Top 21 parks – iSimangaliso Wetland Park

The people who are fortunate enough to live in KwaZulu-Natal’s iSimangaliso Wetland Park like to bang on about the how it possesses ‘a sense of place’. It’s not too much of a stretch to see why this small Eden inspires so much passion – beach and bush lie side-by-side and you’re as likely to find leopard spoor on the shoreline as turtle tracks.

It’s precisely this biodiversity that got it listed as South Africa’s first World Heritage Site – there’s no other place in the world with a comparable ecological footprint. The 332 000-hectare park boasts eight interlinking ecosystems, 25 000-year-old coastal dunes, five turtle species, 100 types of butterfly, more than 2 000 plant species, the top frog count in the country and more than half of South Africa’s bird species (526). Elephant, black and white rhino, oribi, cheetah, buffalo and wild dog have also been reintroduced to the park.

As Nelson Mandela so aptly put it in a speech to mark the reintroduction of elephants to the park in 2001: ‘ The Wetland Park must be the only place on the globe where the world’s oldest land mammal (the rhinoceros) and the world’s biggest terrestrial mammal (the elephant) share an ecosystem with the world’s oldest fish (the coelacanth) and the world’s biggest marine mammal (the whale).’

All of which is good for conservation and even better for affordable, self-drive tourism. Many roads in the park have now been tarred or graded, allowing relatively easy access to St Lucia, Cape Vidal, False Bay, Mkhuze, Sodwana Bay and Kosi Bay.

There are plenty of accommodation choices, including B&Bs in St Lucia, a range of Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife camps – which offer familystyle units and camping – and upmarket offerings from concessionaires, such as iSibindi Africa and Wilderness Safaris.

When to visit
iSimangaliso experiences sunny skies throughout the year. Summer is the rainy season and it can get extremely hot and humid from December to February. The winter months are dry and better for game viewing. South African school holidays bring upwards of 60 000 visitors to the beaches, so stay away if you don’t like crowds.

How to get there
Take the N2 north from Durban and follow connecting roads, depending on which park gate you want to reach. The main links are the R618 to St Lucia or the R22, which links to popular areas such as Sodwana Bay and Kosi Bay.

Park fees and opening hours
At Maphelane, Eastern Shores and Mkhuze, entry is from 05h00 to 19h00 from November to March and from 06h00 to 18h00 from April to October.

At Western Shores, False Bay and Kosi Bay, entry is from 06h00 to 18h00. Sodwana Bay has 24-hour access, year round.

Entry fees at most of the camps are R15 a vehicle, R20 an adult and R10 to R15 for children under 12. For Eastern Shores and Mkhuze, vehicle fees start at R35 if there are fewer than 10 people and increase according to the number of people in the vehicle. Entry is R25 an adult and R15 a child. There’s no entry fee at Lake Sibaya.

Camping costs vary from R60 to R90 an adult a night. For more information, detailed directions and maps, go on-line and visit www.isimangaliso.com.