Going to “the bush” – meaning a game reserve or something similar – is a popular pastime for South Africans. How did Roy and I get so lucky as to crack the nod to Idwala Private Lodge in the Big 5 Nambiti Game Reserve?

Well, our friends Brigid and Clive have been coming here for more than ten years. They own a fractional share of the lodge, which they generally use to host family and close friends.

This time, when one of the five villas became available for the last few nights of their stay, they invited us to join them there.

Located 25km from the town of Ladysmith in KwaZulu-Natal province, near the foothills of the Drakensberg mountain range, Nambiti is a bush retreat and game conservancy that covers 10 hectares (22,000 acres). It’s about a three-hour drive from either Durban or Joburg.

Day One, Sunday

Once we’d signed in at the main gate – security is very, very strict – we drove to the guest car park where game ranger Graham was waiting to load us and our stuff on to the game vehicle and ferry us to the lodge, a 15-minute drive away.

Idwala describes itself as a “five-star self-catering luxury private lodge” – and it’s the only private lodge in the reserve; the other nine lodges are all commercially operated. (Click here to check out the Nambiti website, including contacts for the other lodges.)

Idwala’s spectacular design incorporates lots of floor-to-ceiling glass, both in the common areas and in the individual villas, making the most of its fabulous outlook onto nature.

 

Hardly had we put our bags down when Clive announced an impromptu game drive. With locum game ranger Graham at the wheel, we piled on to the Toyota Land Cruiser-based game vehicle: Clive, Roy and me, brothers Struan and Mark Campbell from Durban, and the Cape Town contingent – Clive’s daughter Amy and her boyfriend Ryan, plus their friends Shannon, her husband (another Ryan) and their serene seven-month-old, Xavi, already a seasoned safari-goer.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

What did we see? Zebra and kudu, eland and warthogs – a great start.

Back at the lodge, superb caterer Brigid was putting together a late Sunday lunch seafood buffet, everything from homemade seafood samosas and an outstanding fish pâté made from shad that had been caught by Clive and smoked and smooshed by Brigid, to a whole roasted rock-cod, prawns and langoustines grilled on the barbecue.

Day Two, Monday

Roy knows only one 5.30 per day, and it’s not 5.30am; so I left him to his beauty sleep and joined the morning game drive.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Stopping for coffee is a well-oiled tradition, and the favourite mugful – a mocha-choco mixture of Nescafé and hot chocolate – tastes way better than it sounds.

When you arrive at the lodge – and each time you return from a game drive – Themba beats the welcoming drum at the front door and ululates a bit. (You get used to it.)

Themba and her team do everything but the cooking. They do help with breakfast, however, and Themba bakes an enormous batch of irresistible rusks and cookies each week.

Breakfast/brunch was the usual generous affair on the alfresco viewing platform. After that, you whiled away the afternoon at the poolside, or in your room with its Zen views of unspoilt bush.

With Idwala’s full-time manager and game ranger Jeff Mokgothu back behind the wheel, the afternoon game drive departed around 4.15pm, only returning after sunset.

Jeff is a great driver with a wealth of knowledge and experience. He has been at Nambiti for ten years, and clearly knows the terrain like the back of his hand.

Elephants having blocked the route, Jeff had to take the long way home. Then tragedy struck:  we couldn’t stop for G&Ts, because there’s a rule against alighting within one kilometre of a sighting of a member of the Big Five: lions, leopards, buffalos, elephants and rhinos.

In quick succession, we’d seen: mixed herds of zebras and wildebeests, which like to graze together; giraffes – many of them up on a ridge, but also a couple close enough to enjoy properly; a white rhino and her baby, picturesquely grazing on the banks of a dam; elephants, one of which came so uncomfortably close that we had to get away sharpish; a couple of hippos, one on the far bank of a dam and the other yawning in the water; an eland or two, and plenty of warthogs.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Day 3, Tuesday

Part of the excitement of every game-drive is that you never know what magnificent animal you might spot; and so it was that our first major sighting of the morning was of the largely nocturnal Roy, rarely seen abroad before noon, but now boldly boarding the game vehicle at the unaccustomed hour of 7am.

Before long, we came upon a large herd of buffalo, including one very young calf,  crossing the road in front of our vehicle and at one point literally surrounding us.

A buffalo will not hesitate to kill you, especially if you seem to pose a threat, says Jeff – he has seen one chasing a lion up a tree.

Fortunately, none of these potentially murderous beasts regard the game vehicle as a threat, so you’re generally safe as long as you remain on board. A lion, he explains, will not attack you until you start looking and acting like prey – walking or running around, for example.

Our last stop was a frankly eerie site where the reserve butchery* throws skulls, bones and skins on to the ground for the delectation of the vultures.

Numerous threatened white-backed vultures that had been stalking zombie-like around their gruesome buffet took off in fright as we drove up; several Cape vultures remained perched on top of the acacias.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

* Various animals such as impalas, warthogs, wildebeests and eland are butchered whenever there’s a need for culling, explains Brigid. The game gets processed into venison, boerewors (sausage) or biltong (strips of dried meat), and supplied to the lodges that want it.

Struan was the best game-spotter of the group, and this morning he spied a rare serval cat on a grassy slope.

He is also something of a twitcher, and uses an app called Sasol eBirds that’s available from the app store for around R159 (less than ten quid).

Some of the more interesting bird species spotted included: Swainson’s spurfowl, the black-bellied bustard, the tawny eagle, the long-tailed widowbird, the rufous-naped lark, the black-shouldered kite, the Diederik cuckoo, the common fiscal, the Cape longclaw, the mocking cliff chat, the African wattled lapwing (plover, above left), the African Darter (above right), the pin-tailed whydah, the Southern red bishop, the red-billed oxpecker (picking ticks off buffalos), several splendid secretary birds, and of course this morning’s white-backed vultures and Cape vultures.

Day Four, Wednesday – departure

Time for one last game drive – just Jeff, Clive and me today, the other regulars having reluctantly torn themselves away from Nambiti and headed back home.

Have you heard of the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing?  The scientifically proven benefits of spending time in a forest or other green space include boosting immune system functioning, reducing stress hormones, heart rate and blood pressure, and much more.

It’s so true, and we should all get into nature more often. As I bumped along in the game vehicle, a million miles from the city, breathing in the heady scents of crushed wild mint, sage and myriad other pungent aromatics of the African bush, I felt an extraordinary rush of happiness and wellbeing.

And when we stopped at the dam for Clive to throw a line, instead of my usual impatience I felt I could have spent the rest of the day there – doing nothing except breathing, absorbing the atmosphere and soaking up the sun.

Footnote

Apart from Idwala, Nambiti has nine game lodges to choose from. Neighbouring Esiweni Lodge is one of the loveliest, says Brigid, poised as it is on a cliff and overlooking the river.

With prices currently ranging between R1,400 and R6,800 per person per night, Nambiti has something for most budgets.Find out more at www.nambiti.com.

Thanks again for sharing your beloved Idwala with us, Clive and Brig – it was a wonderful experience!