I just returned from a great trip to the Umfolozi game reserve, with the best viewing I’ve had there so far. My guests were only in SA for a short time so we did a quick one night trip up there, as well as a boat cruise on the St. Lucia estuary.
Our first morning was filled with sightings of all the common animals, birds and other wonders of nature. It was a great start to what would become a quite satisfactory trip. We stopped for breakfast on the banks of the Black Umfolozi and enjoyed a super bush breakfast. With tummy’s full we set back to searching for the big 5 (we had only seen some distant buffalo until now). We rounded a corner to see a road full of cars, jostling and manoeuvring for position. Two cheetahs had taken down a nyala and were now feeding about 80m away, this was all taking place in a fairly open area except for a few tall trees and the occasional shrub. Now I’m going to go off on a bit of a tangent…………………..
As more and more cars arrived, so chaos seemed to ensue. Eventually the road was packed with cars lined two by two for a 100m. Even then it was fine, until the inevitable monkeys with no respect for other people started to climb of out their cars. I’ve never seen anything like it! They were literally walking down the middle of the road to find a better gap to view the kill. Luckily for the rest of the game viewers the cheetahs were far more concerned with finishing their kill, before some bigger carnivore came to chase them off, that they went about it none the less.
The kicker came though when a ranger came round the corner, suddenly they were scattering like a herd of impala being chased, diving head long into their cars. Which brings me to my point , these aren’t ignorant people who don’t know any better. They are rude, inconsiderate people who know the rules, why else would they go running for cover when a ranger arrives? And it didn’t end there…
We also had a lion sighting with even more extraordinary behaviour! We were making our way down to the Umfolozi River, and as we rounded the corner to cross the main bridge there were three people standing, binoculars in hand scoping the opposite bank. The lady turns to me and says:”there’s a lion over there”. By now I couldn’t take anymore, so I enquired in my sweetest voice why she was out of her vehicle, to which she replied:”Cause I want to be lion’s lunch”. I pointed out the lioness to my group and then told this so called tour guide (yes lady, when you wear a badge people notice), that she was a disgrace to the profession and told her guests they weren’t in the best of hands. They left pretty promptly after that, oh if looks could kill!
Any how we had a fantastic stay at Impila camp, saw cheetah a second time chasing some impala. We had great sightings of rhino and buffalo, as well as a brilliant encounter with two bull elephants. So in all quite a successful trip and certainly gave me a new perspective on this KZN reserve.
Lastly to that ‘tour guide’, if you actually knew anything about the bush, you’d know that lion are in no way solitary animals. Where did you think the rest of her pride was? They could’ve been anywhere, maybe one of these days you will be lion’s lunch! Well it can only strengthen the gene pool...
