Park Life

[ TRAVEL ] UMLALAZI, NDUMO & UMKHUZE – KZN

For the past five years, our family has been going to the Kruger National Park every August to coincide with the school holidays. As we leave the park every year we already start planning for the following year in anticipation of the holiday.

However, our trip in 2016 was not a happy experience due to the severe drought in Kruger, so we decided not to make a booking for 2017. We all felt we needed a break from Kruger anyway.

My wife Merrilee and I have visited KwaZulu-Natal on only two previous occasions, so we decided to give it a try. I tried to find out as much as possible about the parks in KZN, but was not very successful in my endeavours. I could not get feedback from anyone and I had heard many negative reports about everything falling apart in many of the parks.

I am normally reluctant to say too much about a destination as it is so subjective, yet knowing that these parks are very different to Kruger – as is the Kgalagadi – each has its own beauty and attraction.

We had no problems making our plans a reality. Sandy and Allan, our daughter and son-in-law, together with Kirsty their daughter were very keen to join us for the trip and they invited Sid and Penny Fitzhenry, relatively new caravanners to come along. Their daughter and son-in-law, Jillie and Brandon Handley, also spent some time with us. The ages of the group varied from 18 to 80, making it one big happy family.

UMLALAZI RESERVE

Three caravans left Grahamstown and Port Alfred on different days and travelled through the Transkei without any problems. I might mention that this was to be primarily a birding holiday as opposed to the Big Five common to the Kruger. Allan and Sid soon got into the twitching mode (accumulating bird species on one’s list) which was great, without any stress about finding lions, leopards and other big game.