Clock in at Weenen early and buy an information booklet at the office (R3). It lists all the roads (30 km in all) in the reserve, with distances indicated. The booklet also shows you where you may stop.
“The way the roads have been laid out makes it possible for you to see a lot of animals,” says Waldo Bekker. Later, I see what he means. In one place I watch three giraffes right next to the car. Behind them is a small zebra herd, an eland, about five kudu cows, ostriches and red hartebeest.
Like me, you may wonder where the impalas are hiding: They’re not welcome here in Weenen, because apparently their sharp hooves easily break through the topsoil and cause erosion. Blue wildebeest and warthogs are also not welcome.
I do spot a few warthogs with their antenna tails in the veld, almost like students who rock up at a wedding uninvited to have a nice meal. They break into the reserve from surrounding game farms, Waldo says, and as soon as they’re taken out of the reserve they come back for seconds.
The reserve has a 4x4 trail too, so you can put your bakkie through its paces. It costs R40 per vehicle.

This reserve is mainly for day visitors. Pack a picnic basket, including chops and wors, and spend the hottest part of the day at one of the picnic sites before taking a last drive as the sun sets.
There are three picnic sites with benches and braai facilities. At umThombe one of the tables is in the shade of a huge fig tree. Mtunzini is near the look­­out over the Bushman’s River. There’s also a picnic site where Weenen’s bird reserve was founded in 1939.
If you’d like some privacy, head for the small dam near the road to Estcourt. (There isn’t much shade, though.)

At the vulture restaurant between umThombe picnic site and Mtunzini, carcasses are left out for the vultures every few weeks, but unfortunately not anywhere near the road. However, if you watch the thorn trees to the east as you head back from the picnic sites (they’re about 100 m from the road), you may see white-backed vultures in the trees.
Lappet-faced vultures also often show up for a meal. And these are just two of the 267 bird species you can see in the reserve.
In the late afternoon I spot a secretarybird striding through the veld. He turns his head in the wind like a schoolmaster worried that his wig might blow away.
Don’t pass up the chance to watch the waterfowl from the hide near the turn-off to the self-catering cottage.

In Weenen you can get out of your car and go for a walk on one of two hiking trails. The iMpofu Trail (2 km) passes a dam near the campsite, and the uMswenye Trail (3 km) starts near the lookout on the Bushman’s River.
I set off on the longer trail just after 7 am. I’m still adjusting my camera when a tawny animal about 50 m away catches my eye. It disappears before I can identify it – caracal, perhaps?
I continue, now somewhat more careful. A few kudu cows trot off when they see me, but they stop a little further. I look at them. They look at me. Then they look at something beyond me: three rhino!
Oh boy! I’ve met rhino on foot before, but only when there was a game ranger’s gun barrel between us. I sneak up the hill to a higher lookout over the Bushman’s River valley. Perhaps the animals sensed I was the only visitor this morning and tried to make me feel special.