My other half has been begging me to go camping and my reply has always been, “I will go, as long as you find me a camp with my own clean bathroom and a plug-point that I can stick my hairdryer into.”
When you take this city girl out of the city, you can’t take the city out of the girl – that’s why I was apprehensive when I was invited to the Nkelenga tented camp in Thornybush Nature Reserve.
I needn’t have worried. As we arrived at the tent, my husband’s first were: “Taa-daa, I found it”.
The three tents at the self-catering Nkelenga camp are fairly spaced apart for privacy. They are air-conditioned, have their own bathrooms with toilet, double beds, cupboards, night stands with lamps and a true camper’s worst nightmare, electricity (hooray!). It was a home away from home and in the most spectacular setting Africa has to offer. The spoiling doesn’t stop there as the guests at Nkelenga are treated to their own tracker and game ranger, and the property is also serviced daily.
The camp is self-catering, has a pool for those hot, strangely humid, summer days, a main house with all the amenities, a kitchen, dining room, lounge area, a double-bed room and a wide veranda overlooking the watering hole.
So you can do the bush thing without doing the bush thing, if you know what I mean…
On arrival at Thornybush Game Lodge we were welcomed with the kindest smiles and freshest homemade lemonade. It was a great start to an enjoyable weekend without a cellphone signal and the hustle and bustle of our lives.
The Thornybush Nature Reserve spans 11 500 hectares and is part of the Thornybush Collection. The collection consists of eight lodges in the nature reserve and one in the Sabi Sands. Thornybush Game Lodge, Chapungu Bush Tented Camp, Serondella Lodge, Monwana Lodge, Waterbuck Lodge, N’Kaya Lodge, Shumbalala Lodge and self-catering lodge Nkelenga lie within the Thornybush Nature Reserve and the lodge in Sabi Sands is called Simbambili Game Lodge. They are all graded 4 and 5 stars.
Our knowledgeable game ranger, Joseph Mabunda aka Joe, whisked us away to the Nkelenga tented camp in his Land Rover. The camp is one of a kind, fenced off, in the middle of the reserve among the wild animals, overlooking a watering hole.
“We spotted a leopard here this morning,” said Joe. “If you are lucky he will come back today.” This excited me. I have been on a game drive before but have never been lucky enough to see the elusive leopard. The evening game drive with Joe and his son, the tracker, Vusi, was far more successful than even they had expected.
They are the only father and son team in the area and their knowledge of the bush, animal tracks and patterns is astounding.
I shout to Vusi from the back of the landie, “Leopards please”. Within five minutes we suddenly take an off-road turn into the bush. Vusi stares down at prints in the sand and points right. The vehicle steers right and stops.
“This is your lucky day,” Vusi says. There, sitting in the bush about 8m away, is a leopard. After a closer inspection we realise there were two leopards, a mother and her son. These animals are by far the most beautiful I have seen. They are flawlessly beautiful. Their coats are unmatched by any other animal in Africa. They walk around with such unimaginable grace yet, in reality, they are unforgiving beasts.
Ten minutes later and Vusi stumbled across three lionesses. “Lions are the laziest animals you will ever come across,” Joe tells us, and “if they didn’t have to eat they would always be asleep”.
The next morning ended ouradventure in the bush. It was sad to head off into reality again, although reality in Africa used to be what we had just experienced, minus all the luxuries. - Saturday Star