Punkyl44

Anyone know how long the drive would be? Is there anything interesting to see on the way?

thit_cho

Swaziland is between the two, and Mkhaya Game Reserve is a nice place to see rhino, sable and roan. Game drives leave at set times (I did the early morning drive), so you can't just show up, but its a nice few hour game drive. Swaziland has other parks, but I only visited Mkhaya.

Michael

jasher

Hello,

It's a long drive -- you'll probably need one or two overnights along the way. A stop in Swaziland could make an interesting addition to your trip.

Cheers,
Julian

mkhonzo

You can drive between the two destinations in around 8 hours.

santharamhari

If you are doing Phinda and londolozi.......you should ask CCAfrica as to what is the quickest way......you dont want to be in the car for too long and tire out before your game drives......there could be a flight between the two.....

thit_cho

Actually, I beg to differ with the above post. Africa offers much more than private reserves, and I think you'd deprive yourself of worthwhile experiences if you were only to jet from private reserve to private reserve, and miss the villages, roads, border crossings (if you go via Swaziland), people, stores, etc. that you can only get if you overland. I would expect that you can do the drive in one long day, but you may want to break it up in Swaziland.

Michael

biggskd

I agree with Michael. We stopped at Mkhaya in Swaziland for 2 nights on the way from Ngala to Hluhluwe-Imfolozi in KwaZulu-Natal. It's a great way to break up the long drive (we actually left Ngala around 12:00pm and didn't make it to Mkhaya until around 8:00pm - we were late for departure and very embarassed). But those are the parts of the trip you remember the most - trying to find the gate in total darkness, trying to find a house with a phone and ending up at the next town's police station to use one and planning to sleep in our rental car at the gate if we couldn't contact anyone. I think if we had to drive all the way to KwaZulu-Natal we wouldn't have made it until very late that night.

My husband and I really enjoyed Mkhaya. It's a very small reserve but we were able to get very close to white Rhino and also saw a black Rhino. 1 night is sufficient if you don't have 2 nights to spare.

That said, overland is the way to go since you see so much. Have fun planning!