Dispatch from Mtubatuba: Tuesday, May 18

I’m not sure I can pronounce it yet either, but it’s a wild west sort of town located in northern Kwa Zulu Natal Province. Strangely enough, we’re staying at what is without a doubt the best “backpackers” place yet—a garden-like place with a pool, and our room was the size of half a house. Of course it was also spotlighted, patrolled by two dogs and razor wired, but that’s “normal” here.
What brought us here is the real story. We just got done with two and a half days of the most thrilling and memorable part of our trip so far, a visit to the Hluweluwe/Imfolozi Game Reserve (I can do the Imfolozi but I’ve given up on a real Zulu pronunciation of Hluweluwe, except that it begins with a “Shah” sound. This is the oldest gamed reserve in South African dating from 1895, located in the heart of what used to be the hunting reserve of the Zulu kings. Hundreds of square miles of bush, most of it very hilly, even mountainous, with a breathtaking concentration of animals and birds in their natural habitat.
We had read all about the park, but were overwhelmed by it’s vast beauty and teeming wildlife. We had driven about three kilometers into the park when, having seen nothing yet, I jokingly said to Jeanne, “Well, let’s just turn around a get our money back.” Before the words were out of my mouth we rounded a corner in the narrow paved road and a giraffe, mother and baby, stood tall and serene no more than 10 feet off the road. The mother was tending her young one, actually cleaning her butt after a dump. We sat there for ten minutes or so before we could bring ourselves to move on. Both of us had tears in our eyes. We had, of course, seen giraffe in zoos, but it’s an entirely different experience to watch them close up in their natural habitat. And that was only the beginning. That afternoon we spotted elephant, baboon, zebra, and the beautiful impala (who became so common as to be utterly unremarkable) most at very close range.
We headed first to the northern part of the park for a Sunday buffet at the Hilltop Camp, the high end place to stay in the park with lots of facilities, including a full restaurant that served an excellent buffet, including curried crocodile (of course it tasted like chicken). Then we turned south to the Mpila camp, in the more primitive southern part of the reserve where the roads were mostly dirt (we remarked how many people were driving Land Rovers and other 4x4s but learned why when we had to turn around because our Nissan couldn’t negotiate the rocks on one of the “loop” roads). Back in Durban we had reserved what’s called a “safari tent” lodging at Mpila. The safari tent is literally a tent, at least on top, built on a wood platform off the ground, consisting of two parts, a sleeping tent, with good beds all made up (with mosquito netting), and a complete bath on the back with hot shower. Walking a wood deck around a corner is our private kitchen tent with stove, fridge (with a lock to keep the monkeys out of it), and sink. There was a picnic table on the deck between the two areas. It was primitive and luxurious at the same time. We sat out on the deck after a simple meal watching the sun set through the low bush trees with an orange and pink glow, amid the grunts of monkeys and the grass chewing impala, and just thanked God, Lilly, and all of you for our being able to be there.
We had electricity till 9 pm, so there was light to wash dishes and read a bit before bed. Our evening prayers that Pentecost night included Psalm 104 with its vivid images of God caring for the teeming wildlife:
You make the darkness and it is night,
when all the animals of the forest come creeping out.
The young lions roar for their prey,
seeking their food from God.
When the sun rises they withdraw
And lie in the dens.
Then the lights went out and it was DARK, with hardly any moon, the canopy of stars splashed brightly across the sky like a Van Gogh.
The next day we spent driving the mostly dirt roads of the southern half of the reserve. The big rule was that you never left your car, as tempting as it was, because many of the animals could be dangerous if humans got too close. But it mattered little. From our open car windows we saw all the animals above, and that day added white rhino sloshing in a mud pool twenty feel from the car a couple of elephants on the road, with us driving slowly at a respectable distance behind. Elephants are the most destructive animals in the park just ripping at tree limbs for food, and even pushing down whole trees to eat a little of the sweet roots, taking up a huge range of habitat for their destructive ways. We also frequently spotted wart hog, wildebeest, buffalo, and a wide range of antelope. It was so exciting because you never knew what sort of wildlife might be around the next bend in the road.
The next morning, our last in the park, we had booked a guided walk with a ranger at 6am. We rose at 5, got dressed in the cold and dark (electricity didn’t go on till 8am), and felt our way around the kitchen tent for the matches to light the stove to make some instant coffee and have a boiled egg. We were a little punchy since we had been wrenched awake at 3 am by the sound of an elephant near the tent ripping trees apart right on top of the tent, or so it sounded (we didn’t get out to investigate). We drove up to the office, joining two young men from the Netherlands for our hike. Our guide, an older Zulu man walked up (we could tell he was the guide from the rifle slung over his shoulder. We drove down to a nearby parking area off the road, and set out in the bush just at sunrise.
It was a completely different kind of experience to actually walk the bush rather than drive the roads, as exciting as that was. We set out into the tall dewy grass (sometimes up to our armpits) and along trails made by animals. Before we left, the guide, in what I call “Zuleng” (a mixture of Zulu and English, but mostly Zulu, with lots of gestures) gave us the rules. “Rule no. 1: follow me closely in a straight line. Rule No 2 follow me in a straight line….” All the way to rule no. 5, which began to include animals. If a rhino charged we were to climb the nearest tree, which caused us all to keep an eye out for climbing trees on our walk. If an Elephant charged me were to run a zigzag line away (they don’t see well). If a sleeping lion was awakened, we were to bow in respect and slowly back away as though he/she were an oriental potentate. As we set out, trying to keep the rules straight in our head, I noticed for the first time that the guide’s rifle was a single shot bolt action, and wondered how long it took to reload. We didn’t need any of that, however. Still the walk was very exciting, as he had us walking slowly up to grazing Rhino, buffalo and a huge herd of wildebeest, while interpreting animal prints in the dirt and dung piles (the bush is full of so many animals the ground sometimes resembled a barn yard) along the way. He was an extremely knowledgeable bushman, often perfectly mimicking the sounds of various animals and birds. Once, before we could actually see them he interpreted the grunting sounds we heard as white rhino, huge beasts in mating season, and therefore somewhat edgy. In Zulu accompanied by colorful gestures he explained that the sound we heard was a male rhino with a female making another sound, which meant she was not cooperating, making the male a bit cranky. We should stay our distance so we watched them from behind a few large bushes.
The three hours of our hike in the bush flew by like minutes. Actually we didn’t get as close to the animals as in a car, they being more skittish of humans on foot, which was novel for them. Still, the nearly silent walk through this wild and beautiful bush land, over hills and into dry streambeds, expecting to see anything at any time, was totally absorbing. One of the so-called “big five” (rhino, buffalo, elephant, wildebeest and lion) we missed seeing was the lion, not because they aren’t numerous, but because they have such a wide range and are much more secretive than the others. But we did see a recent lion kill on our hike, a giraffe carcass, mostly bones picked clean by hyena and vultures, but still buzzing with flies.
The whole experience was nothing less than thrilling, and a memory we will carry with us for a lifetime. We’re headed back to Durban tomorrow to fly on our favorite cheap African airline, Kulula.com, to Port Elizabeth for a ride through the “garden route” along the southern cape to Capetown. Going south will mean it will be a bit colder so we’ll put all those lightweight cottons