The Hluhluwe hotel reminds me just a bit of a Las Vegas theme hotel. It gets some credibility since it really is out in the bush, but the African themed wallpaper and bedsheets that were probably made in China give it away. It has a huge souvenir gift shop in the middle, and the artwork in the halls looks authentic. In any case, I like it: it’s comfy and clean and has good food. It’s certainly better than sleeping in a broken down car. But maybe not as cool as sharing a rondo with a local family.
First order of business is to get a new tire, as I’m not willing to drive around without a spare. We ask the lady at the front desk and she calls up someone local who must be a friend of hers. He comes by with a pickup full of used tires, and tells me that it’ll cost 200 rand, which seems to me a darn good price. He takes off with our wheel and returns a while later with the mounted tire. It’s a bit more used than I’d like, but it’ll do for us. I don’t know if it’ll do for Avis, but we’ll figure that out later.
We get to the game park entrance, which is only about 15 minutes from the hotel. I double checked and it’s only about 1/3 as big as Rhode Island. That’s still pretty darn big. The park is basically self-serve; you just drive around on mostly dirt roads and look for animals. They have guided tours too, but we plan to do the first day by ourselves.
As we pass into the park, I wonder to myself how often one actually sees animals. I mean, it’s a huge place and they probably hide, right?
Within about 100 meters of the entrance a giraffe walks out of the bush and across the road slowly just a few meters in front of us. Sophie whips out her camera and snaps several pictures. Another few hundred meters and we come across some zebras. They’re very relaxed and continue eating the grass along the side of the road as we get right up to them.
It’s sporadic; but overall we seem to see a lot of animals: buffalo, crocodiles, baboons, various antelope, and an elephant. Some of the animals are very close, and seeing them free is really a different experience than the zoo. I felt that I was in a truly wild world. Sophie takes a whole bunch of wonderful pictures, but she’s working them now, so I’ll put up a link to them later.
We stop by the Hilltop, the place we originally planned to stay, for lunch. We didn’t check out of the Hluhluwe hotel this morning, so we will go back there tonight. But we make reservations to do a sunset safari tomorrow and then stay the night here inside the park.
Back out on the road the day goes by quickly. We end up having to pull ourselves away from a cool elephant sighting, where a whole family was crossing a river, to race back to the gate before 6PM, this time from the inside trying to get out. We make it, and relax with a nice dinner at the hotel.