Mkuze Game Reserve

Aside from the fact that it feels as though one drives forever from Durban to get to Mkuze Game Reserve along the N2, it was this jour­ney that pre­pared my mind and soul for the neces­sary unwind that must first take place before spend­ing any time in a reserve. And by that even­ing, I could appre­ci­ate the trans­ition that took me along the north­ern coast of KwaZulu Natal into the heart of Zululand for what it was — a jour­ney into still­ness countered by the wild and untamed beauty that is the Zulu heartland ...

Whilst you can fly into Richards Bay or even Ulundi, my advice is that you don't. Rather let the sticky, muggy and dense atmo­sphere insi­di­ously take hold of you dur­ing the drive, at the same time as the Elephant coast and its wrench­ing beauty impress them­selves upon you.

Mkuze Game Reserve, not to be con­fused with Mkuze Falls private Game Reserve, makes up the north­ern por­tion of the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park, a World Heritage site. Mkuze Game Reserve is 40 000 hec­tares of some of the most splen­did nat­ural beauty avail­able. Obviously a stay here depends on you and your hol­i­day needs, but there is some­thing about the untamed beauty of this coast­line that is fas­cin­at­ing and an attract­ive option at any time of year.

This part of the coast has been a pro­tec­ted area since 1912. The Mkuze River that wends its way along the east­ern and north­ern bor­ders is a huge attrac­tion for birds of all shapes and sizes, and one of the major draw cards to the reserve. The east­ern bound­ary is hugged by the Lebombo Mountains, which provide a fur­ther wooded and swamp hab­itat, and Mkuze is also the home of a sand forest, a rare occur­rence anywhere.

But of course, one is here mainly to see the anim­als, and see them we did. There are vari­ous options for accom­mod­a­tion that mostly fall just out­side the reserve. There are not a ter­rific num­ber of places to stay within Mkuze. Mantuma Camp, where we opted to stay, is a series of safari tents and chalets, Umkhumbi is a ten­ted bush lodge, and Nhlonhlela Bush Lodge is the most lux­uri­ous of the options. You can camp in the Emshopi camp ground as well, but we opted for the ten­ted Mantuma, rather than stay­ing on a bor­der­ing game farm. Interestingly, Mantuma camp closed briefly last year when the bore­holes in Mkuze dried up, but it's open again, and has to be one of the best such camps around.

We were set up in self-catering Tented Safari Camp that has ten two-bed and three four-bed units avail­able, each with its own en-suit bath­rooms (and yes, there is run­ning hot water, not that you need it most of the time) and an open plan kit­chen. The tents are really nicely fur­nished (obvi­ously this is not lux­ury camp­ing, but it's more than one needs when get­ting back to basics in the bush). Best of all is that great care has been taken to make sure that the tents blend in with their environment.

And may I just inter­ject with a sug­ges­tion. Take a torch! Between us, we man­aged to for­get this one obvi­ous and rather imper­at­ive item. Nights are dark. Very dark ...

And there was plenty to do. Our days were eas­ily filled with lazy morn­ings, fol­lowed by drives through the reserve — you can self-drive Mkuze. We even tried one of the guided game walks, which I can highly recom­mend. We met up with our guide at 6am sharp, des­pite its being rather dif­fi­cult to emerge from our tents quite so early. The park was alive with bird calls, and because it was so early, and most of our party was pre­pared to uphold the 'quiet if you want to see any­thing' rule, we man­aged to wit­ness quite a bit — and it's that much more amaz­ing on foot.

That morn­ing revealed a couple of warthogs, upon whom we stumbled close to the north­ern Nhlonhlela pan, where we man­aged to sight a hippo return­ing to the water, where they tend to spend most of their days. The pan was rel­at­ively quiet that morn­ing, with only a hand­ful of pel­ic­ans and a vari­ety of ducks and geese. But the high­light was undoubtedly stum­bling upon (if one can stumble across such huge beasts — I still battle with how we man­aged to get so close without their know­ing) a small group of ele­phants! We were allowed to watch their morn­ing ablu­tions without inter­rup­tion, and, pos­sibly because they knew we meant no harm, they unabashedly romped in the mud, spray­ing them­selves and one another with bursts of water.

There are three other pans — Kubube, Kamasinga and Kwamalibala — all of which have game view­ing hides, which you can enter on foot hav­ing left your car parked nearby. These water­holes are great, par­tic­u­larly in the late hours of the after­noon when the heat of the day has star­ted to wear off and anim­als feel the urge to quench their thirst.

In this way we saw a num­ber of ante­lope, includ­ing kudu, gir­affe and even a rhino, which someone later explained was a black rhino (although he was in the dis­tance and didn't appear too keen on enter­ing the fray) — the reserve is home to both white and black vari­et­ies. We didn't man­age to spot any chee­tah. They are more elu­sive and you're lucky if you can sight them.

The high­light was the Nsumo pan, which has been nick­named the 'king-size water bird­bath' for its pop­ular­ity with any num­ber of water fowl.

We'll be back!

Mkuze Game Reserve Photographs — Click thumb­nails to view: