2024 05 10 Ithala. What an amazing reserve and busted my first Cape Longclaw photo. A few tips for bird photography. Have your camera ready. Take a few deep breaths. Aim and be quick and press the button. have your camera preset.
Our son was going to visit us from England. His plans did not pan out and we had to cancel our flight and car bookings. We decided not to stay at home and visit Itala Game Reserve. We have never been there.
We did not know the way and asked our friends. Best route from Richards Bay is to follow the N2 to Pongola. It is a short dirt road over the mountains but then it is a tar road to Louwsburg.
What a view, once you have travelled through Louwsburg and you go down the mountain to the Ithala Entrance.
Ithala Game Reserve in South Africa is a great place to see wildlife. It’s in the Ngotshe Mountains in northern KwaZulu-Natal. The reserve has four of the Big Five animals and other African wildlife in beautiful areas. Ithala also has amazing rock formations that are up to 3 billion years old.
Ithala has great chalets, a camp site for 4*4, really in the wild with basic amenities. Nice roads catering for a variety of scenery. I found the staff very friendly and helpful. The chalets are spacious and cleaned daily. The restaurant is good.
It’s got a special beauty with grasslands, valleys, mountains and amazing rock formations. If you want to break away to a peaceful tranquil site, this is the place.
Specials for me on this trip were the Jackal Buzzard, Cape longclaw (This is a first for me and I busted the photo), the Secretary Bird (Sitting on a nest) and the Mocking Cliff Chat.
We saw an amazing number of wild flowers and to my amazement twelve different types of grasses.
The bio diversity is amazing. We saw:
- Birds: 18 Species
- Butterflies: 13 Species
- Dragonflies: 3 Species
- Plants: 121 Species
A few highlights from Ithala.