Day 33, Year 6 Home Again, Home Again
Date: Friday, November 26, 2010
Weather: Mostly Cloudy Early, PM Overcast, Intermittent Heavy Rain
Location: Tuzi Gazi Marina, Richards Bay, South Africa
Home from Kruger and the Blyde River Canyon . . . For the last six days we have been traveling in the northeastern part of South Africa, and it is a most spectacular little corner of the world. We traveled through parts of KwaZulu Natal province that we had not seen previously, drove through the tiny country of Swaziland, traveled for the better part of four days through the southern half of Kruger National Park (which shares an eastern border with Mozambique and the Limpopo Transfrontier Park and a northern border with the country of Zimbabwe), left Kruger and drove through a tiny corner of the South African province of Limpopo, drove into the clouds of Blyde River Canyon in the province of Mpumalanga, and then worked our way home through Mpumalanga and back into KwaZulu Natal. We saw some incredible scenery and spectacular wildlife. When you go to Kruger, you go to see the BIG 5-buffalo, elephant, leopard, lion, and rhino. But you also see cheetah, zebra, giraffe, wildebeest, warthog, hippo, and any number of majestic antelopes. We saw it all and the logs that I wrote for each day of the trip will be posted tomorrow. But if you don’t want to read all the details, you can just read this summary. However, you may want to look at the photos with each day.
Day 1–Big 5 minus 1
After driving two hours north of Richards Bay, we entered the small country of Swaziland. Four hours later we drove into the southeastern entrance to the Kruger National Park at Crocodile Bridge. We checked into our accommodation in the Crocodile Bridge Camp and were most delighted to find our rondavel (round hut with a conical roof) to be very nice. But we didn’t stick around long as we wanted to get out to see the wildlife. It is springtime here in South Africa and we saw evidence of that. We saw a baby zebra, a baby giraffe in a family grouping, and baby impala (a type of antelope) with their mothers. We saw rhino and elephant, got very close to buffalo, and in the last light of day, we saw lions in the distance. But they were so far away that you had to look through binoculars or super zoom in on photos to really tell what you were seeing. We felt like it hardly counted, but we did see lion on our first day, leaving leopard on our list of Most Wanted.
Day 2-Big 5 minus 1 plus 2
This day was all about seeing a mother cheetah with her three babies early in the morning, stumbling upon a pride of ten sleeping lions right beside the road, and seeing a baby hippo, as well as the big mommas and papas, at the end of the day. The adrenaline was running high, but the leopard still escaped us. We left Crocodile Bridge Camp at first light at 4:30 in the morning and by 8:30 am we had seen a herd of 20-30 elephants, three different kinds of antelope, two different groupings of dwarf mongoose, with the highlight being a beautiful mother cheetah crossing the road right in front of the car and then seeing her three bouncing little cubs coming behind her. They ran and climbed and put on a delightful show for us while the mother quietly disappeared into the bush. They quickly followed, but not before we were able to get great photos of the babies. Our goal for the day was to drive to the main road which bisects the park from north to south and then head south and west before heading back to the east to Skukuza Camp for the night. When we reached the main road and headed south, we literally stumbled upon a pride of lions. We saw a couple of cars stopped on our side of the road, so we pulled over to have a look. We were searching through the brush to see what we could see when we realized that lions were sleeping not even twelve feet away from us. If the other cars had not been stopped, we are not sure we would have seen them. They were just TOO obvious. There was a young male lion and a group of females in one body pile, three more in another body pile, and the dominant male sleeping a few yards away from the others. At first it looked like they were all dead. There was absolutely no movement. But then one would twitch, another would toss her head, and yet another would sit up for a second and then just absolutely and instantly collapse. It was so exciting to see these magnificent creatures up-close, but after a half an hour we saw that they were out for the count and we traveled on. After checking into our guest house for four at Skukuza Camp later in the day, we headed to a close-by hide looking out over Lake Panic. Here we saw hippos at a distance but one mother and baby very close to the hide. We also saw a mother egret trying to protect her baby from a monitor lizard (quite an interesting show) and many birds. At day’s end we returned to Skukuza and enjoyed the very nice accommodations in the guest house with Ed and Lynne.
Day 3-BIG FIVE and Much More
This day started at 5 am and by 5:30 we were watching a stately female leopard cross the road directly in front of us. This completed our search for the BIG FIVE, but there was more in store. As we headed back east toward Lower Sabie Camp we saw a big elephant destroying a tree by using his tusks to strip the bark. Before eating the bark, this guy actually managed to strip off the rough outer bark and eat only the tasty inner bark. This is when we realized that an elephant is actually just a self-contained pulp and paper mill. This was confirmed when we reached Lower Sabie Camp and found that they sell elephant dung writing paper in the shop. But we have to go back to the bark stripping elephant for just a minute. After stripping and eating most of the bark of the tree, the elephant moved to a nearby green-leaved bush to top off the bark main course with a little salad. We were constantly snapping photos, and when the elephant walked away from the bush I exclaimed, “This elephant has five legs.” You take it from there. This elephant was a HE and the fifth leg was not a leg! Now how do you top this? Well, the list of animals we saw for the remainder of the day is very long, but as we were hurrying back to Skukuza Camp at the end of the day, we had a big hippo cross the road right in front of us and then had another male elephant encounter. This big guy was walking down the paved road straight toward us, raising his truck high over his head every few steps. So we kept backing up and backing up, until finally we turned around to head in the opposite direction to try and find another way home. But we moved slowly and after this big guy had herded three different cars, us being one of those, he decided to head down to the river. So we did another u-turn and made it safely back to camp. Whew!
Day 4-Leo the Lion
We drove north on this day, out of bush country and into African savannah. We wanted to experience the open country and hoped to see herds of elephants and more lions. We did see a magnificent herd of elephants and just at the end of the day, we saw Leo the Lion. This male lion was cat-napping, head up, eyes closed, right beside the road. He looked just like the MGM lion. After taking tons of photos of him, sometimes eyes open, sometimes eyes closed, we realized that there was a second male lion back in the tall yellow grass. I got a photo of him yawning just before he collapsed in the grass for his nap. One minute we could see him, and the next he was sleeping in the grass and totally camouflaged. This reminded us to never take a walk in tall grass in Africa! These cats are unbelievable. They are up one minute and then down for the count the next. Leo did the same thing. It looked like he got tired of holding his head up and he just instantly fell over. We drove on down the road for a few kilometers and when we returned, he was still sleeping. While we watched, he started heaving his body and roaring and the other male was answering him, but he never got up. What a great way to end our last full day in Kruger.
Day 5-Out of Kruger, Into the Mountains
On our way out of Kruger we came upon a family of giraffe with the tiniest baby giraffe we had seen. And this just reminded us of how lucky we were to be visiting at this time of year. We saw baby antelope, baby hippo, baby zebra, baby giraffe, baby elephant, baby birds, baby buffalo, and baby cheetah. We left the park feeling very lucky to have seen all of the BIG 5 plus so many more animals with their babies. But we had to quickly switch from wildlife to landscape. We drove into the Drakensberg Mountains with absolutely breath-taking views. We had a bit of a battle with clouds in the afternoon as they settled on top of us obstructing some of the views, but we had already seen the most fantastic views and waterfalls and were content to descend to the little town of Graskop where we spent a lovely evening in the Graskop Hotel.
Today we spent eleven hours driving home. It should have taken only eight hours, but rain and road construction slowed us down. But it couldn’t dampen our spirits because we have seen and experienced so much beauty in the last few days.
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| 101126 Day 33 South Africa–Best of Kruger |
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| 101126b Day 33 South Africa–Kruger Faces |
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| 101126c Day 33 South Africa–Kruger Tails |
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| 101126 Day 33b South Africa–Graskop to Richards Bay |
