Falling in love with Ithala Game Reserve

By Roxanne Reid
Crack! It sounded like a gunshot but it was just a big bull elephant breaking branches for a mid-morning snack. I was standing just a few metres away and rapidly falling in love with Ithala Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal.

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The elephant was ignoring the visitors and staff peering at him as he browsed on a tree right next to Ntshondwe camp’s restaurant deck. He’d stretch up, reaching into the tree with his head held high, trunk fully extended, setting up a rhythm of branch breaking and munching. So much for the special elephants of Mfuwe Lodge in Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park – Ithala's Ntshondwe camp has its own elephant excitement in KwaZulu-Natal.

One of the staff told us in a whisper that elephants often visit close to the camp, but usually only for a day or two before they move on. This bull had been there every day for the past two weeks. ‘There are also five others, females, who are coming,’ she said. ‘This bull likes to be the only one and he will fight other bulls.’

An elephant enjoys brunch in peace at the edge of the restaurant deck after visitors scatter

The following morning a walk to the hide in front of the restaurant complex revealed the mayhem the elephant had caused – trees broken, others pushed over, part of the landscaped garden trampled. Although he hadn’t moved too far and was still drinking at the waterhole, staff were already clearing up some of his mess.

It’s no wonder we got a list of guidelines for elephant viewing when we entered the gates at Ithala – advice about keeping a distance of at least 30m, not cutting off their escape route, not getting out of our car. There was also info on signs of stress or aggression in elephants, helping visitors to read elephant behaviour and avoid confrontations. It’s a great idea and I think SANParks should adopt it at the Kruger National Park too.

Ntshondwe camp and its chalets are beautiful; this is a place to wander and explore

Ntshondwe is one of the nicest camps we’ve ever been to. It’s built into the natural landscape on a plateau at the foot of Ngotshe mountain, with boulders, euphorbias, acacias, wild figs and cabbage trees in between the thatched chalets. There’s a swimming pool, a few self-guided nature walks, an info centre with displays that kept us intrigued for nearly an hour, a restaurant and a coffee shop.

Viewing deck on the Nghubu Loop

But no matter how lovely the camp, we wanted to get out on a game drive. We set out early one morning on the Nghubu Loop, a 30km circular drive with some 20 points of interest marked with letters of the alphabet and cross-referenced on an info sheet we bought at the shop.  The route was windy and attractive, looking down on rolling hills and up towards towering cliffs. We crossed over rivers a few times, but in mid September they were really just trickles.

Rivulets here and there are an attractive variation among the scenery of rolling hills

Some points of interest were marula, red ivory and scented thorn trees, an old Zulu kraal at the foot of ‘Iron mountain’, quartzite in the Ngubhu valley, a termite colony, cliffs where you might see Verreaux’s eagles and – just when we were lamenting that the bushiness of the vegetation obscured our view – a viewing platform that laid the scenery out before us.

You shouldn’t expect to see the same wealth of game sightings as you would in a park like Kruger. Ithala has elephant, rhino, buffalo and leopard, but not Kruger’s numbers and in some areas the bushy vegetation is a hindrance to viewing. But at Ithala there’s a peacefulness and scenic beauty of rolling hills and sharp cliffs of sandstone and dolerite that has its own charm. 

Even the tall giraffe here are dwarfed by some of the mountains and koppies

We saw giraffe, impala, Burchell’s zebra, a beautiful big kudu bull and blue wildebeest. At the Nghubu picnic site, some waterbuck were grazing and an acacia pied barbet was calling mournfully. The picnic site had braais, loos and tables and benches. During our three days in the reserve we also saw baboons, a few warthog families, tsessebe, hartebeest, rhino and a lone eland.

Doornkraal campsite at the edge of the river was deserted when we visited

We looked in at the rustic Doornkraal campsite laid out on the river’s edge, where we could see and hear the water purling over the rocks, although the red sand and vegetation was very dry in mid-September. There were flush loos and hot bush showers, a bush kitchen and communal dining area. Like Ntshondwe and Ithala’s bush camps, the campsite was unfenced for that wilderness feeling, but the only wildlife we saw there was a mocking chat.

On our last day, we walked the Plum-coloured Starling nature trail among the boulders between the swimming pool and the cliffs overlooking Ntshondwe. A flash through the trees was impossible to identify until we heard the call of the trumpeter hornbill.

There are four short trails (1-4 hours) at Ntshondwe, taking you onto the mountains behind the camp

On our way from camp to the exit gate, we stopped at an area of deep soil erosion where a turtle dove’s call emerged from a deep hum of silence. Ezemvelo has turned the eroded area into a positive by erecting an info board at the site. They speculate that the erosion may have started with overgrazing back in the 1900s when it was the site of a gold mine’s donkey camp. Now they’ve used gabions to arrest water flow, retain soil and encourage plant growth to prevent further erosion. Yearly photo evidence from a fixed point indicates that at least it isn’t getting any worse. 

The deep erosion area, which is now been monitored

I know Ezemvelo is going through some tough times, with senior executives suspended at the end of last year. But this reserve and its Ntshondwe camp were so beautiful I couldn’t understand why it was like a ghost town, just a handful of other visitors in a place with 36 chalets and another 28 rooms catering for conference delegates.

Ntshondwe won three AA Travel Guides and SAA Resort of the Year awards. Its reviews on Tripadvisor are overwhelmingly positive. So why was the place so quiet? Receptionist Prisca Mbatha shook her head sadly, ‘I think maybe it’s a lack of marketing.’

Well, here’s some marketing for beautiful Ithala: if you’ve been to Kruger and you’ve overcome the urgency to see lions, lions and more lions, if you’re looking for a scenic reserve where you can chill out while watching wildlife, where you can stay in comfort in one of the loveliest camps in the country, then give Ithala Game Reserve near Louwsburg in northern KwaZulu-Natal a chance next time you make holiday plans.

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