The Hluhluwe Umfolozi National Park was only a few miles down the road - if you want to pronounce "Hluhluwe" as a local all you have to do is replace the 'Hs' with 'Ss'. It was a very impressive start with a large thatched entrance gate, together with a very friendly Ranger; a large car park with a line of game viewing vehicles awaiting the coaches that rolled up after us and the - inevitable - curio/souvenir shop. Oh yes! And a trio of enterprising local lads doing energetic Zulu dances just outside the Park boundary. Unfortunately, everybody just seemed to drive past them - enough must stop and part with a few Rand to make it worth their while.
The Park is quite hilly and these are the usual brown - except where there has been deliberate burning which converts it into black ash with bright green new shoots. The valley everybody uses to drive in has the Black Hluhluwe River providing a ribbon of riverine forest that seems to offer drinking opportunity for most of the local animals which troop down for refreshment throughout out the day.
One of the first animals we saw was a White Rhino. All Rhino are a standard grey that is shaded according to the last mud bath they had, the 'White' is a bastardisation of the Afrikaans's for wide. More accurately they are the 'wide mouthed' Rhino, whilst the Black are the 'hooked lipped' variety. The different mouths reflect their eating habits - the former is a grazer and the latter a browser.
This one was quietly snoozing in a mud wallow whilst Little Egrets and Red Billed Oxpeckers tended to the ticks and other parasites on its skin. The only movement from the pachyderm was the occasional twitch as a bird pecked a particularly sensitive piece of skin - like the inside of its nose.
On the way up to the Hill Top Camp we also saw the local specialty - the Nyala. A shaggy buck with twisted horns.
The Camp was a posh one - despite its title there was no camping. We had a small two bed rondavel with a fridge, sink and a collection of crockery etc. Once settled in, we had a quick snack and headed back out into the Park. There seemed to be healthy populations of both Elephant and Rhino (there were both species present but we only saw the 'White' ones). For a while we watched a capture team and its helicopter searching, we learnt later, for a Black Rhino to dart and capture. In the end they headed off to a different area and we left them to the their quest.
When we had checked in we had been told that there were no keys to any doors - I suppose a place surrounded by dangerous animals that closes its gates between 1800 and 0600 does need minimal security. However, when we returned, we found we had been burgled! Not by humans but by the local Vervet Monkeys that had climbed in through open louvered windows and attacked the food we had left in the room - our bread and fruit was no more!
For our dinner we had spaghetti with soya mince - a new experience for me: it's OK but will never replace the proper beef stuff.
This repast was followed by technological breakthroughs for us both. Mary managed to get her UK mobile phone to talk to the SA cell phone network - she spent the rest of the evening merrily texting everybody in the UK. And I - after many futile attempts - managed to get my laptop to interact with my CD burner: it's only taken 3 weeks! This means that I can now send Frank in sunny Belper 13+ pages of text and a dozen or so snaps. I think that, rather than e'mailing them - which will take hours given the speed of the local connections - I will ask Mary to courier them back to the UK.
We had a couple of good days in the park that were mainly centred around its elephant population. Elephants, with their complicated social structure, intelligence and their sense of humour. On the first day we were travelling one of the back dirt roads parallel to the river, when we happened across a large female elephant standing in the middle of the road with her back to us. Most times they will move off as you approach, but this one held her ground, casting the occasional beady eye over her shoulder to keep her eye on us. It soon became apparent that she was the crossing warden as her small family herd slowly came through the forest eating sweet new leaves as they came. Once they had all crossed - chided by the occasional matriarchal rumble - she graciously gave up the road and let us pass.
The next morning as we finally left the park we had a drive around the same road and became part of a large herd of at least 100 who were moving down the road and the bush on either side on their way for a morning drink. We were surrounded by slow moving elephants silently moving through the bush. Occasionally, the air was punctuated by the squeal of the youngster and every so often there was a low rumble from one of the adults. They paid scant attention to us except for the occasional adolescent male who sought to show his manliness by standing tall and shaking his head at us - they clearly thought they were real adults in telling us to keep our distance. In reality, adult males are usually amongst the most tolerant animals and completely ignore your presence. We travelled with this herd, at its pace, for a mile or so as the kids played & tussled and the adults plodded on stripping the occasional branch of its new leaves as they passed. Eventually, as they headed off to the river, our ways parted and we were alone.
On the afternoon we had travelled down into the Umfolozi section of the park - originally they had been two parks separated by a public road: now they are joined by a corridor but the public road is still there. The objectives of this trip was two fold: to see the more open savanna in that area and to visit the Centenary Centre. This was where the park had the boma (corral) where they kept captured animals. Many parks supplement their income by selling off their surplus stock to other parks and to private game reserves. Unfortunately, the bomas were empty and all there was left to do was to look at the craft stalls (tatty) and have a venison burger. Now this was a conundrum as there are no deer in Africa.
During the day the park authorities had set some of its 'controlled' fires which by evening were going nicely producing lots of smoke and some very hot flare ups close to the road. It produced a very red sunset over the hills. I still can't see the logic of setting artificial fires to 'improve' on nature - if nothing else they must play havoc with those animals that are too slow to escape eg spiders, reptiles, bugs etc. In turn this must have an impact on the bird population etc. But then people come to see the big mammals not little bugs and people = revenue.
After leaving the park we headed into the town of Hluhluwe to replenish some of our food stocks and to try to find a watch to replace the one I had left on the bathroom window sill at the Karma hostel when I washed my socks in the sink. The town seemed to be only one dusty street - shops down one side with backies (pick up trucks) with various goods for sale from their tailgates on the other. These backies, together with people with good spread on the pavement outside the shops, seemed to be able to provide most things you would want from fruit & veg to clothes. I bought my new watch from the shop of an oriental gentleman who seemed fluent in the local language but lost with English. I bought a watch for 50 Rand (£5.00) having turned down the 20 Rand model - to hell with the expense!
Mkuze National Park was about 50Ks away down the main drag and then a few more down a dirt road. The camp site was just inside the gate but it was another 8Ks to the Reception. After booking in we headed for a quiet time at a hide overlooking some water. In almost two hours, we saw two Zebra and two female Nyala - but a lot of birds flitting around.
We then headed back to set up camp - apart from one other vehicle already in residence we had the place to ourselves. Dinner was rice with tinned curried fish for Mary and a minute steak for me. As the site had power, I sat down to up date this whilst Mary wrote more postcards - this time remembering to stick the four necessary stamps and the air mail sticker before writing them!
During the evening it had become increasingly hot & humid and, as we prepared for a night's sleep, there were flashes of lightening over the surrounding hills. Ever the optimists, we agreed to have the tent's big ventilation windows open (they are covered in a fine mesh to keep the bugs et al out). The lightening might not have been up to much but the thunder was impressive. Not so much the volume but the length as they rumbled on was - it seemed to bounce & echo off anything possible. There was enough rain to make us close the tent flaps but there was hardly any sign of it the next morning.
The next morning, on the recommendation of a guide who was shepherding a group around SA for 4½ weeks, we headed for one of the hides which she said had a lot of animals visiting. After trying a few others, we arrived at the Kumasinga Hide. There was a short walk through the bush to a 'corridor' of wooden stakes abut 2 metres tall that shrouded you for the last 100 metres from any animals that were around. There were padded benches around the edge that allowed you to look out of a slit about 12" high onto a water hole that surrounded the hide on 3 sides.
We stayed there for almost six hours and were entertained by a constant parade of animals coming down to drink: Nyala families, small skittish Zebra herds, various mobs of Wilderbeast, squadrons of Warthog with their stiff tails waving like radio antenna, hoards of hooligan Baboons and elegant Impala tip toeing their way. The water in front of us was populated by Terrapins which occasionally ended up on their backs waving four feet, a tail and a head in the air and the hide had its own population of little lizards that ricocheted around.
The highlight was the ponderous appearance of a couple of White Rhino. Given they were bigger than anything there (or likely to arrive), they were vary wary and seemed to stand in deep thought before doing the slightest thing. After a long and deep drink, they both decided on a wallow in the margins of the water. However, at the slightest disturbance - whether it was a dropped lens cap in the hide (a German's), the Baboons having one of their periodic domestics or Zebra shying from their own shadow - they were surprisingly quickly & lightly on their feet with a "come and have a go if you think you are hard enough" expression on their faces.
Nyala are fairly large and the males are made more impressive by lyre shaped horns, a bristly hairs down their back, well spaced stripes on their back and a fringed belly. It must have been approaching the breeding season as on a number of occasions a couple of males would go on tip toe, arch their backs and fluff up their mane as they circled each other. The Zebras were in a similar position but they resorted to more direct action - a quick nip with a large set of teeth or, occasionally, a resounding kick that made us wince as hoof hit bone.
We made a quick diversion to see the Park's Cultural Village. It didn't live up to its hype - it was just a small craft shop with stuff made by local communities - the selection was similar to those we had seen elsewhere. On the way back Mary phoned her son James to find how he had faired in his GCSE - he had achieved 10, with the majority at A* grade: I wish that I had been that clever. To celebrate we went and sat with our feet in the camp site's paddling pool drinking alcohol. Mary cooked: pasta, a tin of tomatoes & onion and some soya mince - it's growing on me slowly!
The journey North to the Swaziland was uneventful - the countryside was more given to sugar cane cultivation with massive fields of greenery waving along than the serried ranks of Gum further South. At one point we stopped at some road works beside a field that was being harvested - they had first set it alight and it was a strong roaring crackling fire: it seemed to just burn off some of the dead leaves as the cane and the green tops were left. The men then used their pangas (machetes) to harvest the cane 5/6 stalks at a time - it looked backbreaking work. The only mechanisation seemed to be big grabs that came along to propel the harvest into massive lorries who then grind down the road as mobile road blocks.
The borders were what is becoming a standard process: a breeze through immigration/emigration and a teaching session at both sets of Customs about the Carnet. The Swazi guy seemed to know all about them but said they only needed to be stamped out of the SAEDC (Southern African Economic Development Consortium) i.e. Only when entering Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe or Mozambique - which seemed to make sense. However, he kindly agreed to stamp the Carnet so I still have a complete record: hopefully he wasn't right or I may have problems later!
Swaziland seemed to be much more affluent than either SA or Lesotho - little things like bus stops at villages along the main road, a massive new sewerage treatment plant, more traffic and more modernly/European style homes. Also for along time the hill sides had the indigenous trees rather than sugar cane or Gums. We were stopped at one of the police check points and I asked the officer how I could help him - he said "No, help can I help you" and proceeded to give excellent instructions to our destination: Swazi people are meant to be hospitable and he was certainly seemed to be proof of this.
For a while there had been a rattle from the engine as it started and I'd looked with out luck to find the cause - eventually I put it down to my automotive paranoia. This afternoon it began as we were driving along and when I looked this time one of the jubilee clips that held the hose to my new intercooler had been worn through from rubbing on the alternator's rotating fins. I'm not sure whether this is an original fault or as a result of the work in Bloem. I managed to put on a temporary clip and to fabricate a shield to protect the hose from an old baked bean tin - scavenged from the bins by Mary.
Our overnight stay on this short cut to the Kruger National Park was yet another backpackers' hostel but this one was set within a wildlife reserve. It was described as the "Rolls Royce" of hostels by a couple of guide books but, although it was big, it didn't seem to be exceptional.
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