Hluleka Nature Reserve

Bushbuck in Hluleka Nature Reserve

The virtually undiscovered Hluleka Nature Reserve lies roughly 20 kilometres south of Port St Johns on South Africa’s Wild Coast, a part of the world most aptly described in terms of its rugged and natural unspoiled beauty. The nature reserve lies along a particularly tranquil part of the coast, south east of Mthatha on route 61.

Hluleka Nature Reserve is a combination of an impressive 772 hectare farm known as old Strachan’s grant farm, a strip of coast line, and the particularly splendid forest reserves of Congwane Mtombo and Ndabeni Hluleka. Together these offer a landscape rich in diversity with various eco systems and abundant animal life - rocky seashores home to dolphins and occasional whale visits, lagoons, grassy hilltops, an abundant bird life, and the solitude of forests filled with evergreen quinine, coral, stink ebony and Natal fig trees.

Staying in the Hluleka Nature Reserve gives one direct access to a particularly beautiful golden beach, walking trails, places for picnics and bird watching - look out for evidence of the Cape parrot, osprey, ground hornbill, the rare green coucal, African finfoot and Knysna loerie. In fact wildlife is more than evident in Hluleka - bushbuck, bush pig, eland, Burchell’s zebra, rock dassies, blue wildebeest, impala and the blue duiker are all in residence.

Hluleka is not only regarded as a hiker’s paradise, with neat paths that wend their way through the Hluleka Nature Reserve, but the reserve makes fine use of alternative energy. Gas stoves, solar water heaters, gas geysers, energy saving bulbs, solar panels and wind chargers replace former diesel power generators and set a new standard for green stays in reserves.