SOUTH AFRICA HOLIDAYS

Wild Times in South Africa

By Caroline Hurry

@travelwrite1

Blessed with unparalleled botanical beauty, South Africa has Big Five parks, wilderness areas, marine reserves, forests, mountains, rivers, and rich biodiversity. Why not combine game watching with a city holiday, starting in Cape Town, Durban, or Johannesburg?

If you have less than a week for a safari, do it in style. Smaller reserves might be the better game plan, offering close encounters of the wild kind with off-road excursions and accommodation that spans self-catering to Five Star with bush spas, private pools, huge bathrooms, gourmet food, and guided walks.

From Cape Town, hire a car. View the Atlantic and Indian Oceans from the Rhodes Memorial, Table Mountain, or Cape Point. Smell the roses in Kirstenbosch Gardens or swim with the penguins at Boulders Beach before winding up the Garden Route via the Cape wine lands to enjoy a safari.

Alternatively, head up the whale coast for Hermanus, Overburg, Walker Bay, and Gansbaai, best places for viewing Southern Rights and jagged-toothed sharks.

Craving something drier? Further north of Cape Town – 710km (442 miles) from Johannesburg – the 37 256 km2 Transfrontier Kgalagadi (Land of Thirst in the San vernacular) is home to rare black-maned lion, brown hyena, and some of the last Bushmen on Earth. On transcendental guided walks that reach out to your primitive roots, these San people show visitors how to stitch loincloths using acacia thorn and plant fibres, rub sticks to spark fires, turn ostrich egg shells into water coolers, or sharpen poison darts.

The evolution of mammals from reptiles is recorded in stone all over the arid Karoo – a vast swamp some 500 million years ago. Here, you can walk over rocky dinosaur footprints, fondle the vertebrae of 250 million-year-old dicynodonts, or examine some of the world's most important stone-age sites with petroglyphs and rock engravings, done by the earliest hunter-gatherers.

Surrogate Jersey cows suckle orphaned wildebeest and buffalo calves and you can bottle-feed zebra. Volunteers are welcome at the Born Free Foundation, which nurtures once abused lions and leopards in their natural habitat. Discover why lions must never be castrated – “their manes fall off” – and how to blow a kudu horn, the original vuvuzela.

You’ll find riverine luxuriance – including 1000-year-old Leadwoods – and the highest concentration of leopards in the 65,000-hectare private Sabi Sands Reserve. All lodges here hark back to colonial times when a typical day for the adventurer included hacking through buffalo thorn, hunting lion, skinning kudu, or dispatching puff adders. Libidinous leopards entrance tourists with their seductive beauty. You don’t get wilder than this!

Go out on a limb. Bark up the right tree. Tree houses in the Limpopo Province and Kruger Park offer the ultimate “Me Tarzan, You Jane” fantasy in Big Five territory. Become one with the savannah from your lofty perch under a celestial canopy as the chortle-barks of grazing hippo and the high pitched hoot of a Scops owl punctuate the Sabie River’s murmuring lullaby. A waning moon will illuminate the naked, white torsos of knobthorns stripped by elephants. Expect joyful harmonies of hyena celebrating the hunt and resident genets to clean your dinner plates. Expect the unexpected!

You’re more likely to encounter wild dogs in Madikwe than anywhere else. With fewer than 3 600 in the world, these “painted dogs” are to be found splashing in the Marico River at sundown, before embarking on the evening hunt, trailed by hyena and assorted scavengers. Most Madikwe lodges are family-friendly – children go on game drives and guided nature walks – and volunteerism projects include rhino notching and wild dog collaring.

Viewing game from horseback on guided rides is another great way to become one with the wilderness. The Waterberg offers great access to wildlife via open plains and canter-friendly woodlands, while Addo Elephant Park also has excellent horse trails.

In Kwa-Zulu Natal, proximity to stunning coastal reserves makes the 56,800-acre Phinda Reserve the perfect place to mix beach and bush. Home to cheetah, black rhino, and 415 species of bird, at this living tapestry of woodland, grassland, wetland, and rare sand forest, you’ll learn which plants you can use as a toothbrush and what to do on meeting a lion. “Don’t run, or you’re dinner!”

Fret not. Armed guides escort guests along wooden walkways to their sleeping quarters. Volunteerism opportunities include rhino tracking, elephant population monitoring, and hyena research.

Established in 1895, Hluhluwe–iMfolozi is Africa’s oldest Game Park, famous for bringing the white rhino back from the brink of extinction. Explore the 960-km² area with a hired car, but keep an eye open for dung beetles and potholes. Volunteer opportunities involve surveys of wild dog, cheetah and leopard.