Amazing Zimanga

We head north to Zimanga, the first South African game reserve designed specifically for photographers. Located in KwaZulu Natal, not far south of the Mozambique border, this is a private game reserve of 7000 hectares (about 18000 acres), which is in turn part of a larger estate with sugar cane production. The name Zimanga was chosen to sound suitably African, but it’s also an anagram of "Amazing". We wait to see how well that’s justified

The rather boring more than 3 hour drive north from Durban is eased by our guide Mohammed filling us in on South African history and geography, and also by an unscheduled stop while they wrangle three enormous wind turbine blades across the highway.

Once we’re off the road it takes the best part of the 1/2 hour to drive across the reserve to the lodge. At a quick pre-lunch briefing we discover that Colin, John and I will be in the night hide, so after lunch and a quick freshen up we head out to the hide. Personally I could have done with being eased into the process a bit more, but to give each group a fair crack at each activity and location we don’t have that luxury.

The night hide is very well equipped with a kitchen, flushing toilet, beds, electricity and WiFi, as well as shooting chairs and tripods in front of an enormous glass window, fronting onto a watering hole just below our eye level. However despite all the concessions Zimanga makes to your comfort, sitting in the night hide is very boring. You have to be quiet, and can’t use screens or any other lights near the window.

Nothing happens for most of the night. A jackal walks through a couple of times but outside the range of the lights, and that’s about it. We fail miserably to follow the advice to sleep in shifts, and by the small hours we all doze off in the chairs. It’s quite possible that a unicorn visited the watering hole between 2 and 4 am and we all missed it.

Fortunately our patience is rewarded, and shortly after we wake up around 5 am the watering hole is visited by a very majestic water buffalo.

Dawn Game Drive 1

At 6 we’re collected by our guide Tyrone, for a dawn game drive. My first realisation is how badly I have underestimated the cold. Packing, my uppermost thought was "Africa" not "winter", and I was also thrown by the instruction to avoid bright colours, which eliminated most of my wardrobe. As a result I am woefully underdressed for the back of an open jeep in ambient temperature just above freezing.

All this is forgotten when Tyrone and the other guides converge on a pair of adult male cheetahs. The pair are brothers and live and work together. They are perfectly happy with humans watching on foot as long as we observe a safe minimum distance. They pose for us, play, groom each other and mark their territory in stunning dawn light, and many exposures are made.

After leaving the cheetahs each group takes a separate route back to the lodge. On the way we find buffalo, various birds, and a group of rhino with a youngster, who seem quite relaxed to have us come close in the jeep.

After an excellent breakfast we have the morning to ourselves for ablutions, image editing, and the chance to catch up on missed sleep.