Zuka & Umkhuze Game Drive

At 6:30am I was awake, Simon was leaving us today to head back to his family in Johannesburg and Pieter was going to drop him off at the bus depot. He was told to be ready for 7:30am sharp and I felt like we should atleast see him off from here and say goodbye, so it was an early start for everyone.
Just before 7:30 Pieter asked us what we wanted to do for the day and Ellie suggested another day in a park and rather than Pete having to come back we quickly got all our things together and threw them in Karin. Then we had to wait until 8am for Huzane to turn up, she is Petes second mum and cleaner, and then we left.
At 8:30am we said goodbye to Simon and put him in the minibus to Johannesburg which is around 7 hours away. Then we were on our own again, with Ellie riding shotgun this time and me having the whole of the back seat with my camera gear. Straight away I got the Biltong out as now there would be more to go around.
Our next destination wasn’t really a stop. It was the Zuka Private Game Reserve and is super expensive catering to the rich for private safaris but there is a main road that runs through the park and has to be kept open as it was there before the park fell into private hands and we took that road through the game reserve to get to our destination.
The route was amazing and we saw Zebra, a huge water buffalo that was the Mike Tyson of all buffalos and then we spotted a lone rhino in the distance.
I was gutted it was so far away but 5 minutes later I spotted a closer Rhino looking at us and as I started taking photos a baby one walked out from behind. I couldn’t believe our luck and it was an incredible sighting, had we have been 5 minutes earlier or later we wouldn’t have seen them. Then we spotted a giraffe at the side of the road a little further up and as we got closer a baby giraffe stepped out into the middle of the road right in front of us.
Just as we came out of the game reserve there was a little roadside motel called the Boabab inn that did breakfasts and as it was now 11:30am and we had all skipped breakfast we stopped for food.
It looked like a nice place to stay with little thatched rooms dotted all around a lush green landscape and a tiny swimming pool just behind the restaurant area and they did us a lovely fried breakfast. Then it was back in Karin for 20 minutes until we got to our park for the day. The uMkhaze game reserve, and yes that is the correct spelling.
The parks in this part of Africa are lush and green and very foresty. There are also huge rocky cliffs dotted about and lots of rivers and lakes so water for the animals isn’t really a problem even in the dry season, so the whole feel of the place is very jungly and this also makes spotting animals a lot harder.
We saw lots of our usual finds like warthogs, Impalas and now imyalas are on that list aswell as various birds, which is always special to us but not so exciting anymore. What really made our day exciting was when we climbed an observation tower and right infront of us were 2 huge white rhino. We couldn’t believe our luck, we had, had a real result with hippos today and had we driven past or there hadn’t been a tower we would never have seen them from the road because the grass was to high. We had been really lucky.
Not long after that sighting and back in the car we headed for a hide that was really just an open piece of grass overlooking the lake but here we saw 2 hippos, a bunch of Vervet Monkeys and on the way out we saw a massive water monitor which is a super rare find on a game drive. Again we had been really lucky.
Just before 4pm we started heading home which took about an hour and we said what a good day it had been for animals. Then after coffees Pieter cooked us an amazing fillet steak, with potato salad, African style, and mixed vegetables. It was all amazing.
By 8pm we were all done and we sat with Pieter talking until 8:30pm whilst he had his last joint of the day and some of the whiskey we had brought him and then it was time for bed.もっと詳しく