Rhinos on safari at Honeyguide Khoka Moya

by Billy Hare

We seem to embark on an epic Kruger educational about twice a year on average and I was fortunate enough to be one of the 8 to be picked for our recent trip to the area. This trip was a little different to ones I had been on before as we were visiting properties (….and many of them too!) mostly on the outside of the actual park and in private reserves like The Manyeleti and The Timbavati, both bordering and open to The Kruger so that wildlife can roam freely between the areas. With David as our designated driver, we completed about 1200km in total, almost the distance between Cape Town and Johannesburg. Let me just say that David did his advanced drivers course in a mini van…. and leave it at that!

We arrived at Honeyguide Khoka Moya in The Manyeleti in the early afternoon, after a whirlwind tour of some properties in Hazeyview that we use for self-drive guests en route to the Kruger or from Kruger to the Panorama Route. We arrived just in time for a glass of wine, a beautifully simple but ample lunch and then the afternoon game drive with our ranger, Jason, and our tracker, Philip. This was the first time I had been to a camp where there was absolutely no fencing and as we waited for lunch to be served, two huge elephant bulls calmly waltzed into the camp area and started dining too! Two small trees about a metre from the bar were completely decimated in minutes and then, in need of a drink, our friend calmly strolled over to pool where guests approaching for lunch got the fright of their lives and drank from the pool as if it were a Martini glass in his favourite cocktail bar. “No muddy watering holes for me! They’re soooo last season!”

I couldn’t get over the temperature range during the day either. It was really cold on the early morning and evening game drives but then as they day progressed, it got hotter and hotter until we were looking at temperatures in the late 20’s… hot enough for a swim actually. My advice to travellers in the Winter months of June, July & August is to pack layers that can be removed or added as the temperature changes.

We stopped off at the other, slightly more luxurious Honeyguide Mantobeni Camp as we headed out on our game drive and had a look around the public areas. The camp was fully booked so we never got a chance to see the tented accommodation but if the public areas are anything to go by, the tents must be very beautiful as well. Simple but elegantly designed … and thankfully no Africana to be found anywhere! Jason was a brilliant ranger and we learned a lot about the smaller things that people often forget to ask about. I find that people are so eager to see the big 5 that they forget about the birds, plants and other smaller animals found in the game areas. Every animal and plant has an interesting story about them, as quite often, they have developed specific characteristics or defence mechanisms for survival as a species, even the Impala believe it or not, and this is what Jason was good at communicating to us. We have all been on plenty of safaris between us and there are certain animals one just never gets to see like the African Wildcat, The Civet and certain shy nocturnal species like the white tailed Mongoose and we saw them all on one game drive.

The proprieters of Honeyguide Camps (Khoka Moya and Mantobeni Camps), Christoff and Peter and their reservations whiz, Alison, flew down to meet us and spend time with us. I was really impressed at this and to me it spelled out a commitment to Rhino Africa and to our clientele.

The Manyeleti has an interesting history. During the apartheid years in South Africa, people of colour were obviously not allowed to enter the Kruger (unless they were working there) and The Manyeleti was a reserve that was exclusively reserved for this purpose. Because of this, it is not as developed as the other private reserves and Kruger concessions in the Greater Kruger area and has only 3 camps! Two of them are the Honeyguide Camps, both tented camps with Honeyguide Khoka Moya being a little more standard than Honeyguide Mantobeni…although we love the L’Occitane guest amenities in the bathrooms. Both properties offer the fully inclusive safari experience that people have come to expect on their South African safari and the food was out of this world. What better way to connect with Africa than to stay in comfortable Botswana-style tented accommodation in an unfenced camp in an uncrowded reserve!

2007/07/11 | permalink |

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Rhinos on safari at Honeyguide Khoka Moya

by Billy Hare

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