In the North East corner of Swaziland is the Kings National park, Hlane. We decided to really spend up and rent a cottage in the park for a few days ..a whole 35AUD$ a night. It was a Thatched, stone walled cabin with all the mod cons. .except power! There was a good gas fridge and a great fire pit to cook up a storm. Just outside our front door was a lagoon that a small pod of hippo were living in, and they turned out to be very chatty, calling out to us in thier special way, all day and night.
The roads in the park were very deep mud, and we decided to be lazy and have the rangers take us in one of their open top land rovers to see some lions and elephants. …no big deal, just a relaxing evening visit in a part of the park we hadn’t seen yet.
Our first break to the serenity was seeing a large mud and dust cloud about 50m in front of us, from the dust exploded two bull elephants having a full on brawl. It was like watching two freight trains colliding. One of the bulls had a broken tusk ( what should have been an indicator to the other elephant that this guy likes a good fight). The loosing elephant stormed off through the scrub looking for someone he could beat in a scrap….enter us in our Landover!
The bull full on charged at the car, and our guide floored it flat strap in reverse down the track to make good our dignified retreat. After about 50 meters, old mate thought he had won and called it quits. I would like to s ay I had it so together that I took perfect photos of the charge….but the truth is they are all over the shop.. an angry eye here, cranky ear there…etc..etc.
The image of the huge bull with ears out and trunk up charging at what must have been 20km/hr was life changing. I would like to see all ivory poachers tied to posts to let those boys practice their charging skills.
The guide founds a smaller (still the size of a house) female with a baby. He told us she was a good ‘chaser’ so be ready for anything. He backed the rover slowly into the mothers comfort zone, she gave a polite trumpet to indicate…back off dick head.
We edged a little closer.
This time I filmed the whole process.
That mother was all over us like a fat kid on a cup cake!
We then had the privilege of finding three female lions having a little gnaw on an unfortunate impala. I thought we would sit back and watch, but the guide idled right up to within about 5 meters. That sounds fine for a car in a lion park…but this was an open wagon with real wild lions. They were amazingly tolerant, and we took some stunning photos. The guide then warned us, and threw a ‘feather’ out into the lions ‘space’. Whilst I’m sure she was just curious, the lion was up and onto us , looking all the world like the perfect hunting machine that she was.
That prowling lion was no more than a meter from us, and the only reason we weren’t lion-snacks is because, she chose not to have a go.
Hlane was my favourite reserve, and we left with genuine sadness. …but it was well positioned for our boarder crossing into Mozambique, which is our next blog.
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