Day 5, Hluhluwe game drive

Day 5, Today was my first taste of the wildlife. The destination was the nearby Hluhluwe-Imfolozi game park about 90km south of Mseleni. Being a safari virgin I got a briefing on etiquette by my colleagues; don’t get out of the car except where marked, don’t blare the music and of course to participate in the ‘safari game’ (this involves betting on how many different species could be seen on the trip).

Within five minutes of driving into the park in my colleague’s Toyota Yaris, we saw two young giraffe pop their head up. We caught them posing for a few pictures before moving on. Soon we were encountering impala, zebras and rhinos. They wander around the park completely unperturbed by the passing vehicles. As we drove up to the top of hill we came across a group of zebras grazing the new shoots of grass. They stood serenely on the backdrop of the hills and valleys, majestic and proud with their bold stripes, to think this is essentially my backyard now.

After a stop at the Hilltop lodge, where you can see the landscape for miles around, we continued along the tracks. But after our initial flurry of gamespotting activity things had dried up like the winter landscape. We tried to identify fresh dung of varying shapes and quantities to help us track the animals but that just turned out to be a load of poo. Still we were hopeful and persisted; my colleague was convinced that we had to turn to her secret weapon of drawing the animals out, so we turned on to the animal attractiveness of Tracey Chapman. Lo and behold we chanced upon an elephant in the bushes and a buffalo as the power of Tracey was clear to see. As dusk settled the animals seemed to become more visible and got a few more glimpses before heading back.

On the way back I offered to drive and got my first taste of night driving in the bush. The complete darkness is disconcerting enough but this is compounded people wandering onto the main road, speed bumps appearing out of nowhere, and of course the nomadic cows that chance a brush with death by walking in the middle of the road.

Having yet to have unpacked, not yet shopped, and not yet done a day of work it was fantastic to manage 3 of the so called Big five in the matter of hours. Just need to see lions and leopards and then I’d be done with Africa.

http://youtu.be/watch?v=SKYWOwWAguk