Day 16 – St Lucia to Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park – 24 September

We got an early start at St Lucia – partly because I hated the St Lucia Safari Lodge, and partly because we wanted to get to Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park early enough to get a game drive in. We got to the Park gate not long after 10 and decided to do the northern part of the park, or Hluhluwe first as we were booked into Mpila Camp, which is in the southern part, iMfolozi. We saw loads of animals and I got very excited about the rhinos – not realising at that point that we’d have more than 30 sightings of them over the couple of days we spent in the park! We saw a giraffe early on which was grazing in the road, and didn’t bother moving off when we drove around it – they are huge!!!!!

We covered a fair bit of the park in the morning and went as far as Hilltop Camp before turning back and checking in to Mpila. We got Chalet 1 – another disabled chalet! No idea why we keep getting them, not that it matters really. The chalet was fairly basic, with electricity only between 7am and 10pm, and you have to bring your own water. Each chalet has a braai though, and as it was Heritage Day we HAD to braai, even in the fairly strong winds and nippy temperatures! We were warned to stay by our braai while your meat is cooking – not sure whether because of the monkeys or because of predators, as the camp isn’t fenced at all. You are also not advised to wander about after dark, so we didn’t! We did a quick drive in the afternoon in the iMfolozi Park but didn’t see anything at all really and the roads were pretty bad, so just came back and started the fire. Mpila Camp is more basic than some places we’ve stayed in, but still very comfortable and with everything you need – even a gas kettle! As they don’t have a restaurant we braaied some chops and had a quiet night in with the laptop – no TV either.