Swaziland's Best Game Park: Hlane Royal National Park

Welcome to Hlane Royal National Park

  The park fee is only $3.50 at the moment with the great Rand to Dollar conversion (nearly 14SAR=$1), but it is free if you have your WILD card. Inside the park there are two camps, Ndlovu and Bhubesi. Ndlovu is the obvious choice giving a wider range of accommodations as well as a beautiful open air restaurant overlooking a waterhole frequented by elephants and white rhinos. There are lots of activities that leave from Ndlovu Camp including bird walks, safari game drives, mountain biking, lion drives, or self driving safaris as well.

  
    The tiny kingdom of Swaziland lies completely surrounded by the country of South Africa up near the Mozambique border in the NE. There are several game parks within Swaziland and if you are searching for the best I may have just found your answer. Six years ago I checked out Mlilwane which had pretty easy game viewing in open savannas, but not many of the big name animals. If you are looking for three of the Big 5 (lion, elephant, white rhino) then Hlane Royal National Park is the place to go. It is small but intimate with close encounters galore.

White Rhino encounter

  Don't expect easy, well-kept roads like you would find in South Africa. On the crude map you receive at the gate most of the roads are labeled 'muddy' and you are told to stay off of those if it rains. The self drive area is pretty small and easily covered in one afternoon of driving. We did also find that the lions are in a separate area that you can only see if you book a safari game drive through the park. We could hear them roaring from our rondavel at night though.

Dung Beetles rolling dung

Little Bee Eater

  We chose to self drive and luckily it had been pretty dry so even in our little Ford Fiesta we were able to tackle all of the roads we came across. There were several huge dips and holes in the dirt roads but there was always 'just' enough room to slip by with our narrow sedan. The bird life was great with lots of bird-of-prey sightings and some beautiful bee eaters. Elephant and rhino dung was all over the place which provided a great habitat for dung beetles. We had several great encounters with white rhinos and came across several elephants during our drives.

  At night the rains finally came in the form of a wonderful thunder storm. It was a memorable experience sitting at the buffet dinner in the open air restaurant while watching lightning over the waterhole. There is no access to electricity in your rooms at the camp so the staff puts kerosene lamps everywhere which sets a wonderful 'out of Africa' mood.

  There is probably no need to spend more than a night here at Hlane but it is great seeing moves forward for this small country and their animal conservation. This point is really driven home when you pass the gate of Hlane Park and see an entire wall covered in confiscated snares that poachers used to try and capture animals in the past. The roads around the country are getting better, although there was a 30km strip on the way that had quite a few career ending potholes. They have a long way to go before reaching South Africa National Park levels but it can be quite nice visiting such a cozy and intimate park like Hlane.

   For wildlife photography Hlane can give you the freedom and seclusion for great photo opportunities. The entire time we drove through the park we didn't see any other cars. You can see and purchase some of my best results here: http://www.daimarsphotos.com/Africa/African-Wildlife/i-njWRZKn