‘If you annoy a black rhino, dash up a tree’

Paul Bloomfield steels himself for close encounters with wildlife wonders in little-visited KwaZulu-Natal

Strange things happen after dark in St Lucia. Each night, after the swollen crimson sun melts into the lake, a special kind of horticultural magic begins. And each morning, the townsfolk of this tidy South African settlement wake to neatly trimmed parks and front lawns. But it’s not benevolent elves indulging in nocturnal mowing: it’s hippos.

By day, some 1,200 rotund waterhorses guffaw in the shallow waters of Lake St Lucia. After dusk they emerge to feed, many cropping the grass lining these gridded streets. Which makes an evening stroll to the bar a nerve- jangling prospect, as I discovered on my first night in South Africa.

“Don’t worry,” my guesthouse host averred. “Take a powerful torch and, if you see a hippo, nip around the block to avoid it.” Nip? Really? To dodge a tetchy two-ton beast with an 18mph sprint and a bite that can bisect a croc?

No, I didn’t stumble upon any grazing giants – though I did spot a miscreant honey badger shambling into the local police station. But this illustrates the casual wildness of north-east KwaZulu-Natal. This province is popular with South Africans savvy to its natural and cultural diversity, abbreviated in the Four Bs: beaches, battlefields, bergs (the dramatic peaks of the Drakensberg mountains) and bush thronging with wildlife. It’s less known to UK travellers, who gravitate to Cape Town or Kruger; that should change now that British Airways offers direct flights to Durban.

South Africa’s third-largest city is a gateway to the Elephant Coast, the swathe of KZN stretching up towards the Mozambique border. I hired a car at Durban airport and steered north towards St Lucia, at the southern tip of iSimangaliso Wetland Park.

This “miracle and wonder”, as the park’s Zulu name translates, is a 1,474 sq mile mosaic of lakes, estuaries, forest, savannah and coast hosting well over half of South Africa’s 800-odd bird species, plus plentiful mammals including the headline Big Five – lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo. Options for experiencing its wonders are correspondingly varied: horseriding, cycling, lake cruises, even snorkelling or diving on coral reefs at Sodwana Bay or Kosi Bay, where Thonga fishermen catch mullet and tilapia in traditional woven traps inherited over seven centuries.

My first slice of iSimangaliso was served by local guide Sakhile on a four-wheel-drive tour. Tall, charismatic, with an infectious grin and booming baritone voice, Sakhile introduced the region’s Zulu heritage as well as its quadruped denizens, discussing ancestral spirits, sangomas (traditional healers) and the high cost of marriage: the lobola (bride price) payable by a would-be groom is, he revealed ruefully, 11 cows.

Within the park, priority is given to creatures great and, indeed, small. “Dung Beetles Have Right of Way” admonished a sign; a metronomic pinging accompanied our journey as dozens of these flying insects ricocheted off the Land Rover. Winding between wild date palms, waterberry trees and aromatic wild jasmine, we passed a zeal of zebras,

PRIDE AND JOYLions, above left; a walking safari, left; a humpback whale, right; and diving among longfin bannerfish, far right