Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park Game Drive - 7 May 09

Our week was spent in Durban with our PEF work bordering routine - meeting with students, processing loan applications, solving documentation and banking issues. The highlight was the time spent helping one of our deaf students. Our blog entry this week will focus on the game drive we took in the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park last week on Friday during our stay in St. Lucia.
This park is about a two and a half hour drive from Durban and is one of South Africa's best-known game parks covering 96,000 hectares. Following is a handful of the over 100 pictures we took on the drive. Our guide picked us up at our bed and breakfast in St. Lucia at 5 am so we would be in the park at first light at 6. We returned to St. Lucia at about 3:30 pm. The early hour start was to give us a chance to see cats (lion and leopard) since they bed down during the day and are hard to find. No luck this trip - we saw lots of animals, but no cats.

This is our guide and driver, Rick. He is a retired telecommunications executive who spent the early part of his life as a guide for big game hunters. He was extremely knowledgeable giving us a tutorial in the entire eco-system of the park. (Boy Scouts, you thought your shorts were short!)

Our vehicle was a four wheel drive Toyota bakkie (pick-up). The cab is open on the top and there are three bench seats in the back tiered stadium seating style. The group included three senior missionary couples and a newlywed couple from Johannesburg on their honeymoon. Our time was spent in the Imfolozi half of the park and this is a view of the Imfolozi river which flows through the middle of the park.

Behind Sandy is a closer look at the river which is a little dry this time of year. Besides breakfast at 9 and a lunch break for a braai (BBQ) at lunch, we only had two other short stops where we could get out of the vehicle and stretch our legs. This was one of those stops.

Our first sighting, even before the sun was up, was a spotted hyaena finishing off a zebra with a companion before bedding down for the day.

One of the several giraffes we spotted - a truly magnificent and graceful animal.

Thought this made nice giraffe shot. The tips of the horns on top help with gender - boys are bald and girls have make-up brushes (fuzzy).

The wildebeest was plentiful. Our guide did not have much good to say about the wildebeest. Thought they were the dumbest animal in the park.

We only saw rhino twice. Two in both sightings relaxing in the middle of the day in mud holes.

This was the only cape buffalo we got close enough for a picture. We saw two herds of buffalo on distant hill sides.

This was a troop of 50 or more baboons we ran into.

We saw more impala than you can count. Rick told us at the beginning of the drive that since we were seated higher than he was, that we needed to yell stop when we saw something, but to not bother with impala or zebra since we would be seeing them all day.

One of the many birds we spotted - a crested barbet.

One of the flying scavengers of the park - cape vulture.

Rick was right, we saw zebra everywhere.

Warthogs were also plentiful - this guy wouldn't win any beauty contest.

Another member of the antelope family - a nyala. They are a little more shy than the impala and we only saw two close enough to photograph.

We had two sightings of elephants - a single bull in each case. They were close, but stayed in the trees, preventing us from getting a good photo. These were the largest animals we have ever seen. Maybe there are only females in zoos and the circus. These guys were at least 50% bigger than the female.
South Africa has a number of game parks/reserves. We hope to visit more before we come home.