Ciao for Now

One of the main reasons we wanted to visit South Africa was to see its renowned wildlife, so for the grand finale of our month long drive across the country we set aside six nights in Kruger National Park. It was mind-blowing. You can watch Discovery Channel everyday for the rest of your life, but nothing compares to seeing wild animals in their natural habitat with your own two eyes. For me, it was nothing short of a religious experience.

Because Kruger is the oldest, biggest and most visited game reserve in all of Africa, I was somewhat worried it would feel a little like a theme park. It didn’t at all. We could hop in our car, turn down a dirt road and not see another car for hours. Our first day, we pulled right up next to an elephant on the side of the road, turned off our engine and watched it feed in silence for a good 30 minutes. Amazing! Overnight visitors at Kruger typically stay at one of 12 rest camps located throughout the park, and we chose the Crocodile Bridge, Lower Sabie and Olifants camps for our visit. Each evening, everybody returns to the camps (you have to be back in the gates by sunset) and gathers around the communal kitchens to have some drinks, cook up dinner and discuss what they saw that day. Our neighbor one night was a professional chef, and he shared with us some of his wildebeest stew (yum!) as well as stories from all his past trips to Kruger. It’s hard to explain, but there’s just this cool little vibe of community between everybody there…an unspoken understanding that you’re fortunate to be somewhere very special. It’s a little like being at the lot before a Phish show.

One of the highlights of our visit to Kruger was going on a 4:30am guided bush walk with Irving, the most macho park ranger of all times. This dude made Bear Gryllis look like Richard Simmons. He was a walking encyclopedia of wilderness knowledge with x-ray vision and the hearing of a jungle cat. We’d be walking along, and he’d stop in his tracks and say something like, “Rhino…800 meters to the southeast…female…25 months old…Sagittarius.” At one point, Anna couldn’t help but laugh when Irving spit out 20 minutes worth of facts about some male aardvark tracks we stumbled upon. Plus, he had such burly stories about tracking and being charged at by, as he put it, “big and hairies.” Beyond Irving’s awesomeness, being able to get out of our car and walk into the bush was an experience Anna and I will never forget. Oh, and on the way to our walk we drove by two male lions feasting on a fresh kill. It was such an amazing sighting that even our guides were taking pictures. We also took a guided sunset drive one night, which treated us to some cool nighttime wildlife sightings as well as the craziest lightning show we’ve ever seen.

During our visit to Kruger, we saw elephant, giraffe, zebra, impala, lion, rhino, hippo, crocodile, wildebeest, baboon, warthog, buffalo, mongoose, jackal and more cool birds than I can name. The only animals we really wanted to see that we missed were the elusive cheetah and leopard. We’ll get ‘em next time. We took hundreds of pictures (you can see them all on our Flickr page), but here are some of our favorites:

We had our first of many elephant sightings as soon as we entered Kruger

Two male lions feasting on a buffalo kill

Spots and stripes

Buffalo proving the butt-cut never goes out of style

Two lionesses

Wildebeest	Impala

“Whatchu lookin’ at?!”

Rhino at sunrise

Up close and personal with an elephant

Zebra are the coolest

Vervet monkey

Sunrise on the drive to our bush walk

On the drive to our bush walk	On our bush walk…can you tell it’s about 5:00am?

The lion was so impressive even our guides were taking pics

Irving protecting us from a leopard tortoise

Warthog and babies

African elephant

Saddle-billed stork

Anna goes crazy for elephants…	…while Johny is cool as a cucumber

Post feeding nap time

Kudu

Giraffe striking a pose

Our “safari tent” at Crocodile Bridge	Our hut at Lower Sabie

The huts at Olifants	The viewpoint at Olifants

The view from Lower Sabie

Watching a family of elephants from the viewpoint at Olifants

Scoping it out at Lower Sabie	Wildebeest stew gave me some stomach problems

Rush hour at Kruger

Sunset over some hippos

And a couple videos, for good measure:

Posted on November 23, 2011 at 12:49 pm in South Africa   |  RSS feed |   Reply   |   Trackback URL