When I first read my invitation to spend a weekend at Nambiti Hills Private Game Lodge, I did a double take. First, Nambiti was the nickname of a high-school friend who we teased, and second, just what animals could there really be in Ladysmith? I mean, it’s Ladysmith – two hours away from Durban and yet worlds apart.
So I packed my iPod and resigned myself to a nice, relaxing weekend away, with maybe sightings of some of the Smaller Five. You know, warthogs, impalas, kudu, birds and zebra. The stuff you see at most reserves, even the ones boasting the Big Five.
But from the minute my friend and I arrived, we knew we had the place pegged all wrong.
A 4km-long dirt road, 23km east of Ladysmith, takes you to a shared reception area where you park your car. There are 10 lodges hidden amid the bushes in the 10 000ha of wild, unspoiled terrain, the main reason why someone from the lodge meets you after you’ve parked your car.
We’re warmly greeted by a khaki-clad Sean – a game-drive guide (the only one with a rifle licence – which comes in handy later) and one half of the couple who run the place. While my friend and I are thrown about (safari vehicle plus dirt roads plus fearless driver equals good bumpy times), we ask him the question we simply have to ask: what kinda animals are we talking about here?
He nonchalantly responds: “Oh everything, the Big Five, you name it.”
At that very moment I am hurled into the air, thanks to a particularly nasty bump, and it is in midair that I meet my friend’s gaze and in his eyes I see the same wonder reflected. The Big Five? we ask silently, as if there is another set of animals that travellers the world over would kill to see.
Sean’s heard it all before, of course, and sets about setting the story straight: “The Big Five is really more a hunting term – the animals were simply the biggest and most difficult to kill. But it’s become a marketer’s dream, you know, ‘the Big Five’. But most people couldn’t even tell you what the Big Five are.” I do a quick mental check in my head: lion, rhino, elephant, cheetah and buffalo, right? Apparently, I’m one off, cheetahs are out, leopards are in. Ah, same thing I say. I’m still stunned that these magnificent beasts run wild, right here, in Ladysmith and until I see it, I still don’t believe it.
We check in, welcomed with warm towels and iced tea – Nambiti Hills is a five-star lodge after all – and soon realise that it’s a pretty exclusive little estate. I counted five chalets (split into two separate cosy abodes each) plus one honeymoon suite, decked out with a large, wraparound, um, deck, a massive bath tub that you just slide into, outdoor showers for the adventurous, a killer coffee table propped up with wooden branches, and a magnificent four-poster bed with full-on netting.
But my favourite feature was the floor – made of millions of tiny little stones, it was neither soft nor hard on your bare feet, neither cool nor warm, just the precise texture to make it perfect. Seriously, I want floors like that.
There’s also a rock pool (cooler than conventional pools in the summer), the most comfortable boma I’ve been to and a bar that only sleeps when you do.
It’s tasteful and African (fake porcupine quills and antlers spill out of large bowls, animal prints can be found everywhere and, if you look closely, you’ll spot intricate beadwork too), while the view from our suite was too much to take in with just one look.
You have a panoramic view of an open plain so vast and verdant that you’d need a week, a pair of binoculars, a video camera and someone to point things out, to really take it all in.
We’re offered some refreshments and seats on that night’s game drive. Just minutes into the drive, a sharp-eyed guest named Julia spots some movement behind a tree that turns out to be a young African bull elephant. We watch him uproot a tree as if it were as light as Nicole Richie after a colonoscopy and are suitably wowed. We then spot what I thought was a giraffe but instead turned out to be a kudu. Before you snicker, let me just tell you that kudu are ridiculously bigger than you think they are. Even sharp-eyed Julia, who could pinpoint a chameleon on a piñata from a continent away, mistakes one for an elephant later on.
We spot all kinds of buck (springbok, impala, gemsbok, who knows, it’s buck), some rotund and mellow hippos chilling in the dam, some zebra and an actual giraffe and, then, a crackling voice on the radio alerts us to the mother lode.
A trio of cheetah brothers – so vicious that they had reduced the cheetah population from 13 to five since they arrived – were spotted (ha ha) lying under a tree nearby.
Sean floors it and soon we arrive at the tree. Sharp-eyed Julia points something out to her husband and even though she squeaks with delight, he looks confused. As do the rest of us. But Sean points out a rock, and a tree and a funny-shaped piece of something and, just like that, I see it. It’s just a face, blurred out by grass, but once my eyes settle on it, the cheetah’s body seemingly materialises and I realise it’s resting on all fours.
To its right, I suddenly see the face of the second cheetah and to its left, the third.
I take back everything I thought about Ladysmith and am pretty chuffed at seeing these three beasts when suddenly, Sean says: “Alright, let’s get out and see ’em.”
Ha ha, that Sean, I think. But he loads his rifle with what I assume is a tranquilliser, and jumps off the van. I start to wonder. He then tells us to stay behind him and not make a sound: “I can only take care of you if you stay behind me, you move anywhere else, and you’re on own, cos I am only taking care of me. So stay behind me.”
Sharp-eyed Julia stifles a laugh, because at this point we realise he’s not joking. It takes me a second, and I’m out of the car – I mean, when do you ever get to go up to three wild cheetah, in the wild? Each footstep seems to make a cacophony of noise, alerting the cheetahs that not only is there a van full of tasty human snacks, but that the snacks seem to be delivering themselves.
And then Sean stops us with a silent hand gesture. The cheetahs all suddenly sit up, also silently. We’re about four metres away from them when I wonder how one rifle and one tranquilliser would help anyone if all three cats decided to attack, and the reality of the situation gets my adrenaline pumping.
We eventually get back in the van (longest walk back of my life) and, within seconds, the cheetahs are on the move. We follow them to a hilltop where some impala are grazing. In the time it takes for the van to drive around to get a clearer shot, the cheetah have already pounced and attacked a baby impala. We drive slowly to within a metre of the kill and watch the three brothers rip the limbs off the buck.
It’s a surreal moment that silences everyone. Until another guide radios in a spotting of a lioness and, with that, Sean races off to track it. He could easily waffle on about bird droppings and tree frogs – stuff most guides do get to when the Big Five feel shy. But Sean knows that while people do appreciate it, they mainly just wanna see the Big Cats. His persistence pays off and less than an hour later, we spot two lionesses in the middle of a hunt.
We end the night with a sundowner, and a chat to a nice young Alaskan couple who have just arrived. They tell us that Durban is exactly like Hawaii. They have sugar-cane plantations too, lots of hilly areas and it’s tropical with beautiful oceans and lush flora. I’m thinking they have a point.
We bond over a 5.30am game drive the next morning, in which we once again track a lioness, successfully. She is a magnificent beast, that even injured (she had some pretty nasty-looking scratches on her hindquarters from what Sean tells us was a failed hunting attack) was able to still amaze us into an awed silence.
We see a humongous hippo waddle its way across the dirt road and back into the dam, a rhino sans its horn standing as still as a tree, another elephant, an entire kaleidoscope of giraffe (yes, that really is the collective noun), a jackal, more kudu, buffalo, zebra, and a lone warthog who nearly ended up as breakfast for the lioness.
l Nambiti Hills curently has a special rate of R1 350, all inclusive, per night per person sharing, which is valid until February. For more info see www.nambitihills.com or call 031 818 0340 - The Tribune