and then imitated animals.  The young men were dressed in animal skins with woolly goatskin “legwarmers” around their shins.  After the dancing was over, the entire troupe sang several songs.  They were an award-winning choir that had toured in Europe.  I bought a copy of their CD.

Matsamo Man Thatching a Hut

After the show, we received a tour of the village.  The huts were constructed from thatched grass over wooden frames.  Matsamo men may have as many wives as they can afford.  Each wife must be purchased from her parents for about fifteen cows.  Each wife has her own hut for herself and her children.  The men have small huts of their own.  They do not sleep with the wives but merely come to “visit” them.  The largest hut in the village belongs to the chief’s mother.  Her hut serves as the meeting place for the village.  We went inside the “grandmother’s” hut to see how it was constructed and listen to our guide talk about the village customs.

Inside the Grandmother's Hut

After our tour, we had lunch in the village restaurant.  Lunch was a buffet with rice, corn, or polenta and a variety of meat sauces, as well as a selection of salads and ice cream and banana tart for dessert.  The restaurant was open air and sited next to a lily pond and had a slightly Asian feel to it.  It rained while we were eating lunch and Jan and Ramona, who were sitting on the outside edge, had to run for cover.

Cane Fields on the Way to Kruger National Park

After lunch, we continued driving north towards Kruger National Park, stopping for half an hour at a strip mall while the coach went to refuel.  I had time to visit an ATM to get an infusion of rand and the local grocery store to buy Cadbury chocolate and a soda to wake me up.  After a final hour of driving, we arrived at the Protea Hotel in Hazyview, close to Kruger National Park.

Our hotel room was larger than some apartments we had lived in and the beds were very comfortable.  Unfortunately, there was no WiFi in the rooms.  Electra and I lounged for half an hour and then joined some of her family members in the bar.  I had a hefty glass (no stingy pours there) of pinotage and chatted with the other members of the tour until it was time for dinner.  It was nice to arrive somewhere early enough to socialize before dinner because our early morning departures made it difficult to do so afterward.

Our Room at the Protea Hotel in Hazyview

Dinner was a buffet in the hotel because the hotel was located in a remote location that offered no other services.  We seemed to be almost the only guests, so it was a relaxed affair.  They offered a Mongolian BBQ style stir fry, as well as African fare.  I had a lovely slice of perfectly roasted impala haunch that was juicy and flavorful and by far the best thing I had eaten since leaving Mexico.  The dessert table and broad array of ice cream flavors was a treat, as well.  Another glass of pinotage came with dinner and, knowing that we had a 4:45 wake-up call, we went straight to bed after dinner.  I was asleep before 8:30.  It had been a tiring couple of days.

May 17, 2018

Dawn in Kruger National Park

I had a nightmare that the hotel staff had commandeered our room at 4:15 AM and left me with nothing but my pajamas.  Though I went back to sleep, I knew the wake-up call was coming and did not sleep deeply.  I had laid out my clothes the night before, so was able to throw on my clothes, turn in my suitcase and make it to the lobby by our 5:15 departure.  I couldn’t face coffee at that hour but nibbled on a rusk so that my malaria pill wouldn’t upset my stomach.  We were at the Phabeni Gate of Kruger National Park in time to load into safari vehicles and be at the entrance when the park opened at 6:00 AM.

Running Rhinos

It was just barely light when we entered the park and a bit dark to take photos.  I really wanted to take a picture of the sunrise but our guide never stopped long enough for me to take a photo in that low light.  The first animals that we came across were zebra.  It was fun to see them but nothing like the photo opportunity we had had with the zebras in Hluhluwe-Imfolozi.  It was too dark to get good photos of them.  The next creatures we came across were a mother rhino and her large son.  They wanted to cross the road and ran alongside the jeep for quite a way until they could cross in front of us. It was amazing to see such ponderous animals running at speed through the bush.  We really got a sense of their power and it was very thrilling.

Wild Dogs Running Down the Road

Shortly after seeing the rhinos, we came across a group of wild dogs running down the road.  The dogs were black, white, yellow, and brown spotted, almost like calico cats.  The ranger in Hluhluwe-Imfolozi had told us that it was rare to see them, so it was exciting and we got some decent shots of them, although the light was a bit low to focus well on moving targets.

Wildebeest

We drove a bit further and saw a solitary wildebeest and then a mother hyena with a couple of babies nursing near the side of the road.  I always think of hyenas as being ugly, but they seemed quite beautiful in that pastoral setting.  The park was absolutely crawling with impalas.  Our driver didn’t even slow down for them.  We saw herds of females with a dominant male and also groups of male “losers” as the rangers called them, the males that couldn’t win the competition to dominate the females.  Impalas like to run and play in the morning and they were bounding about but not dashing with a purpose as they would have if something were chasing them.

Mother Hyena with Babies

The power to my charger had gone out the night before and my camera was not charged.  The battery gave up the ghost by 7:30, which was discouraging.  I didn’t have a whole lot of charge on my cell phone, either, so I mostly just watched the animals and only attempted to take photos when I had a clear shot.  Our driver, Sinki, was not a good driver for photographers.  He seldom stopped long enough to focus a shot and, when he did, always seemed to stop where the animals were obscured by a tree.  I was sitting in a middle seat and always seemed to have a camera, a head, or part of the jeep in whatever shot I tried to compose.  After getting so many great photos at Hluhluwe-Imfolozi, I was very disappointed to have so little luck on our full day game drive.

Lions off the Road

By 8:30, we stopped at the Skukuza rest camp to buy coffee and eat some of the food from the bag breakfasts that the hotel had provided.  We were given 45 minutes to eat and use the restrooms, which barely left enough time to dash into the gift shop and buy a booklet about the animals.  I didn’t have time to shop for anything else, although I was eyeing the purses made of springbok hide that I had first admired in Stellenbosch.

Female Kudu

After breakfast, we headed back into the bush and came across a small herd of kudu.  The males have impressive horns but the females that we saw had only lovely fringed ears.  Then our driver heard of a sighting of lions and we dashed off down the road to see them.  There were a couple of lions lying quite a way from the road.  One was completely immobile and we couldn’t determine which sex it was, although it was quite large and looked like a boulder.  One female picked up her head to look at us but she was too obscured by brush to get a good photograph.

Lilac-breasted Roller

Southern Yellow-billed Hornbill

Helmeted Guineafowl

We drove around for the rest of the morning, seeing numerous impala and some nice birds like the colorful rollers and red and yellow hornbills, as well as the helmeted guinea fowl with their bright blue heads.  We saw elephants but they were busy eating trees and we didn’t have a clear view of them.  We also saw a giraffe at a distance.

Herd of Impala Crossing the Road

Elephant Eating a Tree

Giraffe in the Distance

Lion Cubs Stashed in a Pile of Rocks

Finally, we got another call that there was a lioness with cubs and we went dashing off to see them.  There was an annoying group of tourists in their own car who refused to let others take turns looking, so we saw little of the lioness and her kill, although at one point I could make out the carcass of a wildebeest.  The cubs, however, had been stashed in a pile of rocks and we could see them from a distance.  There were three of them and they were quite young.  They were playing, ate a little, and then stretched out to nap.  A flock of buzzards perched in the surrounding trees, waiting for the lions to finish with the kill.  We could smell the carrion from a distance.  

A lioness with small cubs will leave the pride so that she doesn’t have to share her kill with the male.  That way, they cubs can get something to eat.  Otherwise, the male would eat first and take all the meat.

Cubs Playing

Vultures Waiting Their Turns

Sleepy Cubs

Jan and Ramona at the Skukuza Rest Camp

At 1:00, we returned to the rest camp to spend an hour eating lunch and shopping.  I succumbed to the temptation to purchase a stunning springbok hide shoulder bag.  It wasn’t cheap but was half the price of the ones I had seen in Stellenbosch and, unlike the other styles I had seen, the fur was not cut abruptly at the edges but left shaggy.  It was a piece that I could use for a lifetime.

My Springbok Bag

Zebras

After lunch, our driver made a beeline for the gate, which was 39 km from the rest camp.  He whizzed past herds of impala, zebra, and giraffes, although we did get him to stop briefly to watch a mixed herd of giraffes and zebras.  Other animals like to travel with the giraffes because they can see the predators coming and act as lookouts.  Impala were everywhere.  The park was a lion smorgasbord.

Our driver did take one detour to a watering hole where we saw hippos, crocodiles, zebras, and giraffes.  It was a scenic spot and one hippo was up and walking around, posing for our cameras.  We could have stayed there all afternoon but our driver wanted to get us out of the park by 3:00, so we reluctantly allowed him to drive us away.  We left the park and then took photos of each other at the entrance sign until the third jeep finally arrived and we could load up the coach for a short drive back to the hotel.

Hippo at the Watering Hole

Electra and Ramona at the Phabeni Gate

Electra and I relaxed for an hour and then took showers before repairing to the bar for a drink before dinner.  I took my computer to the bar and worked on my blog while I started on a glass of pinotage.  The bar was crowded with members of another, large tour group.  We all found their noisy presence stressful.  Our group was much more laid back and our guide, Dale, had always kept us much better briefed that this clueless group that kept asking us questions.

Dinner was a chaotic affair and there was no lovely haunch of impala to be sliced to order for that horde.  To make matters worse, the power went out and plunged us into blackness while we were eating.  Fortunately, it came back on quickly.  I was served another glass of wine with dinner and was ready to come back to my room after we ate, although I did stay up long enough to catch up on my blog before falling asleep.