Mkhuze Game Reserve
The Mkhuze Game Reserve lies off the main tourist routes and the visitor numbers are modest by South African standards.
The Mkhuze River curves along the reserve's northern and eastern borders with a fine stretch of fig forest along its banks. Fish eagles swoop over the pans, snatching prey spotted from their perches in the fever trees. The Lebombo Mountains form the Western border.
The reserve has an astonishing diversity of natural habitats including broad stretches of acacia savannah, swamps and a variety of woodlands and riverine forest. A rare type of sand forest also occurs in the reserve.
This diversity of habitat allows a wide variety of animal species to flourish including black and white rhinoceros, elephant, giraffe, nyala, blue wildebeest, warthog, eland, hippo, impala, kudu and other smaller antelope. Rare species occurring in the reserve are cheetah, hyena, suni and leopard.
Three game viewing hides have been constructed next to the Kubube, Kamasinga, Kwamalibala pans. Visitors park their cars and enter the hides on foot. Depending on the surface water in the reserve, but normally during the drier winter months,large concentrations of game visit the waterholes giving the visitor an excellent chance of seeing and photographing the reserves larger animals.
Two beautiful pans, Nhlonhlela and Nsumo , lie in the north and east respectively, home to communities of hippo, crocodile, pink backed and white pelicans, as well as a diversity of ducks and geese which gather in spring.