Hluhluwe

From Dundee we had another longish drive over to Hluhluwe in the heart of Zululand. The Hluhluwe game park is relatively small at 96,000ha, but its hilly terrain does make it rather attractive.

Not long after we entered the park, we passed two safari vehicles watching a herd of elephants passing in the valley below. However, the disadvantage of having a saloon car is that you can barely see over the shrubbery, leaving you sitting there wandering what everyone else is looking at.

Things improved after coffee, when we ran into a very large bull elephant wandering down the road, followed quickly by a male White Rhino. After checking us out, the rhino got on with rubbing his bits on a large log. White Rhinos are fairly common in this park, judging by the two groups we ran into in the afternoon.

We spend two nights at Isinkwe backpackers, about 30km from the park, where we were the only guests. Meanwhile the guides sat around the fire, swapping stories of people who had been killed by agitated bull elephants – must keep more distant in future (or a least learn how to reverse at high speed).

Before moving on to Sodwana Bay, we paid another visit to the park. We had a good start by almost reversing into a giraffe. After another group of white rhinos, we were on our way out of the park when we ran into a pack of nine African Wild Dogs lounging by the side of the road. Now these creatures are really quite rare, so it's lucky to come across them at all. They didn't seemed bothered by us, and got on with a bit of play fighting, before eventually wandering across the road and off into the distance.