Converted To Conservation

Magnificent scenery, wonderful facilities and evangelical rangers make Thanda Safari easy to believe in

- Bruce Dennill

“Hallelujah!”

Someone in the game vehicle has answered a question about something we’ve stopped to see correctly and our guide, Buselaphi Mngomezulu, gives the moment the full gospel treatment, complete with a smile almost as wide as his massive shoulders.

There’s a response – “Amen!” – from elsewhere in the Land Cruiser and a young woman who has acknowledged a strict religious upbringing raises her hands in the air with a smile.

It’s an atmosphere that’s rather different to the mood on many game drives, where protocol involves listening to a minor lecture about the gestation period of an impala and grumbling about Kenneth bleeding Newman changing the names of the birds just when you’d managed to remember a handful of them.

It’s the sort of tone that informs the way you look at the way a day begins. For instance, after it’s been raining all night, with pink lightning (something to do with the refraction of the light through the clouds) piercing the sky, the thick red mud of the Thanda Safari landscape is now somehow, simultaneously sticky and slippery. This means, among other things, that the game drives can only follow certain routes rather than utilising the reserve’s whole road network – and even then, a good deal of time is likely to be spent fishtailing around corners. Nobody actually grumbles, but there’s a sense that the morning drive is more likely to be about ticking a box on the schedule than having a brilliant wildlife experience.