Shelley Seid takes her fussy Australian family for a ride on the wild side
AST December while the Proteas were busy annihilating the Aussies Down Under, an alternative Australian team comprising my sister, her son, her daughter, assorted bits of technology and an unlimited reserve of energy, descended on Durban.
My job was to present the wonders of the province which obviously had to include the Big Five. Dad would be joining his family at a later date, at which time they would be going to the category of upmarket game lodge that only the Australian dollar can buy. Meanwhile, I had to find something in line with my modest means.
I settled on DumaZulu Lodge because it has a “living” cultural Zulu village and my nephew wanted to learn to dance like a traditional Zulu (it would have been mean to tell him that any Zulu teenager worth his salt would be into hip hop).
DumaZulu has a reptile park and very reasonable rates and it’s about 20 minutes from the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi game
Lreserve, the point of the excursion in the first place. We arrived late afternoon, just in time for the kids to have a stand-up fight about who would sleep in which room, and for my sister, who now lives in a country commonly known as “the land of the lizards” to strongly object to the gekko poo on her bedspread.
The next morning while the sun rose we hurtled towards Hluhluwe. Thanks to the eternal deluge of rain that KwaZulu-Natal received over the previous months, we saw hectares of very long grass and little else. The lions could have been holding a lekgotla two metres from the road and we wouldn’t have noticed. Twelve hours later I was frazzled. We had stopped for a family of warthogs, a giraffe or two, posing zebras, the usual assortment of impala and waterbuck, a gathering of vultures and a buffalo wallowing in a mudbath on the side of the road. It wasn’t a great catch,
In addition, Hluhluwe has developed scores of potholes, some the size of moon craters, and my neck was stiff from swivelling between the road and the bush. My right foot, suspended for the duration in the 20km-per-hour position, was paralysed.
We got back long after 6pm. My niece had broken out in hive-like bumps and wanted to scratch. My nephew wanted to see the crocodiles. My sister wanted to check everyone’s bed linen for droppings. I wanted 20 minutes of solitary confinement.
We almost missed dinner, which would have been a pity; plenty of hearty, homestyle food and a selection of our national puddings — malva, melktert and custard.
There were more animals planned for day two. St Lucia and a surfeit of hippo in the morning, and feeding time at the Emdoneni Cat Rehabilitation Centre in the afternoon.
The centre, which has a breed and release programme, cares for cheetahs, servals, African wildcats and caracal that have been orphaned or injured and need care and rehabilitation. Watching a caracal leap for its food and having photos taken with a chilled cheetah were the highlight of the day.
Feeling that I had at last delivered the goods, we went back to the lodge for dinner. Triumphant, I addressed the couple at the table alongside ours. They were French and it was their first trip to Africa. “How was your day?” I said. “We were really lucky,” said the woman. We Africans know that a vervet monkey is enough to send a European into paroxysms of excitement. “So what did you see? I asked kindly. “Lions mating in the road. We couldn’t get past them so we had to stop the car and wait. We almost got locked out of the park. And you? Did you see anything special?” “Yes,” I said, “The malva pudding.” I headed away from the blowhard as fast as possible but it was too late. The Australians had heard every word and I was out for a duck.