In KwaZulu-Natal, you can ditch the expensive safari lodges to see elephants and lions under your own steam.
Meeting a teenage elephant
Is it angry? Is it frisky? Should we back away slowly? Or should we just put the foot down and get away to safety as soon as possible?
What to do when you encounter a teenage male African elephant isn’t something your parents tend to teach you. You don’t learn it in school. And it certainly doesn’t feature too heavily in the holiday brochures.
We spend about five minutes with him stood next to us. He’s a hulking beast, and an absolutely magnificent one. Elephants should be clunky and ungainly, but they move almost silently, and with an eerie, considered grace for something so big. They’re captivating, awe-inspiring creatures, and it doesn’t take long in one of South Africa’s game parks to get utterly obsessed with them.
Does a safari need to be expensive?
But the encounter exposes one of the great African safari myths: that going around seeing animals needs to be expensive. Sure, you can stay in eye-wateringly expensive lodges and pay to go on game drives. But at the likes of Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park (essentially a national park like Pilanesberg, the Kruger and Addo Elephant, but they all go under slightly different titles), this is not the case. You can just hire a car, pay the park entrance fee and drive around the dirt roads looking for things that could eat you or crush the car in a heartbeat.
Why you should pay for a game drive
There are several reasons why paying for a game drive is better. You’re likely to be sitting higher up, and thus have a better viewing angle. Having a trained expert guide is also extremely helpful, as they know what they’re looking for and are much better at spotting the little flickers of movement that might give away the location of a lion or a leopard.
The advantages of a self-drive safari
But the DIY method involves a sense of freedom and adventure that can’t be rivalled by signing up for a tour. You might not see as much – although you can give yourself better odds by checking at the entry gate and visitor centre where other people have made big five sightings – but the sense of achievement when you do stumble across something is far greater.
There’s a giddy excitement when you see a lumbering giraffe’s neck stick out above the trees, an uncontrollable smile when a warthog scuttles across the road, and a triumphant pleasure when you’re proved correct on the odd grey colour between the bushes being a rhinoceros.
The thrill of not really knowing what you’re doing, but succeeding in spotting loads of Very Good Animals, is immense. And then you get certain memories that just stick with you for a very long time.
Meeting the herd
After meeting the teenage male on his own, we encounter the girls. And the kids. There’s a massive herd of them, crossing the road in front of us. The matriarch stands facing the car, raises her trunk and makes a half trumpeting, half harrumphing noise. It’s a warning not to come any closer to the little ones. Don’t worry, lady, we’re happy where we are, just watching.
More KwaZulu-Natal travel
If you’d prefer a guided game drive, several Hluhluwe-Imfolozi tours are available here.
Other KwaZulu-Natal (and Durban) stories on Planet Whitley include:
- Why Durban is South Africa’s winter sun destination.
- 7 reasons to visit Durban.
- Review of the KwaMuhle Museum.
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you book anything through them, I earn a small commission.
