Hluhluwe and Umdloti

Before you try to pronounce the names of these places, you should know that they are both in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal or KZN as people here refer to it. But make sure you don't say K - Zee - N. It's K - Zed - N! Since that's probably not enough of a hint...here's how they are pronounced: Hluhluwe is Shooshlooee and Umdloti is Oomshloti.

Anyway, these were our destinations over the Easter holiday weekend. And let me just say right away that I will never ever again take a long drive on a popular South African holiday weekend. South African drivers are scary enough...speeding and passing with wild abandon. And while the freeway infrastructure around Pretoria/Jo'burg is quite good, when you get outside of town, the freeways become 4 lane roads without medians and often just a two lane road. It's in these areas that the dangers escalate...from cattle and goats crossing the road to people trying to scoot across to police check points. The police here deploy an unusual tactic of standing in the middle of the road and pointing at your car to pull you over. Remarkably, people actually stop for this which is surprising given the apparent lack of interest in obeying other traffic rules such as speeding and passing. The scary part is since the police stand in the road, you can't see them until the cars ahead of you start breaking very quickly. Oh and did I mention the occasional, surprise speed bumps in the middle of the road? The point is, driving here presents a variety of other dangers beyond just other cars on the road.

Having survived the driving, the rest of the trip was absolutely fantastic. Hluhluwe is one of the oldest game parks in South Africa. It's relatively small so we were able to drive through most of the park over the two days we were there. The have all the Big 5 game: Cape buffalo, lion, leopard, rhino and African elephant. We saw everything but lion and leopard. This being our first safari, it was a lesson in patience. You spend a lot of time looking and waiting to see something. And then, bam. Just like that you run across a giant white rhino and her calf. Since this is the end of the rainy season here, the brush was quite thick...so seeing game was not easy.

We stayed in a rondavel...a circular hut that is typical of African homes in the countryside here. The room was super clean and had a fridge and sink. Even the communal ablutions area was clean. Cooking out under the stars at night was fantastic...and then sharing our breakfast with the Vervet monkeys who came by both mornings was lots of fun.

The next two nights we spent at a beach resort town (Umdloti) north of Durban. It was a beautiful setting in our rented cliff-side condo. The water here was warm and great for swimming although the first day the Indian Ocean was so rough that all I did was dodge waves and rip currents. Durban has the largest Indian population outside India. So we had some fantastic Indian food one night.

All in all...a great 4 night getaway. Enjoy some of the pictures!!

Baby rhino following mom.

Vervet monkeys in a cabbage tree outside our rondavel.

Evening at Hilltop Camp.

Cape buffalo taking a mud nap.

uShaka Beach, Durban. The swimming was better here.

African elephants in the distance.

Hluhluwe landscape.

Impala.

Moonrise at Hilltop Camp restaurant patio.

Vervet who wanted some of our breakfast...

Nyala...completely unafraid of our presence.

Moonrise over the Indian Ocean from our condo in Umdloti.

Our rondavel in Hluhluwe

We had to walk under this scary thing to get to the "hide" where we waited for game to show up to a watering hole. Nobody came...but we did hear a herd of elephants.

Cape buffalo are quite dangerous...as evidenced by the stare down we got from this guy. He never took his eyes off of us. There were wildebeest around here too but I didn't get a good enough picture to post.

Sunset in Hluhluwe

A turbulent India Ocean looking at Umhlanga.

Vervet

Vultures.

Check out the tusk on mama rhino. She was actually quite close to our car. Also seen on the trip were warthogs and baboons. My warthog picture didn't turn out well enough to post.