A day at the game reserves. We spent two days touring through Hluhluwe and iMflozi game reserves. This is about 2 hours north of Sundumbili, just outside of Mtubatuba.
Hluhluwe was established in 1897 and boasts beautiful mountain views, sweeping grassy flat lands, and a crocodile pool.
iMfolozi game reserve was established in 1895 and is about 24000 ha in size. iMfolozi and Hluhluwe game reserves are now managed as one large park! Together, they lie near the heart of the Zulu kingdom where ancient trails lead through one of Africa's oldest established wildernesses. Once the exclusive royal hunting grounds for King Shaka (read blog below for King Shaka info)this rich tapesty of natural cultural history still beats with the rhythms of Africa.
We had an exciting day of driving up steep mountians overlooking vast areas of grasslands, then dipping low down to the river bottom and dried creek beds. The kids were pinned to their windows looking for the "big five" or anything that moved in the bush! We had lunch in the picnic area of Hilltop overlooking the areas vast terrain and vegetation below! What a sight (site)! Below are just a few pics of what we saw. The elephant was the most exciting and scaries of the animals. This one decided he had had enough of being looked at and was now going to chase the cars away. With ears flapping, head tossing and trunk swinging he started towards the cars at a fairly steady pace. Of course now there was a gridlock of cars trying to escape the ensuing elephant. The elephant did get to one SUV that was unable to move out of the way. Smartly, the car and occupants sat very still and the elephant merely pushed its trunk against the car several times before moving on...similiar to a cat, without a chase there is no fun! The kids had a very healthy respect for elephants after that! I hope you enjoy the pictures...
Chacma Baboon, very timid and hard to see if they are just sitting still under a tree.
Black Rhinoceros. There are white ones in the park but we did not see them, I believe they are more rare.
Our grouchy elephant before he became a car chaser!
Burchell's Zebra.
Warthog mommy with her little ones. Apparently they are quite rare in the park but we saw quite a few of them around.
Blue Wildebeast. Not so common to see and hard to spot if standing still.
These two little bushbuck were so cute together, they must have been twins, they stuck together like glue!
Giraffe, they are much taller in real life than I imagined!
This is a Secretary Bird. The birds here are spectacular, their colours are brilliant and vivid! With the bright sun they appear almost like in a picture book. They are hard to get good pictures of as they are always moving and quite timid!
This was an excellent way to spend the day! The kids were absolutely amazed and in disbelief! There were lots of good information boards up to help guide us through the park! Our next stop is the St. Lucia Estuary...
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