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Published: March 25th 2010
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Southern Africa - Swaziland
We make a brief stop in
Swaziland on our way south towards Cape Town. Our stopping point here is the
Ndlovu campsite in the
Hlane Royal National Park- so called because this park was once the Swazi king’s hunting grounds.
Ndlovu Campsite
The campsite is quite busy during the time that we are there with a couple of big groups staying in the area. There are enough people there to encourage a group of local dancers come and give a performance one evening.
The campsite is also built very close to a watering hole and, all the time that we are there, there are rhinos, hippos or elephants by the watering hole.
The rhinos are supposed to be quite “friendly” because they are used to the noise and activity from the campsite. The fence between us and the watering hole, though, doesn’t look like it would stop an angry rhino and I make sure I know which direction I’m going to run in (just in case!)
As well as friendly rhinos the campsite also has a friendly ostrich who seems to prefer human company and keeps returning to the campsite every
time they put her into the game reserve.
On the first afternoon we are there the ostrich comes into our circle of tents and lays an egg. She then walks off - presumably she expects one of us to sit on the egg for her! We resist the temptation to feed the entire group scrambled eggs for breakfast and the egg is kept at the camp reception.
Driving And Walking In Hlane
The park is quite a bit smaller than other parks in the region {
at 35,000 hectares it is less than 2%!t(MISSING)he size of Kruger Park} so the animals are in a much smaller space and we expect to see quite a few animals in the park. I get the impression as we drive through the park that we are never too far away from a fence.
On our first afternoon our guide,
Ndumiso, takes us for a drive out of the campsite. We spend quite a long time getting “up close and personal” to an elephant which is cooling itself in a small watering hole. The rest of the afternoon isn’t as successful and Ndumiso spends a lot of time talking into
his walkie-talkie until we eventually catch up with a lion. We are able to follow him for some distance, however, as he also makes his way to a watering hole.
On the following morning we are up very early for an early morning walking tour. As in Okavango I am being protected from the animals by a man with a stick but our tour is more of an educational walk than a game-spotting experience. We still do manage to get quite close to rhinos, hippos {
closer than some of our group are comfortable with!}, wildebeest and giraffes.
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