Day 57: Home to Olifants River Game Reserve

Olifants is not a ‘get up and go to destination’ - we have to take up all food and drink. The closest shops are an hours drive away, so forgetting your toothbrush or the milk is not a good idea. As we are going for 3 weeks and have guests coming and going, it took the better part of Monday and Tuesday to shop and pack. We have been coming to the farm for 30 odd years, a couple of times a year, so I have a fairly comprehensive list of what to bring down.

We woke up at 5, I packed the cooler boxes and car fridge with the meat and perishables and we left at 6 am.  It was still dark and there was a distinct winter chill in the air. I couldn't believe how busy the roads were at that time of the morning and we had a steady flow of traffic through to Pretoria. From there it thinned out and we had a pleasant trip through to Hoedspruit. My favourite part of the drive was the beautiful forested section down Magoebaskloof to the plantations of the lowveld.

From Hoedspruit we took the gravel railway service line to the farm. We turned off at Palmloop ‘station’ to the farm office, where I collected the game drive vehicle and we headed to our home in the bush. Along the way we saw elephant, impala, nyala and giraffe.

Olifants River Game Reserve is a privately owned big 5 reserve situated in Limpopo Province, approximately midway between Hoedspruit and Phalaborwa. It is registered as a share block and there are around 80 houses on the reserve. It comprises of 6200 hectares and and has the perennial Olifants River running through it. A causeway over the river gives us access to traverse another 3000 hectares on Olifants North Reserve.

It is big game country and in 2005 the fence between the Klaserie and Balule Reserves was dismantled, allowing Game to move freely from the Kruger through the area. The farm is now an integral part of the Greater Kruger National / Transfrontier Park System.

The reserve prides itself on the strict conservation of the environment and comprises of a variety of habitat types and biomes supporting a myriad diversity of associated wildlife species from the rare Pels Fishing owl along the river, to leopards and klipspringers in the hilly bushveld sections, to the open planes where herds of game abound.

We arrived at our house, number 16, around 1 pm and unpacked the car and trailer. Gray managed to break 3 bottles of Sophie (white wine – one of Kirst’s favourites, she will be mortified), the wine had leaked into his clothes bag. So the afternoon was spent washing clothes, by hand, as there is no washing machine. 

Then it was wine time around the fire. As it gets dark around 5:30, wine time starts fairly early, as did our braai. We were in bed by 8.

As always, in the bush, we were asleep after a few pages.