Tembe Elephant Park

Tembe is a must-visit safari destination for anyone doing a trip around KwaZulu-Natal. Its unique ecology sets it apart from any other park, and you are sure to come very close to the native wildlife. It is renowned for its large elephant population, and for being one of the few remaining destinations where bull elephants can grow exceptionally large tusks (so-called “tuskers”) in Southern Africa. Because of the dense vegetation and narrow roads across large portions of this park, you are sure to get very close to these giants as they often use these roads to get around. 

The park also houses the other Big 5. You often see large herds of impressive African buffaloes down by the large and open Muzi Swamp to the east side of the park (elephants also often gather here). There’s a healthy population of lions that are often seen. Both white and black rhinos are present, with white rhinos being seen regularly (not often), and black rhinos being very shy and rare. There’s also a healthy leopard population here, but they are shy, and observations are lucky. 

Additional wildlife of note are the vastly numerous nyala, a beautiful spiral-horned antelope (this is probably the best place in the world to see this antelope), African wild dogs (if you are lucky), Natal red duiker, southern giraffe, bushbuck, greater kudu, zebra, wildebeest, impala, and many other species. Be sure to look out for the tiny suni antelope, which hides in the dense sand forest sections of the park.

Short answer: Big 5 safaris (particularly for elephants), volunteering

Long answer:

Most people come here for Big 5 safaris in the hopes of getting close to the elephants that roam this park, and hopefully be lucky enough to see one of the tuskers. Your best chance of getting close to these giants in a safe way is to book a safari with a professional guide. An overnight stay at the Tembe Elephant Park Lodge will get you both a nice luxury accommodation inside the park and safari drives (both morning and evening) with experienced drivers. There also various safari companies that arrange day trips to Tembe from other areas of KwaZulu-Natal (such as St Lucia Town).

To get a really wild and exciting adventure it is possible to self-drive inside the park. A 4×4 vehicle is a must, as the roads a rough and sandy. Only 10 vehicles are allowed inside the park each day. Some experience with driving in Big 5 parks is recommended before doing this one. Elephants do get close, and you should know how to handle such situations. Be respectful, keep your distance, turn off engines, and let the elephants walk towards you, instead of you driving up to them. If you decide on a self-drive (which I do recommend if you know what you are doing – and it is cheaper), then be sure to head to Mahlasela Hide (which is found along the southern portion of the park heading east), and drive up the East Swamp Road on the eastern side of the Muzi Swamp to get a good and open view of the area. There is another hide further north, on the western edge of the swamp, called Ponweni, which is also a nice place to stop and have a look. Bring a map to make sure you do not get lost (there are road signs throughout the park that helps you). Also, you should know that only the bottom third of the park is open to tourists. The rest is wilderness areas, so be sure to respect the “No Entry” signs when you see them.

If you really want to get to know the place, then I highly recommend staying for two weeks as a research volunteer with Wildlife Act. You won’t get luxury accommodation, but you’ll get more then good enough accommodation at the Tembe Research Camp, and you’ll get many more drives for a lot less money than traditional luxury safaris. You’ll also get to partake in the research that is going on the park, particularly regarding the elephants, lions, and the African wild dogs (at least that was the focus during my time in the park – check their website for recent updates). 

For wildlife watching, the best time to visit would be during the dry season (the South African winter), from May to September. When its dry, there is a lot less vegetation, which means it is easier to spot wildlife. At the same time, many animals then tend to gather around water holes, particularly the elephants. Mahlasela Hide, which is situated near a water hole, is particularly popular to visit during this period, both for tourists and for the native wildlife that needs to quench their thirst.

My personal favorite time to visit Tembe is October, just after the first rain. The place is then still quite open, as vegetation hasn’t really grown back yet, but the place is becoming greener and prettier. At the height of summer (the rainy season from November to March), the place is lush and green, but wildlife is often harder to spot, and fewer animals stick to the regular water holes, as there is typically more than enough water elsewhere in the park. Summer is also quite hot, with temperatures reaching over 40 degrees Celsius.

Tembe is pretty easy to find, but it is quite a distance away from most other areas of interest (if you are a visiting tourist). It is still very much worth the drive. For visitors from abroad (and South Africans for that matter), I recommend staying in St Lucia on the East Coast of KwaZulu-Natal, and have it as a hub during your stay). To get from Tembe from St Lucia you first drive up the N2 highway to the town of Hluhluwe, where you exit the highway (after about an hour of driving). From there you just follow the road (R22) until its end at a T-junction and you have to make a turn left or right (after almost two more hours of driving). Take a left here and you will see Tembe on your right-hand side after about 15 minutes.

Tips if you drive here yourself:

Fill up gas at Hluhluwe and get something to eat there as well if you need it. There won’t be any more towns with shops and gas stations after this point before Tembe. 

If you do need to fill gas or get some food or drinks closer to Tembe, there is a small town a bit further west of Tembe (Lulwane) with a gas station and a Spar. It takes about 15 minutes to get here from Tembe. This is not the place I would linger for too long or withdraw any cash from ATMs as a tourist. I wouldn’t say it is unsafe at Lulwane, but if you want a more high-end gas station, as well as a place to more safely take out cash, I’d go for Manguzi, a town about 30 minutes East of Tembe, towards the coast and the border of Mozambique.

Tembe Elephant Park is the park where I did most of the field work for my PhD on leopards that never came to pass. Out of my almost two years of living in South Africa, large portions of it was spent in this park. I’d say at least one week every month, on average. I’d say this time was probably the best and most exciting time of my life (so far). I absolutely loved doing field work in Tembe. I bought my own 4×4 (a second hand Jeep Cherokee ’93), and I enjoyed driving it around the sandy roads of Tembe as I put out camera traps, checked on already put out camera traps, counted wildlife for my research and photographed exciting wildlife as I came by it. The freedom of driving on your own in one of the wildest and most remote parks of South Africa, with the chance to encounter lions, elephants, rhinos, and everything else the park had to offer, was simply incredible, and is something I really miss to this day.

When there, I stayed at the Tembe Research Camp and got to know the guys working there quite well, including those working for Wildlife Act. That means I also got to know many of the volunteers as well. I always enjoyed my stay at this camp, and loved sharing a cold beer in the evening under a starry sky with whoever was present at the time. It is a bit more rustic than the luxury of the more expensive and touristy lodge, but I prefer it that way.

So, what did I actually experience in this park in terms of wildlife and exciting encounters? Let me start with the leopards, my subject of study. The leopards in Tembe are extremely shy and if they do not want to be seen, you will not see them. During my entire stay, I did not see a single leopard with my own two eyes. Some of the tourists on the lodge did, as did the volunteers from time to time, but not often. Often enough that it annoyed me, however, the leopard researcher. My camera traps picked them up all the time, which meant I did get to know them quite well in some sense. The closest I got was having a leopard roaring loudly right next to my car, but just behind dense vegetation so I could not see it.

If the leopards did not want to show them self to me, I regularly encountered elephants. Funnily enough, my very first trip to Tembe (as a tourist the year prior to me moving over to do my research), we did not see a single elephant. Since then I hardly had any day out driving in Tembe without seeing at least one. I got a lot of respect for elephants, particularly after doing my Master’s degree on elephants in Tanzania, so I always drove with caution and the belief that an elephant could be standing in the road just around the next corner. Sometimes they did, most often they didn’t. Most often they weren’t bothered by me, as long as I kept my distance, but sometimes they were. A few times I had to drive away in a hurry from angry elephants wanting me out of their way, particularly mothers, but as long as I gave them their space, they were happy. Spending so much time around these animals made me realize just how intelligent they are (I consider them almost as people, with their own personalities, emotions, and even sense of humor sometimes). To me, seeing an elephant in a zoo now, is like seeing a person in jail, and is something I try to avoid. 

I also came across lions quite a bit. They are not a guarantee if you only stay a few nights, but they are not rare. I mostly came across them on the eastern side of the park, where vegetation is a bit more open i general, but they can be found everywhere. They do, however, tend to be less often in the dense sand forest areas to the west. During dry season they are often seen in or near the Muzi Swamp, as most of their prey also stick to those areas during that period. When you come across them, the lions are not shy, and often walk down the road as if they are without a care in the world. 

As for other wildlife, I was lucky to come across the sole pack of African wild dogs a few times. They move over large distances, and often stick to remote areas, particularly away from lions, who tend to kill wild dogs if they get the chance. Most of the time they were far up in the remote northern section, particularly to the west nearby the sand forest areas. Sometimes they came down south, and a few times I was lucky to come across them very close to camp. One time I saw them at Mahlasela Hide, which is not common, and very much in the middle of lion territory. I also came across white rhinos now and then, but not often, and sightings rarely lasted long. Black rhinos I never saw, but I got a few on the camera traps. The park has no cheetah and no permanent population of spotted hyena (at least not when I was there), even though I did catch a couple of hyena on camera traps in remote areas.

What most people won’t experience, which I did my fair bit of, is walking around in large sections of this park, particularly the wilderness areas up north. I always had a ranger with a weapon with me, as I weren’t allowed to walk around on my own without protection. I came across a lot less animals on foot than by car, but now and then we came close to elephants and saw track of rhinos, which meant we had to do fairly large detours to keep our distance. A few times we came across lions, but they mostly walked off when seeing us. These walks were always very tense and exciting, and its almost strange to think back to those days when we were many kilometers away from the nearest road, in some hard to get to area, setting up camera traps, knowing all those dangerous animals were somewhere out there, probably closer than we knew. Once, way off into the bush, we even had a male leopard approaching us. We heard its roar getting louder, until it faded again, and probably went in a different direction. We never saw it of course, but it was very exciting knowing such animal was so close to us there in the middle of nowhere.

I should also add that my stay in this park is what got me into wildlife photography. My camera wasn’t great (a modest Canon 600D), but I enjoyed photographing animals so much that it almost became an obsession (and I started this very blog from my bedroom at the Tembe Research Camp). After having photographed most of the mammals quite a lot, I began focusing more on the birds, and thus, my bird obsession also began here. During the last six months of my stay, my focus was just as much (if not more) on getting good photos of everything I came across, than to the actual research I was doing.

It is (at the time of writing in 2024) almost 10 years since I left Tembe and went back home to Norway, and I miss the freedom and excitement it gave me during my stay there. I also miss the people. It is a great place. A very special and unique place that I hope many more people will experience, and I look forward to coming back sometime in the future. It might not be the same, now that I will not be doing research and have the freedom to go and do as I please, and I might even have to stay at the more luxurious lodge and pay more to stay there, but it will be very special to, at some point, come back again and experience the place where I finally found my real independence.