We left Louis’s house early morning to get to the Kruger Park gate as soon as possible. Ahead of us was a 400 km drive. Yay.
For those of you who don’t know, Pretoria is in what we call the High Veld at 1,339 meters above sea level, while Kruger park is in the Low Veld at 260 to 300 meters above sea level. So as you can imagine it was quite a down hill drive, and I loved it, a free roller coaster ride!
KRUGER NATIONAL PARK
Our destination was the Kruger National Park, the biggest game park in South Africa.
Fun facts about Kruger National Park
- Covers nearly 20,000 square kilometers (about 2 million hectares)
- The area was first protected in 1898 as the Sabie Game Reserve and
- became a national park in 1926, named after President Paul Kruger
- sits in the northeast of South Africa across the Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces, bordering Zimbabwe and Mozambique
- The park has 147 mammal species, over 500 bird species, 114 reptile species, and 336 tree species.
- Archaeological evidence shows human presence in the area dating back 1.5 million years.
Berg en Dal without the leopard
After checking through the Malelane gate we had to drive 15km to Berg en Dal Restcamp, during which we saw impalas (aka roi bokke), a very common antelope, and a young elephant bull. I was the one who spotted the elephant, which is funny because I’m in the back seat, but if it wasn’t for me, the other two would have driven right passed him, though he nearly came after us because we stopped so suddenly, giving him a fright.
When we were checking in at the camp we got told that three nights in a row they’ve seen a leopard outside the fence! I hope we get lucky and see him!
Then we set up camp, after which we went to the sightseeing point where we saw water bucks and velvet monkeys.
We braaied for dinner, and went back to the waterhole where the presence of mr Crocodile made sure nobody came for a late night drink. We slept in our borrowed 3 person tent from Louis.
We decided to take an early morning walk and we saw 2 Nyalas (another type of antelope). No leopard to be seen.
Then we went back to our camping spot and packed up our stuff. And off we went on a game drive to the next camp.
Our first spotting of the day was 4 funny looking black birds with red bills, quite tall (1m), walking around in the grass. At first we thought they were vultures, but they didn’t really look like vultures. Later we looked it up. Turns out they’re called the Southern ground hornbill
On the drive we saw a lot more bucks, Impalas, water bucks, and even a kudu bull, some giraffes, lots of elephants and we saw buffalo or wildebeest, warthogs and zebras.
Skukuza where baboons take a swim
Around lunchtime we arrived at our next camp, Skukuza, which has it’s own mini airport and is quite touristic.
Skukuza’s view point was looking over a large fast flowing river, and in the distance you could see an old train bridge, with an old style train on it. The railway station on the Skukuza side of the river has been turned into a restaurant, as are the parts of the train inside the station, I think. And the rest of the train that’s on the bridge, is now luxury acomodation. Here’s some history about the train:
Known as the railway that saved the Kruger National Park, the Selati line is one of the most expensive railways ever built connecting Komatipoort with Tzaneen during the gold rush times. The construction of the line started in 1892 and was only completed in 1912.
In 1923, the South African Railways took over and introduced a “Round in Nine” train tour through the Lowveld, with a stopover at Sabie Bridge, today called Skukuza. The tour soon became very popular for its game viewing, and Kruger was established as a national park in 1926.
Trains still ran through the park up until 1973 after which most of the tracks were removed, leaving the bridge intact and part of the Skukuza scenery.
There was a large curio and gorcery shop and several restaurants. But there was also an icecream booth. They serve softserve ice cream in a cone. But what makes it special is that they dip the ice cream part in warm chocolate or caramel, which instantly hardens and is really tasty. Best invention ever!
After checking in and setting up camp me and dad went to the pool, because it was very hot. But the water was cold so we only dipped in, then sat on the edge of the pool to warm up.
All of the sudden a troop of baboons passed by. Then one climbed over the fence around the pool, and took a drink from the pool!! This black family that was swimming in the pool immediately started clearing out, and ran off. Then later this white family also packed up and left. Then we remembered we left the back of the car open, where all of our food was 😳. And the baboons could break in there and steal our food. So we had to rush out as well. For those of you who don’t know: baboons are very smart but very naughty with very big teeth and great strength. So, they are not animals to play with.
That night, we braai-ed again.
Then the next morning we left around 7 am. As we were driving, I spotted something that looked like a wild dog or hyena lying on the ground a couple of meters from the road, and made the driver stop. We realized it was a hyena, but something strange was lying with it. At first we thought it was a dead hyena, or a full-bellied hyena with half of its food, or something being eaten. Then we realized the hyena was alive and well, and the dark shape lying with it was a pup suckling on it’s mother!! Which is crazy lucky, but ungrateful me just really wanted to see a feline.🐅🦁🐈
We were following this line of impalas when we had to stop the car because hundreds of them were walking across the road the road! It was crazy!
We also saw a troop of elephants bathing at a waterhole, spraying themselves with water, while others were snacking on the trees.
Later we saw a troop of elephants running together in a line!
We saw more elephants, giraffes, zebras. We saw some hippos in a lake. 🦓🦒🐘🦛
We also saw a huge troop of baboons, a couple of them carrying babies. One of them sat down right next to the car to scratch its butt 🙈. And another started feeding her baby right there! The baby was so cute with his little pink face.🐒🐵
In the distance we saw Sable antilope (super rare to see).
Meeting the Krugers @ Satara
Then around 12, we arrived at our last camp, Satara, which was really fancy in my opinion.
Dad has gotten an obsession with this bird we kept on seeing flying around: The african Southern yellow-billed hornbill, hence the super creepy close up picture. 🐦
That night we were busy braai-ing dinner, I was sitting on this car mat thing that someone left behind, when our neighbors from across the road brought us their spare camping chairs. Then they came back later with homemade droe wors and biltong. Much talking later it turned out they were mr Willem and mrs Victoria Kruger, and dad had known their cousin from the army. I wonder if they get a discount on the park fee because they’re legitimate Krugers🤣.
That night we saw a jackal running around the tents.(I know it doesn’t look like a jackal but it is, I swear!)
Lions and hyena’s
One thing we still haven’t seen is lions, this is our last hours in the park, they’d better show up! 😠
That morning we left extra early because most felines prefer to hunt then and we really wanted to see some.
On the last day I was starting to lose hope of seeing lions even though we left extra early to try and catch a feline, each time there was a sandy colored rock in the grass, my heart would jump hopefully… We saw more elephants and giraffes… But no lions☹️.
Then suddenly we came to a traffic jam, and we looked around trying to figure out what’s up. Then we see a pack of hyenas, and one of them was eating something big and black. As the traffic started to move forward, we saw on the other side of the road was a pride of 4 lions!! (sorry the pictures aren’t that great but they were too far away).
We saw Lions, and wildebeest, and elephants and giraffes.
We had an african buffalo who wanted to be a photoshoot model and was posing for us.
Viewings and the Big 5
What we saw:
Hyenas (mum and pup)
Hippos
Lions
Impalas
Kudus (hard)
Water bucks
Bush bucks
Giraffes
Elephant
Warthogs
Lizards
Birds
Sable antelopes (super rare)
Nyalas (rare)
Jackal
Baboons
Lots of magpies
In the end we only saw 3 of the “Big 5”. The “Big 5” are lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and African buffalo.
Fun fact:
The name “Big 5” does not refer to the physical size of the animals, even though all five are quite large. Instead, the term was coined during the 19th and early 20th centuries by big-game hunters.
They used “Big 5” to describe the five most dangerous and difficult animals to hunt and track on foot in Africa. These species were notorious for charging, fighting back, and severely injuring or killing hunters when cornered. 🦁🐃🐘🦏🐆.
Phalaborwa
We stayed in this town right outside of the park, called Phalaborwa, but we nicknamed it Phala-gat (gat means hole😁) because of all the potholes in the roads. We didn’t really do any sightseeing because mom was very busy and there wasn’t much to see there either.
Sorry it’s taking so long to post the blog, we’ve been a bit all over the place.😅
But you will hear all about that in the next posts.
-Gitane