This Cheetah Safari in Phinda Delivers a Bucket List of Wildlife

FIVE MINUTES AFTER LANDING, we encountered our first elephant. “Oh, you are so lucky,” said our guide Jess Botha, sitting behind the wheel of the open-top Landcruiser that would be our chariot for the next few days. Maintaining a safe distance from the volatile young male, Jess accelerated off when it began taking a little too much notice of us, exclaiming, “Now, let’s go see some lions, eh?” 

We’d flown into &Beyond Phinda, a sprawling 73,000-acre game reserve in northeastern South Africa, on a 10-seat Cessna Caravan turboprop, the pilot artfully avoiding grazing warthogs as he touched down on the remote, rustic landing strip. There we were met by Jess—picture, if you will, a young Emma Bunton (aka Baby Spice) with the khaki wardrobe and enthusiasm for nature of Robert Irwin—and our tracker, Thoks Mlambo, a local community leader and expert on the flora and fauna hereabouts.  

Loading into the Landy and rolling into the bush, with Thoks perched on a “spotter seat” mounted to the vehicle’s bull bar, we immediately sighted a bucket list of iconic African wildlife. “Wow! This doesn’t happen every day, guys,” Jess reminded us. Truer words were never spoken.  

To start, there was the elephant, followed by some gnarled wildebeests and buffalo. Then, minutes later, Jess pointed through the trees to two lionesses lounging 50 meters away. I took some snaps on my iPhone, the camera zoom on max, and thought that was it for our viewing of these apex predators. Not so. “Let’s go take a closer look,” Jess said, steering the 4×4—the roofless, windowless 4×4, remember—right up to the spot where the big cats were relaxing on a dry riverbank. Apparently, since they’d already fed on a hapless herbivore earlier in the day, we had nothing to worry about. Or so Jess said. You couldn’t help but feel vulnerable in that roofless, windowless car, though. 

Jess allayed our fears. The animals of Phinda have grown accustomed to seeing &Beyond’s safari vehicles, she explained, and when all the passengers are seated, individual humans are perceived as part of a larger, indistinct object. Only when someone foolishly leans out or stands up (as this mild-mannered reporter did once, recklessly wielding his Leica and earning a swift reprimand from Jess) do people begin to resemble a tasty snack. 

For our cheetah safari, we spent only three nights at Phinda, staying at &Beyond’s Forest Lodge camp—a collection of tastefully decorated, luxury cabins on stilts designed to blend into the natural bushland surrounds. But in that brief time, we were lucky enough to see just about every critter anyone could hope to encounter on an African safari—including some of the deadliest. Like the hippo. 

Unlike adorable online sensation pygmy hippo Moo Deng, the Nile hippopotamus is a fearsome animal, responsible for more deaths in Africa each year than any other creature except the mosquito (which can carry diseases like dengue, yellow fever, and malaria). We saw these hulking beasts on several occasions during our game drives, once getting perilously close during a pitstop by a lagoon. When my travel companions—editors from glossy Singaporean fashion magazines—admired a pod of hippos from a spot a little too close to the water’s edge, Jess quickly warned them to hit reverse.  

“Yah, guys, see that one? He’s starting to snort at you; he’s not happy. Come away from the water, please. There could also be crocs in there—and you won’t even see them coming,” she admonished. I cautiously stepped around the back of the Landcruiser, ensuring there’d be something solid between me and a slippery two-tonne monster expressing its displeasure, should that situation have eventuated. Fortunately for my fate-tempting friends, the only thing that got crushed or consumed during that stop was a few frosty lagers. 

Each night, after eating outstanding cuisine at the camp’s restaurants or dining under the stars at plush alfresco barbeques, we’d be escorted by guards back to our cabins. Wild predators, many of which hunt at night, are free to roam the camp, so guests are instructed not to wander off alone after dinner, lest they become a meal themselves. 

On day two of our cheetah safari, we were scheduled to meet at sunrise for another adventure in the bush. Now, as the editors of this publication will gladly attest, I am renowned for my strict timekeeping and punctuality. Thus, just before daybreak, I was the first to leave my cabin, bringing me face-to-face with the last of the evening’s visitors: a hyena about the size of a great dane, standing in the middle of the trail. Retreating to my cabin wasn’t an option—that would’ve meant getting closer to the toothsome brute—so I slowly but surely started walking toward the meeting point. 

The hyena began to follow me. I cannot adequately describe the sensation: it was pure terror, mingled with the greatest calm I’ve ever felt. (I’ve had a good life, I thought. Guess it’s time to see what’s next. Hakuna matata.) Jess had advised us to remain cool and composed if we encountered a predator. “Just walk away slowly, don’t ever run,” she’d said. “Nothing excites a cat more than the thrill of chasing its prey.” 

Okay, but what about hyenas? (What even is a hyena? A set of jaws on four legs, by the looks of it.) As I walked, my new friend following, I wondered whether this one was acting as a decoy while its homies flanked me in the bushes, like the “clever girl” velociraptors in Jurassic Park. Thankfully, after the longest few minutes of my life, I reached the safety of the vehicle, where tracker Thoks was waiting. “Man, there was a massive hyena on the track,” I panted, knees weak, palms sweaty. “Just one? That’s nothing to worry about,” Thoks calmly replied. “If you see three, though, then you might be in trouble.” 

While I managed to avoid any three-way hyena ambushes, I did get close to a trio of cheetah brothers. The fastest animals on the planet, when not hunting, they move with a languid grace, conserving energy. We also saw plenty of their preferred prey: zebras, impalas and nyalas (another type of antelope). We spied snakes and their mortal enemy, the mongoose. There were baboons in the bush, and smaller simians by the lodge’s swimming pool. 

We awww-ed at a mother and baby giraffe and, perhaps most astonishingly, came across a mother black rhino with her calf. As critically endangered as these animals are, they are a rare sight, especially seeing as these rhinos had their horns intact. Most have had them painlessly removed by rangers to discourage poaching, which has driven this breed to the brink of extinction—all because some people are foolhardy enough to believe rhino horn, made of a toenail-like material, contains medicinal or aphrodisiac qualities.  

My family told me I was oddly quiet for about a week after I got back from Africa. The wildlife and incredible landscape of Phinda left a mark on me. But so too did a visit to the shantytowns of Soweto, on our way home through Johannesburg. Here, some of the poorest people on earth—mostly unemployed, whole families living on around US$50 per month in government benefits—shelter in makeshift shacks, with no plumbing, sanitation or electricity. Here, you’ll see residents picking through their equally impoverished neighbors’ garbage for scraps, surrounded by hand-painted advertisements for undertakers and gravestone masons. Here, death is a constant presence—there were 27,000 murders in the nation last year, 98 percent of the victims black South Africans.  

Today, more than 60 percent of South Africans live in poverty, according to World Bank figures, and a third are unemployed—while nearly half of its young people are jobless. Desperate circumstances lead to desperate acts, unfortunately, making traveling independently in South Africa inadvisable. Whether you’re in the bush or the city, you need someone guiding you and keeping you out of harm’s way. Operators like &Beyond ensure you’re taken care of through every leg of your journey—and that some of the money you spend goes towards improving the lives of local people and animals alike.  

Winning numerous accolades for responsible tourism and sustainable practices, &Beyond partners with non-profit Wild Impact to support programmes that fight poaching and preserve Africa’s natural environment and wildlife, and provide education, employment, medicine, infrastructure and social services to communities in the areas where the company’s lodges and resorts are located, across Africa, Asia and South America.  

You’ll be changed for good by the experience of visiting a place like Phinda—and South Africa more broadly—particularly knowing you’re supporting change, for good, where it’s so desperately needed. 

www.andbeyond.com; all-inclusive rates for a Suite per person twin share from ZAR 16,000 (USD 936) per night.  

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