Jewel in The KZN Crown

Eight interlinked ecosystems: tick. Big Seven game viewing: tick. Turtle hikes and jaw-dropping marine adventures: tick. Superb camping and accommodation options in an unmatched World Heritage Site: tick. Yup, iSimangaliso certainly ticks all the boxes!

- Jacques Marais

Hanging back from the rest of the group, I perched on an undulating grassland dune, waiting to grab a few photos. Looking down, I watched as iSimangaliso CEO Andrew Zaloumis followed the game track, together with his wife Tracey and Lindy Duffield, the marketing manager at this ‘Place of Miracles and Wonder’.

They skirted a thicket of Umdoni trees atop the 30 000-year-old dunes, and disappeared from view. As I lifted my camera, a scream pierced the air, and within an instant all hell broke loose. Through my zoom lens, I saw Tracey running towards me on the forest edge, with a massive buffalo bull less than 10 metres behind her.

I dropped the camera and shouted loudly, hoping to distract the dagga-boy, but this had no effect whatsoever, and an instant later the buffalo crashed into her back with the full force of nearly a ton of bone, muscle and horn. The enraged bull swung its massive head, hooking his horn into Tracey’s thigh to fling her skywards like a rag doll.

“Fortunately, I never saw it coming,” says Tracey Zaloumis. “I remember being airborne and landing hard on my back.” From my vantage point, it looked like Bismarck du Plessis head-butting a kitten before the buffalo charged onwards.

All of this took three, maybe four seconds; and up to then I’d felt relatively confident that I was in control there. In a flash, it dawned on me that the buffalo was less than 15 metres from me, and moving at full tilt towards the exposed rise where I stood − giving me a couple of seconds at most in which to make my move.