Privatization

Ronald Bailey | From the August/September 2025 issue

This is part of Reason's 2025 summer travel issue. Click here to read the rest of the issue.

Sitting in the front seat of an open Land Rover being driven furiously backward for about a half-mile while being chased by a bugling, ear-flapping, and very pissed off elephant matriarch is, well, pretty exciting. Our guide later speculated that she had been spooked earlier by a roving pride of lions.

This incident occurred during our stay at the Shibula Safari Lodge in the 140-square-mile, privately owned Welgevonden Game Reserve. The reserve is in the Waterberg District in the northern Limpopo province of South Africa.

Besides being chased by an angry elephant, what happened while my wife Pamela and I visited Shibula? We saw a contest between two cape buffalo as they crashed their heavy horns loudly into one another. We learned that giraffes, tall as they are, are surprisingly hard to spot as they blend into the veldt less than 200 feet away. A troupe of baboons hopped onto the walls of our outdoor shower to observe closely the strange bathing rituals of two 

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