Over the hills and far away

A few weeks ago we had a week off again and this time we decided to head down to the coast and Hluhluwe-Umfolozi National Park. Unfortunately we had decided to rent a cheaper car this time so we got a Toyota Tazz, which we had never heard of before, but we will never ever forget it. Over the hills and far away it took us… at a speed of about 30 kph uphill! Because of this, heavy rains closer to the coast and road works for 200 km in the mountains bordering Swaziland, we arrived at our first camp a couple of hours later than planned. Exhausted we fell asleep in a small wood cabin, to the sound of rain on the roof.

Hluhluwe-Umfolozi is famous for their successful rhino breeding program and what do you know, rhinos were the first animals we encountered the next morning, shortly after entering through the gate. All together we saw over 80 white rhinos during our five nights’ stay and sometimes they came pretty close to the car, like this cow and her quite big calf enjoying a mud bath.This national park is very beautiful with its rivers and green hills and sometimes we just sat down in one of the picnic spots and enjoyed the scenary and the sounds of the wild.It was raining a couple of the days but not all animals seemed to mind too much. The dung beetles were very active despite the weather and it was rather amusing watching these little guys rolling their dung balls around in all directions.Zebras are usually calm and cute and don’t do much except for grazing, but these two were fighting and even brought each other down on the knees. It can’t have been the first time either since they both were quite scarred, as were a few others in the herd.One morning we decided to go on an organized game drive with one of the park’s guides. This we did for two reasons, to experience what it is like and also because you get much higher than in the stupid Tazz. We did not see much we hadn’t already seen, but you don’t feel as intimidated by all the animals in a bigger game viewing vehicle as you do in a small car for old women. Elephants soon circled around the car and a few of the calves were playing happily without taking notice of us.The last day we all of a sudden saw a female cheetah crossing the road. She seemed to be searching for something so we stopped and turned off the engine. When cheetahs call they sound almost like a bird and we hoped this meant that she had cubs close by. After a while two cubs came running down the hill towards her and we enjoyed half an hour in their company before they disappeared into the bush.St Lucia wetlands park has become part of a much larger national park now and we stayed for a couple of nights in the touristy but charming town with the same name.We visited the wetlands during the next couple of days and were yet again greeted by rhinos, but also red duiker and baboons. In the afternoon we decided to play tourists again and jumped on one of the boats that cruise the estuary in search of hippos and crocodiles.The drive back "home" was an interesting experience. We had flats on three tires (two of them twice!) on the highway in the pouring rain. With a lot of help (again, twice) we managed to get to a small town with a 24 hour garage. Luckily we decided on staying there over night... the thunderstorm that night was magnificent, but would not have been a lot of fun to be driving around in.

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