Photos from our visit on Friday to the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi National Park, a 230,000-acre preserve about 3 hours north of Durban, South Africa. Established in 1895(!), it’s the oldest nature reserve in the country, the only state-run park in KwaZulu-Natal where each of the big five game animals can be found, and is home to one of the largest populations of white rhino in the world.

This was another private game drive (perhaps our last of the trip?) and we especially enjoyed seeing the monkeys and the watching the elephant browsing on the tree in front of us.

-S 🇿🇦

A young baboon attempts to climb, but doesn’t get too far.​ ​

Warthog through the brush ​

Being stared down by an elephant​

​This lonely tree just screams African safari, doesn’t it?

A matter of scale.​

The elephant spotted above.​

Views ahead.​

On our Zoom update, Matt asked how close the animals were. It varies, of course, but here’s a good example. This shot is 130mm (for comparison, an iPhone’s 1x lens is 24mm, and its 3x lens is 77mm).

This tighter shot​ is 400mm, though I may have cropped further. So you can see that the lenses we brought really make a difference. By the way, these zebras are “hugging” as a way to keep an eye out for danger in both directions.

A water buck posing for us from the shade of a tree.

We had an excellent experience with this elephant, which spent quite a bit of time browsing from this acacia tree.

About halfway through his lunch, he casually crossed his back legs.

Here’s a short 94 second video clip from the encounter

Some young warthogs, wondering if we’re safe enough to allow them closer to the mudhole or not.

There’s a hippo in the middle of this river, though it’s a bit hard to tell.

A vervet monkey running away once I was spotted.

The “toilet seat” butt of a water buck

Loved this little pin-tailed whydah; it seemed to struggle to fly with its crazy tail feathers.

A warthog, looking guilty of something…

They have Pac-Man here! But they’re green instead of yellow, presumably for trademark purposes.

Some warthogs in situ

Baboons and a baby

Baboon marooned in a tree

Yet another kudu

View of a river valley. The rivers have been quite low, which made it much harder to find some of the wildlife we were looking for

Awww shit! …it’s a photo about dung beetles.

Some cape buffalo

A baboon carries a baby

Yet another impala. Look, these damn things are everywhere.

Our first nyala sighting

Young zebra nestling a parent

Just a shot of the landscape, for general context

Two elephants blocking the road

Elephant browsing on some grass

This baboon spread eagle as soon as he saw me.

Direct eye contact the whole time, trying to make it as weird as possible…

Another nyala

And another nyala, but this one was practicing his hurdles.

A whole mess of buffalo

Loved the mud on his horns

What might be around the bend?

An intense Samango monkey looks towards the visitor center

Additional photos on our public icloud album.