Dear Greta Gerwig: If you’re looking to cast Barbie in a “Safari” sequel anytime soon, might I suggest South Africa’s own Heather Wollon.
Oh, sorry, she’s currently busy fearlessly changing a flat tire on her Toyota Landcruiser bush mobile not 10 yards away from two ear-perked, post-coital lions fresh off a roaring 17-second romp now looking to nosh.
Have your people call her people.
The Barbie comparison starts and ends at the 26-year-old’s über-flaxen hair and cerulean eyes, however. Heather is a rootin, tootin’, “brain box”-shootin’ (if need be) headlining ranger at andBeyond’s 73,800-acre Phinda Private Game Reserve in the country’s southeastern camel-cased KwaZulu-Natal province — home to a unique dune forest ecosystem.
With the help of her “Ken,” if you will — Muzi Phumlani, a 43-year-old Hluhluwe-area native and master tracker — the brilliant, one-time dressage champ can magically manifest any beast or bird your heart desires.
Come to see everything from a tower of stately giraffes and everyone’s favorite emo cat, the tear drop-eyed cheetah — who make bloody fresh jerky out of any red duiker dumb enough to cross them — to the surprisingly spry and deadly hippo and the shaved-horned (for their own good) black rhino.
Heather can make them happen.
And all the while steering and simultaneously standing up backwards in her driver’s seat in order to lovingly chat about it all to her passengers via a PA mic, the danger of leonine concupiscence still in the air.
Wollon even takes requests. I wanted a crocodile, so wouldn’t you know it, we rolled up on a pan (local-ese for lakes and ponds), and she produced the snouted scaly scoundrel, along with a makeshift G&T party for us, like it was nothing.
Just don’t be a wisenheimer and ask for the 1-in-a-billion pangolin sighting. Those sadly heavily trafficked little armored wonders are bush unicorns in terms of safari cameos.
This isn’t how safaris are supposed to work. They can’t be forced. They can’t be staged. They’re not on-demand. Typically, the rule is: What you see is what you get.
Yet, Wollon and Phumlani are preternatural in their ability to spot even a 3-inch chameleon — on a lark — hiding in a bush of the exact same color, because, duh, you jokingly flirted with the notion over lunch.
“Over hee-yah,” she’ll say in a thick South African accent, “you’ll find it’s beady eyes peeping back.”
Wait, where? Binoculars on super-zoom: Oh, there! How did you guys spot what’s basically the size of a marble while driving, no less? That’s their secret.
Heather seems to do the impossible. But I think the bush’s critters just really like her, as do her Jeeped-up guests — she’s basically an anything-that-lives-and-breathes whisperer.
As entranced back-seaters, we were longingly and shamelessly begging for an elephant sighting on a lazy Tuesday morning. Problem was, electric-fenced Phinda doesn’t accommodate the tusked set given their propensity to stamp and crush, well, everything in sight — vegetation, human structures, other animals, us.
So, off the reserve we went and wound up sneakily stalking a lively male on next door-neighboring and community-owned Makhasa Private Game Reserve busy lumberjacking every tree in sight with — not an ax, of course — just its dad bod.
But forget all of that. On our final voyage day of the week, we spotted an even more evasive creature: an elephant shrew. That happy accident delighted our ranger even more than spotting its actual humdrum namesake pachyderm!
But to our surprise, our guides’ hands-down favorite critters are hyenas which, in itty-bitty baby form, have circular ears like bear cubs. You forgive their tendency to roll around in their own urine given their so-cute-it-hurts curiosity and fearlessness. Also, they’re matriarchal, which is a welcome exception to the otherwise bro-run world out here.
Back in human society, (groan), it features three room types, with 16 suites, six cottages and one family suite.
And when you think about it, less-than-soberly e-biking around the preserve and cannonballing in the pool were our own weirdo ways of amusing these marvelous critters in return.
Cottages start from $836 a night.
The lowdown
Fly: Emirates — you’ve always wanted to fly it, here’s your excuse. Even its coveted coach section spoils its occupants rotten. And you’ll likely connect through its Dubai-based, shop-crazed hub with a hotel: It’s a mall rat’s sublime kingdom come in an otherwise Amazon-conquered world (from $1,199/roundtrip).
Stay over: En route to the resort, you’ll fly into Durban. Stay over at the wave-crashed Sala Beach House in Thompson’s Bay, South Africa’s version of Big Sur; big little lies not included (from $450).
