Back in May, Danielle & I purchased a six day, six night South African photo safari during a fundraiser for the California Labrador, Retrievers & More Rescue organization. The safari was at Zulu Nyala Game Lodge located just outside Hluhluwe, South Africa (the pronunciation of this took me a good two weeks) which is located about three hours north of Durban.
(our fantastic safari group for the week & Ranger Ronnie)
The week was filled with six days of safari’ing through the private reserve of Zulu Nyala. Typically we would do two safari’s per day. They have four of the Big 5 on their reserve, the only one missing being lions. You can take a side trip to see lions, but since we had seen them in the Serengeti, we opted to just stick to Zulu Nyala. Our ranger, Ronnie, did a fantastic job showing us the reserve, tracking the animals and giving us lots of fun facts. The highlight might have been our night safari when we got semi-chased by a group of hippos. You wouldn’t think they could move fast just to look at them, but they move pretty swiftly.
One of the other things about Zulu Nyala is that it has been used as a set for several films. The most “famous” being I Dreamed of Africa and more recently used for one of the international Big Brother reality shows. On our last day, after we had done a considerable amount of safari’ing, I asked if we could detour and go see the sets. There are two sets and one is particularly run down but it was a lot of fun to go explore around. Danielle & I will now have to watch I Dreamed of Africa to see how it looked in the film.
All in all, a fun, (much needed) relaxing week at Zulu Nyala.
