Kruger

Where do we start? We were picked up at 5am on Saturday by Douglas and Tinos, and spent the next 2 hours getting a lovely tour of Pretoria and Rosebank – we had to pick up 2 other guys and we were lost. Mark, the first pick-up, was a nerdy British Medical student (who had been to both Oxford and Cambridge while studying…). Flinton, the second guy, was a Northern Ireland grumpy IT trainer. He rarely smiled, and Mark never stopped. We drove the Panorama Route and it was breathtaking. We stopped at the Three Rondawels (similar to the Three Sisters), Blyde’s River Canyon, and the last stop was God’s Window. It was pretty obvious why it was named so. Tinos, our driver, was from Zimbabwe - where they only drive 30 kph even on the freeways, and it was his first time driving in South Africa. After 12 hours in the van, we arrived at the Tribal Village just outside of the Kruger Park. It was dark and we just made it in time for dinner. We unpacked our stuff and took it to our ‘room’. We were staying in a large Rondawel, a big round hut with walls built from termite mud and a roof made of grass (nothing more than a few sticks for a door). The next day we went to the Kapama Cheetah centre – our first sighting of African wildlife – although still behind bars… They breed and rehabilitate animals to the wild in Africa, and have been very successful in raising the number of cheetahs, rare ground hornbills, wild dogs and other animals in the wild. We left the centre & swapped our vehicle to an open sided land-rover which we would be travelling in for the next 5 days. We entered the Kruger for our first safari. The first night on a night drive we saw our first lions. (After driving for three bitterly cold hours they ended up being right next to our camp…) We are camping at Maroela, a small campsite inside the park surrounded by an electric fence – to keep us in and the lions out!! We are sleeping in little tents right next to the fence where the animals walk by at night. There is a pregnant hyena that comes by, and we wake up to the lions roaring. It’s a very surreal world.

The next three days are spent searching the massive park for the elusive animals. We saw heaps! Hippos, Zebra, Warthogs, a Black Mamba, enormous antelope species, lots of rare birds and Impala’s around every corner. Everything is supersized here, and as our Pommy friend told us – a cross between Jurassic Park and Polar Express. After three days in the park we bid farewell to Doug, Tinos, Mark and Flinton as they were only staying for four days and we meet our new guide, Elson a very funny, politically incorrect 41 y.o. locally born African. He bought with him Ella, a 19 y.o. dutch traveller, Joy, a 57 y.o. Aussie from Darwin, and a young Swiss couple who rarely spoke to the rest of us. In the final two days in the park we saw many elephants and giraffe (we chased one mama elephant down the road in the land-rover.) We got really close to a lone lioness in the grass (did a bit of illegal off-roading to get her to stand up). So far we have taken 1400+ photos and some very funny videos. Yesterday we left the park, very tired, severely windblown and sad with a long 8 hour car trip ahead of us. We arrived at our new accommodation, Court Yard East Gate (a small 4 star step up from Camping in the wild) just in time for the free bar and a very filling Buffet dinner. We washed our clothes in the sink and fell asleep under sheets for the first time in a week.