Day 27 – Satara to Lower Sabie
Day 27 – March 21
See pics here.
AM Drive
Left Satara this morning to go to Lower Sabie Rest Camp. This will be our last night in Kruger, as tomorrow we leave South Africa and arrive in London. We cannot believe how fast this trip has gone by!
Well, we had a very lucky morning. The drive from Satara to Lower Sabie was quite beautiful. Lots of open savannah to view many species through. We came upon a lookout that was high upon a cliff, but with our binoculars we were able to spot a couple of rhinos! This was a great find, as we had not yet seen these beasts in Kruger yet! It was amazing how well such immense animals can blend into their surroundings so well. Without our binoculars, it was very difficult to pick them out in the landscape.
Feeling on top of the world now that we had seen all the animals that we had seen with the guides while in Dulini (except the leopard, which we had actually seen on our own when leaving Sabi Sands), we continued on south. Not much further down the road, we came upon quite the sight – three enormous rhinos crossing the road in front of us! What a gift! They took their time, offering us many photo opportunities as they sauntered by.
We stopped at a rest area along the road, bought a couple of coffees and quiche, and sat down at a picnic table. We had also brought out a bag of food from our car. Jim noticed that there were some cute vervet monkeys hanging around, and he got up and went to the car to get the camera. No sooner did he get up, a monkey came over to the picnic table and jumped up on the seat. It didn’t really surprise Kristin, and she was ready to deter him from grabbing Jim’s coffee that it went for. However, little did Kristin know, that the monkey was actually ‘faking her out‘ by pretending to go for the coffee cup. In a matter of milliseconds, before Kristin realized what was happening, he was into our bag with a quick swipe of his hand, had grabbed a banana and scooted away. He sat in a tree, happily peeling then eating his banana. Little rascal.
Closer to the camp, we came upon more chacma baboons – although these were a fairly common sight, this time we came across a mother baboon nursing her baby in her arms. It was amazing to watch another primate look so human-like.
By the time we got to Lower Sabie rest camp, we only had a couple of hours before we’d go out again for our afternoon drive. Our accommodation was again different from the others we had previously – this one was a hut with a bedroom/fridge/air conditioner (really nice), but it was attached to 3 others. Unfortunately we were on the far side, so every time we went from our car to our hut, we had to walk through the camp areas of other people. Oh well. The shared bathrooms were fine – clean, and all we required. We had a couple of things to accomplish – 1) take all our luggage out of the car and repack it appropriate for the flight and London and 2) clean the car. Having driven on dirt and rock tracks for over a week, our light blue Chevy Cruise was now brown. We had seen a car wash at the first camp we stayed at, but had not seen one since – it didn’t look like we were going to be able to get the car washed before we returned it. Oh well. Kristin took a bucket of water (a cooking pot) and cloth and went to work on the inside of the car – a film of brown dirt had settled on everything. Not bad – better than what it was. We just hoped we wouldn’t be charged for returning a ‘dirty’ car.
Our afternoon drive had all the usual suspects, plus a couple new birds (there always are!). It never gets old seeing big animals – you never know where or what will be your next encounter!
The evening had a sad tone to it – neither of us could believe that our time in Africa was nearly over. We talked about how much we would miss our daily dose of animal sightings, and how we hoped we would be able to travel here again someday.
Kristin
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