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Published: June 17th 2017
01 Entrance
The entrance to the game reserve- with a big warning about tortoises.Geo: -27.6358, 32.2092
This morning we were woken by the alarm at 3:30am. We quickly finished packing and at 4am we said goodbye to Paul's parents and then headed off for our little holiday. We were spending two nights atMkhuze Game Reserve and then 9 nights at Isimangalis Wetland Park- finally going to the beach again! It wasn't long before I fell asleep while Paul drove.
At about 11am we arrived in the town of Mkhuze. The last few kilometres to the park took us quite a while to drive as we stopped very often to identify the many birds. Paul wanted to identify at least 100 birds on this trip- shouldn't be too difficult as there are more than 420 identified species in this reserve.
We finally arrived at the gate of Mkhuze Game Reserve at midday. Mkhuze is in Northern Zululand and has a wide variety of game. In front of the gate there was the Mshopi campsite. We drove around the campsite to see which site we would like the best. There were only a few other campers there. We chose a site and set up our tent.
It was a bit too hot to go for a game
02 Giraffe
A giraffe looking at us. drive yet, so we walked around the camp site for an hour or so and identified the many birds flying about. We saw a pregnant Tree Agama gripping the trunk of a small tree as well as about a dozen bird species at the camp site. I also tested the temperature of the swimming pool which was perfect.
We then got ready for game drive. As we entered the game reserve at 2pm there was a sign saying to be aware of tortoises – I was looking forward to seeing some tortoises during our game drives. It was an 8 km drive to the main camp complex – Mantuma, where we had to register and pay for our camping.
Along the way we saw a large journey of giraffe eating leaves as they slowly moved. Alongside the giraffe there was a dazzle of zebra and a large herd of female impalas. Three of the zebra suddenly started running in circles and play fighting by trying to bite each other. This action caused the relaxing impalas to move on. We finally arrived at Mantuma camp, paid for our camping and bought an ice cream before continuing our afternoon game drive.
We
03 Walking
Another giraffe walking along. drove towards Kumasinga Hide. On the way we came across a couple of young nyalas. The hide was very impressive as it was comfortable and spacious.
From here I could see a small herd of 3 male impalas who wanted to drink but were very cautious of our presence and decided to move on. This reminded how important it is to be quiet when sitting in a hide. On the other side of the pan there was a tortoise sitting on the edge drinking water. After we had been here for ten minutes I noticed that there were many terrapins swimming in the pan at the edge of the hide. There were also 2 tortoises at the edge of the pan enjoying the afternoon sun.
After spending thirty minutes at the hide we decided to get a move on, there was still quite a bit of road we wanted to cover before having to be back at the campsite. Our last stop during the drive was the Insumo hide which overlooked the Insumo Pan. It was very windy here and we didn't see anything at all, except many weaver nests waving around in the wind. We started making our way
04 Stretching
The giraffe stretching up high for leaves. back to camp. In the distance I saw something out of the corner of my eye, I wasn't too sure if it was anything or just a bush. I asked Paul to reverse, it turned out to be an old elephant bull with very long tusks. He was slowly walking away from us, so we continued on.
By now it was slowly starting to get dark. We were nearly back and then I saw something cross the road in front of us. It was a spotted hyena. It ran along the road and crossed again. In the distance we could hear another hyena calling. This hyena then ran off in the direction of the calling hyena. The gates to the camp close at 7pm and we got back just in time. The total bird count for today was 50 – a great start towards our 100.
We had a few drinks by the fire and had an early night after our dinner, since it was such an early start this morning.
During the night I heard something sniffing the side of the tent and realised that it must be a bush pig. Paul warned me about them visiting the campsite last
05 Ticks
Lots of ticks on the giraffe's bottom. time he was here. The bush pig continued sniffing around the tent and then knocked over the bin and enjoyed eating the scraps from our dinner. Soon after he left we fell asleep again as we listened to the sounds of the African bush.
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