IT was so good to be back at beloved Mkuze – I can’t begin to describe just how this sometimes embattled game reserve touches my soul.
It is something to do with its unique sense of place, its amazing powers of recovery and forgiveness, its tough, wild spirit that refuses to die.
We were only paying Mkuze a short, two-night visit this time as we were on our way to a wedding in Richards Bay. Driving there along a new road in the iSimangeliso Wetland Park had taken us longer than expected and we’d only reached Mkuze late in the afternoon. We erected our tent in a shady site in the attractive camping ground near the eMshopi Entrance Gate and our braai fire was soon sending up little puffs of smoke. We’d explore the park tomorrow. Now it was time to sit back, relax after our busy day and enjoy just being in this amazing reserve.
Mkuze’s history goes back all the way to 1912, when it was proclaimed, but it is a troubled history as this African Eden has suffered much abuse. Many attempts have been made to de-proclaim it. Once seen as a reservoir for nagana, spread by the tsetse fly, it has been drenched with poisons and its animals have been mercilessly slaughtered. From time to time, it still seems to suffer poaching problems.
It also goes through periods when it, for some reason, it receives bad press. Suddenly it seems to become fashionable to moan about Mkuze although I believe that many of the complaints are unjustified and that its detractors are so busy moaning they overlook its many attributes.
And attributes, Mkuze has many. Like our other KwaZulu-Natal parks it is physically beautiful, offering an amazing mix of scenery and thereby nurturing a huge variety of vegetation, birds, bugs and animals. In fact it is one of South Africa’s very best birding spots and has a bird list of over 420 species. It is also home to an impressive list of mammals including lion, leopard, white and black rhino, elephant, giraffe, wild dog. cheetah, hyena and a good selection of antelope.
As for its amazingly varied vegetation, I love its bushveld, savannah and grassland areas, all teeming with life, its backdrop of blue Lebombo Mountains, its magnificent woodlands, its sandveld forest and magnificent riverine trees.
It also has gloriously swampy area and its lovely Nsumo Pan, a large expanse of water offering first class birding opportunities from two hides and a large lakeside picnic area beneath giant fever trees. Another of its most popular attractions is its fig tree forest and birders shouldn’t miss the chance of doing a guided walk through this haven for forest species. Wherever you go in Mkuze, though, the birding is excellent.
We hadn’t been on a camping trip to Mkuze for ages although we’d tried to book the previous year, only to be told that the camping area was closed because of water supply problems. We’d heard that there had been an upgrade of many of the facilities and we were looking forward to a full day in the park.
The camping area was looking wonderful, with its fairly new pool and children’s playground. On a visit a few years back we’d been pleased to see that a number of indigenous saplings had been planted. It was gratifying to see that these were now substantial trees, providing campers with much more shade and adding to the beauty of their surrounds.
We had a truly wonderful day in the park and were most impressed with the refurbished hides and the totally revamped picnic site at the pan. It was the end of a long rainy summer and the drought- prone park was looking glorious.
As a part of the larger iSimangaliso Wetlands Park, it appeared that a lot of money and effort was being injected into Mkuze and it made me glad. A park of many moods – no two visits are ever the same – Mkuze deserves all the love and care that it can get.
We finished the day with a sundowner at a picnic site near the camp. It is one of my favourite spots in the whole park, offering a thorn tree-framed vista of bushveld and blue mountains. A quintessential African scene, it has probably remained unchanged for eons, untroubled by the changes, the trials, the tribulations and the threats the park has faced over these years. As the setting sun painted the veld and the mountains and turned the thorn trees into dark silhouettes, I was reminded of its its resilience.
I felt immensely privileged and thankful for all the peace, joy and tranquility it had offered us over the years, in spite of the turbulent times it has weathered. And I remembered, once again, just why this beautiful Mkuze Game Reserve was such a special place.
