Wild Places and Open Spaces

Day 17

The day has come – today we drove to ‘The Kruger’. Kruger National Park is world renowned for the diverse wildlife it is home to. Our drive from Benoni (just outside of Johannesburg) was interesting – our GPS decided to go haywire, so we had to rely on the ‘old school method of reading a map’. The landscape went from relatively flat fields/crop areas (and 3 coal burning plants) to beautiful rolling hills/mountains and valleys. We passed by banana plantations and some housing villages that we did not want to get stranded in.

After driving for 6 hours, we found ‘Paul Kruger gate’ and entered the park at 2pm. We had already booked a night in a permanent tent in ‘Skukuza’, and upon registration, we were pleased to find that the tent was equipped with bedding, a fridge, electricity, and a fan! Now this is luxury! We share a common bathroom and cooking facilities.

Immediately we went for a walk to check things out by the river. Before we got there, a very large warthog wandered into our camp area. Not knowing whether he would be dangerous or not, we kept our distance, and he just walked about, not bothering with anyone. Then out of a tree jumped a vervet – a small, very cute primate. This is incredible!!! Off to the river….believe it or not, we immediately spotted a hippopotamus and a buffalo! Too good to be true!

Hunger was setting in, so we ate at the restaurant here (yes, this is a very well equipped ‘campground’) – a simple chicken stir fry that hit the spot. Then, off to do our own ‘safari’ with our car. There are plenty of roads to do self-drives, but everyone has to be back in the camp by 6pm when the gate closes.  The entire campground is surrounded by electric fencing – if it was not, it would not be safe. We saw a variety of wildlife on our first short drive – numerous birds including a hornbill; mongoose, crocodile, hippopotamus, baboon families, a large herd of impala, and numerous other creatures we have yet to identify!

I just have to say, this is an absolute dream come true. We are in our element, scoping out wildlife that we’ve never seen before. Every corner we turn we see something new. We liken it to our time spent in the Australia bush – everything is new and exciting to us. We are already planning our next trip here!

The sun set by 6:30pm. Just prior to this, a hyena had come out and was pacing the fence by our tent.  At 7pm we watched a movie on elephants and lions in Kruger (they are the ruling rivals), and then went for a brief night walk. Then, it was laundry time – a washer and dryer were located beside the washrooms, and it cost 10 Rand (about $1.00) for a wash and another 10 Rand for a dry.

Tomorrow will be an early day – we want to do a ‘self drive’ safari in the morning. They open the gate at 5:30am, and we plan to be there!

Day 18

Up before dawn today….we were at the park gate eagerly awaiting for it to open at 5:30am. We saw a ton of stuff on our own – vervet monkeys, chacma baboons, helmeted guinea foul, impala, buffalo, and the highlight: a herd of elephants!! There were 15-20 elephants at the river, drinking and socializing. Then, in a span of 2 minutes, they wandered up the bank into the bushes and vanished. Simply incredible that such huge animals can be hidden by the bush in a matter of minutes.

After our successful self safari, we needed to pack up and be out of our tent by 10am. Today is the day we meet up with our friends again!

The next place we are staying is Dulini Lodge, in the Sabi Sand private reserve. It is connected to Kruger National Park, and no fences divide the two.  The drive to Dulini was interesting…the roads continued to get rougher and rougher the closer we got to the lodge, and a we even ‘bottomed out’ with our rental car once. Again, this reminded us of our travels in Australia on many of the rough ‘roads’ we had taken there.

I’m not going to talk about the lodge, except to say that it is incredible. I’ll leave it up to you to look up if you wish.

Our first wildlife sighting was Nyala – elegant, slender antelope. The females and their young were playing on the grounds of the lodge, literally right in front of us while we ate lunch outside. Then, we saw the male – he looks much different from the females and has long horns.  Later, another male showed up, and the two males did this interesting ‘dance’ where they each held their heads low and would walk extremely slowly with deliberate movements – almost like they were trying out for a ballet. We really thought the two of them were going to ‘go at it’, but they must have worked it out because no battle ensued.

Each day for the 4 nights we are here, we have morning (5:30am-9am) and evening (4:30pm-7pm) safari drives. We met at 4pm for ‘tea’ and then we were off – our first ‘real safari’ in a land cruiser, with the driver, tracker, our friends and perhaps most important, a rifle……just in case.

We saw a buffalo straight away. Next, an elephant – up close and personal.  A young (about 10-15yrs), lone male. We were so close that we could hear him munching on his grass. It truly is amazing that many of the large animals (buffalo, giraffe, elephant) are herbivores, and that a diet of mainly grass, leaves and or bark can sustain their enormous body mass.

Later we saw dwarf mongoose – cute, curious creatures that came out of the scrub to check us out. After 2.5hours we headed back – our driver and ranger sounded disappointed with the drive, and told us that they hoped we would see more in the morning.

A late dinner followed, and we headed to bed, as 5am comes early!

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