Magnificent Manyeleti

The Kruger National Park is world renowned and the private reserves – like Manyeleti Nature Reserve – that border the park’s western boundary offer some of the best up close game viewing in Africa. Sure, it may not have the magnificent panoramic landscapes of East Africa but when it comes to getting close to the wildlife few places can compete and, for photographers, this is great news.

Another bonus is that, even in the National Park itself, you will not get the same concentration of vehicles too often found at key sightings in East African parks and in the private reserves the number of vehicles attending any sighting is limited to a small number to ensure the quality of the experience.

What about the cost?

Prices per night in some lodges can exceed $1000 per person, which – to me at least – is ridiculous. You don’t need to pay anything like that much for a great wildlife experience.
OK, we’d all like to be comfortable and well fed, but the ultimate goal of a wildlife safari – surely – is excellent wildlife sightings. The animals don’t care where you’re staying.

If the key objective of your safari is to get great photographs of wildlife then what really matters is the quality of your guide. He/she is the person who will make sure you are in the right place to take those photos. Yes, to some extent, the more up market lodges can attract the best guides because they can afford to pay them a bit more and because the prestige of working for a top lodge is undeniable.The flip side of that is some of the guides at expensive lodges can be a bit smug and arrogant.

The best guides I’ve experienced have almost all been those who work in the area where they grew up. They know the bush intimately and have a deep understanding of the local ecosystem.

I’ve visited the Greater Kruger area many times, and stayed in many different camps and lodges across a wide range of prices. On my most recent visit I went to a reserve I’d not visited before, Manyeleti Nature Reserve, located between the iconic Sabi Sands and Timbavati reserves.
I’d heard plenty about it though. It was the first place recommended by South African friends when I asked them where they go when they visit Kruger. They’ve been visiting Manyeleti for more than 20 years.

Within Manyeleti there is a choice of accommodation (5 camps/lodges) some of it very inexpensive by modern safari standards. I opted to stay at Ndzhaka Camp, one of the cheaper options; again based on my friends’ recommendation.

Ndzhaka Camp

Ndzhaka is well located near the centre of Manyeleti’s 23,000 hectares and small, just 5 guest tents. Indeed it was this ‘smallness’ that was a large part of Ndzhaka’s appeal for me. Tucked away in a forest setting Ndzhaka does not offer views out across the plains but it does a wonderful sense of tranquillity, with antelopes browsing among the trees.

The guest tents are large and comfortably kitted out. The meals, taken at a large table in the dining room which could accommodate all guests, were excellent. (Smaller, more intimate tables were available)

The resident guide at Ndzhaka is Ronnie and he is outstanding. This is his home territory – he was born not far away near Kruger Park’s Orpen gate – and his knowledge, tracing skills and oneness with the bush were a joy to witness.

Another reason for choosing to stay at Ndzhaka – if one was needed – is that we could use the money we saved on accommodation to hire a private vehicle for our game drives.
If your objective is photographs there is little worse than sharing a game drive with people who simply wish to tick off as many species as possible, or who just want to see lions, and constantly want to move on when you just want to sit and enjoy a quality sighting.

Manyeleti Nature Reserve

So how was the game viewing?
Actually it was pretty damn good. The only species we ‘missed out on’ was cheetah; they are present but we didn’t manage to see any.

We saw lions, leopard, elephants, rhinoceros, a decent sized herd of buffalo, giraffes, a good variety of antelopes, plenty of zebra and managed to get 2 great encounters with a small pack of wild dogs.
The terrain is nicely varied with decent open plains, plenty of decent sized dams and a good network of tracks.

As hinted earlier, our best sighting was when we found a small group of wild dogs rousing themselves from an afternoon snooze. We watched as they went through their bonding rituals before setting off to one of the dams for a drink.

We’d seen this same pack hunting earlier in the day but lost them before they made their kill. We followed them for a while then, anticipating their destination, we went ahead to wait for them by one of the large dams.

The sun had set and it was almost dark when they finally arrived, but it was fascinating to watch them take turns to drink while others kept watch. Quite right too as there was a crocodile floating in towards them, ready to attack if they got careless.