avelog

Our household’s first visitor of the year prompted a trip to Kruger National Park last weekend. For those of you who don’t know, Kruger is one of the foremost places in the world to see big game, and is only a (approx.) five hour drive from Pretoria. In order for Rob, Rebecca, her American friend Bob, and myself to take this fantastic trip, we rented a car locally and headed down the highway. Being that there was apparently a shortage of cars at the rental company, contrary to our agreement and the price that we paid, we received a tiny little blue car that was officially a four-door, but with two guys over six feet (not me!) and no air conditioning in 35 degree Celsius weather, it wasn’t always so comfortable. I offered to drive, being the only one with drive-on-the-left experience, and therefore mostly avoided the space constraints (yay for driver exemptions from bickering over the front seat!).

Driving down the N4 motorway into the morning horizon-softening haze (read smog) at 120 km/h (I swear that’s the speed limit!), we passed townships, factories, informal settlements, power plants, coal mines, cows, and many people (all Black) waiting on the side of the highway for kombis (minibus taxis, for those of you too lazy to read my other posts). After turning off onto a scenic route recommended to us by a co-worker, we stopped briefly for fuel (read crepes) before winding up through over mountains and through Long Tom Pass. The mountains in this area aren’t readily recognizable as mountains for someone from Canada, as they have no snow, and the only trees are those planted as a renewable resource in some of the valleys.

At the top of Long Tom Pass

After a couple of stops to look at the scenery, a couple more to get gas, and one at a random police checkpoint where they had a group pow-wow to figure out whether or not my Saskatchewan driver’s licence was legit, we finally arrived at the park gate, got our pre-booked park pass and drove under the boom gate. We’re in Kruger Park!!

The park regulations are perfectly suited to those who want to drive around slowly looking for wildlife, and not very well suited for much else, hence the need for a rental car. The speed limit is either 50km/h or 40km/h for paved or dirt roads, respectively, meaning that I could actually spend some time looking around for wildlife with the other guys rather than simply staring at the deserted stretch of road ahead. Accomodation in the park comes in the form of camping spots and cabins, both clustered inside fenced tourist camps in order to provide a measure of safety against all the dangerous animals. Of course each camp we stayed at had a variety of antelope and monkeys inside, and it’s common knowledge that leopards can easily hop the fence.

There are numerous routes from one camp to the next, with the option of taking paved or dirt roads. We had the most fun and luck on dirt roads, as there was far less traffic and consequently (at least it seemed that way) there was more wildlife. Our first night was booked at a camp a little to the south, estimated to be 2.5 hours away at 25km/h (to include wildlife watching). At the sight of our first antelope in the sparse woods, we all went crazy with joy and took many many pictures! Of course, by Monday, antelope were the most boring thing in the world, as there are far far more of them than anything else in the park. We spotted a giraffe or two and a herd of elephants that crossed the road in front of us, but once we turned down our first dirt road, things really picked up. While we were gawping at a giraffe to our left, a rhinoceros wandered out of the bushes ahead and onto the road, causing havoc in the car and frantic grappling for the binoculars. We followed him (or her) down the road for a while and concluded that it was a White Rhino by the shape of its jaw (this was to be our only rhino ). Then as we were approaching our first night’s camp (Pretoriuskop), we came upon a massive troop of baboons travelling down a path parallel to the road. They were spread out over a couple of hundred metres, and we ooohed and awed over them for a while before finding ourselves right in their midst as their path converged with our road. We therefore had quite the fun time taking photos and observing many different baboon behaviours before we turned into camp after nearly 4.5 hours of driving in the park (remember, the official park estimate was 2.5!)

Various photos from our first day in Kruger

Considering our pace on the first day, our second day looked daunting, at an official estimate of 8.5 hours driving, so we got up at 5:30am and headed out as quickly as possible. It was a good thing we did, since after a slow start to the day wildlife-wise, we saw an amazing number of zebras, our first lone lion, a pride of lions, ostriches, many many giraffes, wildebeest, lots of varieties of antelope, some hippos (in water), elephants, monkeys of various types, and water buffalo.

Various photos from our second day of driving in Kruger

Once we got into our second camp (Olifants), which has an incredible location on top of a cliff at a bend in the Olifants river, we went on an astronomy tour, during which we were trucked out to a sunset viewing point, then wined and snacked while being taught about the skies of the Southern Hemisphere and being shown various galactic bodies in the telescope. All-in-all a chock-full and quite satisfying day.

Views from the Olifants tourist camp

The next morning was our scheduled river walk. Accompanied by guides armed with rifles, we took a truck down to a humanly deserted stretch of river and wandered around in the grass and among the pools on foot, coming within smelling distance (on his part) of an old bull elephant, and spending quite a bit of time staring at the two dozen or so hippos occupying a small pool. The guides spent quite a portion of the trek telling us about how each animal in the park could kill us if we looked at it wrong, and how water buffalo don’t even need that for an excuse.

The river walk, including our guide showing us why elephant dung is so easily recognizable

Day 3 again involved a long drive back south. We opted this time to take an alternate dirt road most of the way, where we found our first self-discovered lions (the previous times, people had been stopped to look at them already). More wildlife sightings, including warthogs, and we arrived at our third camp (Skukuza), the largest and most touristy camp in the park. We immediately embarked on our scheduled sunset game drive, in which 26 people get in an open-sided safari truck and cruise around the roads at dusk and after dark looking for those elusive cats that tourists often miss on their own: leopards, lions, and cheetahs. Unfortunately, after 45 minutes of cruising, and nothing sighted besides antelope, the first clouds that we’d ever spotted in South Africa decided to open up on us, unleashing a furious and spectacular electric storm, with wind-driven rain whipping through the truck and everyone cowering under the 1-to-2-people ponchos with which we’d been provided. Another rain-soaked hour later and the driver finally conducted a poll to see who wanted to turn back to camp instead of continuing to wander fruitlessly around in the dark. Of course, as soon as we set foot back on solid ground, the rain ceased and ten minutes later the beautiful stars were shining down on us once more.

Various photos from our third day of driving in Kruger; the last is a puff adder, the only thing of interest on our sunset game drive

Our last morning in Kruger was spent making a last-ditch and fruitless effort to find a leopard or cheetah before we left, dashing from place to place to follow rumours of cat-sightings. We were sad to leave and it was quite a shock to drive back into the real South Africa. On leaving the park, we were immediately confronted with tacky country clubs, vast swaths of farmland, and factories and power plants belching smoke in the distance.

Three photos from our last day in Kruger, and one of the citrus orchards east of the park

Everything about in South Africa, both human and natural, is so raw and powerful.