Hey y'all!
Am currently in Pretoria, hanging out with my cousin Rob. He doesn't actually have anywhere to live himself at the moment, so am just couch-surfing for a couple of nights with him.
I got back from Safari last night. The trip was gooood. I got the train to the airport early Monday morning where I met the 'truck' okay. It was literally a truck, but the back is decked out a bit more like a bus. As per usual I was the last to arrive, just on time. There were only 7 of us in the group - 3 other Aussies from Adelaide (a sister and bro, and his mate), and Swiss, Dutch and Argentinian girls, all of us in our twenties. And we had a driver and a cook. We left Jo'burg at about 8am, and arrived at 'Kwa Madala', a private game reserve just outside Kruger at about 430pm, so it was a big day of driving. Where we stopped for lunch - Mbombela, or Nelspruit - was one of the cities where the World Cup was played. We all thought that we would be camping the whole time, but it was a nice surprise to find out that the first night was actually at a lodge. It was pretty much just us staying there which was nice. And it had this awesome pool which overlooked a waterhole - all very scenic. So we spent the afternoon relaxing there, and then went on an evening game drive. We spotted zebra and wildebeest right outside the lodge, and giraffes on the drive. We spent a good while following rhino tracks too, which seemed really fresh, but sadly didn't come across it. The couple of weeks beforehand, they had had really heavy rain and floods in the area, so we had been warned that they couldn't access all the roads. Anyway, we were getting along fine, but then went down a slight ditch and suddenly three-quarters of the wheel was stuck in the mud. After spending about 30mins waiting around trying to get it out, and staying in the ute because there were lions somewhere nearby, I fell to sleep. Woops! But by the time I woke up there was another ute there which was able to pull us out.
The next morning was another early one. We went on a walk for a couple of hours. Was a lovely morning, we didn't see anything that we didn't see the night before, but the ranger told us lots about the plants and different ways they could be used medicinally.
After our brekkie (fried eggs, cereal etc) we headed off to Kruger which was about a half hour drive away. We spent the day driving through the park to our campsite. We saw loads of elephants, which was exciting to begin with, but they were all just hanging out by themselves so not so exciting by the 10th or so time. But we did see a group of wild dog, which is apparently really lucky. There are at most only about 400 of them in the park (which is 2.2million hectares). In the 11 years that he'd been doing these tours our driver - Matt - had only seen them 4 times. They're pretty ugly though! haha. It did get a bit exciting though, when a warthog appeared on the other side of the road and decided to cross over. It could obviously smell the dogs though, as it suddenly got a bit wary and decided it wasn't the best idea. It escaped back to where it came from just in time as the dogs got up see what it was. I think they must have already eaten for the day though, as they didn't put up much of a chase.
We drove for a couple of hours to our lunch spot, and then another to our campsite, which again was a pleasant surprise. We camped at Skukuza, which is the biggest campsite in the park and again had a nice pool. So we spent a relaxing afternoon by it, and then went on another night drive after dinner. We weren't that lucky in terms of spotting cats, but we did have two hyena walk past the truck.
For the day the animals we spotted were:
- elephants
- giraffe
- a crocodile under the bridge as we entered Kruger
- hippos from a distance in the water
- wild dogs
- warthog
- impala (small antelope, everywhere!)
- zebra
- wildebeest (the above three all liked hanging out together)
- hornbills
- genet cat
- hyena (night drive)
- monkeys in the camp
On Wednesday, we spent the day in a 4WD open ute, with a park guide called Roger. We left the camp soon after 6am, and were out until about 330. Again, we were really lucky in some respects - saw wild dog again! and a white and black rhino - but didn't see any lions, leopards or cheetahs. One dissapointing moment was when Roger stopped by a big tree because a couple of monkeys were making crazy yowling sounds, and Roger said that this is normally a warning sound signalling that there is a cat nearby. So we spent about 10 minutes looking through the grass, but couldn't see anything and then they quietened down. About 20 minutes later we were watch a huuuuge herd of elephants (I think they must have been 2 seperate families, really beautiful to watch, and some came about 10metres from the ute), when another group drove past and asked if we saw the leopard at that same tree. So it seemed we'd just missed it! Damn.
My list of spottings for that day were:
- white rhino
- klipspringer (cute little antelope jumping about the rocks)
- warthogs (later, a family came into our campsite)
- leopart tortoise
- terripan
- giraffe
- zebra
- buffalo
- elephants
- impala
- kudu
- hippo (as well as in the water, I spotted one way out of water, which is really rare during the day as they get very sunburnt! Roger said that was the first time he'd seen one so far out in the middle of the day in 9 years)
- vultures
- saddle-billed stalk
- maribou stalk
- black rhino
- baboons
It was nice that evening to not do anything, so we just hung out at the campsite. I went to bed pretty early though; I was pretty tired, but also I found the tour leader to be super annoying constantly talking about himself so I left the others to it!
Yesterday, we spent the day driving back to Jo'burg, but went via what they call the Panoramic Route. This includes the third biggest canyon in the world, God's Window (a viewpoint they think looks like what the world must have looked like when God first created it. All we could see was clouds!), and some blowholes. This was all just in the first section of the drive too, it was crazy to see how quickly the terrain changed! It was a really good tour, everyone was easy to get along with. I just found the guide super irritating which I probably let get in the way a bit too much! haha. But the cook was great - he didn't say much, but he was much less annoying! And cooked some great camp meals.
Head up to Tanzania tomorrow night where I'll be for the next 6 or so weeks.
Hope you're all fine and dandy :) much love to you all xox
