Note: I first wrote this post back in Mozambique but was never able to upload it on the dodgy data networks there, so I'm posting it now, with a postscript about our second (brief) visit to Kruger a few days ago.
Pomene, May 20, 2016
It’s 9 pm and a nearly full moon
is shining through the gaps in the clouds scudding past at speed, blown by a
south-easterly wind that has been scouring the shore of Mozambique for four
days now. It’s a beautiful spot here in
Pomene Nature Reserve and a good chance to reflect on the first two weeks of
our trip around Southern Africa in Stanley (Henry Morton Stanley to give him
his full name), our camper. We spent
almost all of this time in Kruger National Park, and so a blog post about
Kruger seems like a good way to start recording Stanley’s Travels; you can also
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| Southern Ground Hornbill |
Saturday, April 30th
was a long day, the first of our new life on the open road. It started at 5 am in our AirBnB place in funky,
gritty Woodstock, a newly-gentrifying inner-city suburb of Cape Town. It was the third separate time that Terri and
I had stayed with Leonie and Shanaaz, and we were starting to feel like family. We heard about the family intrigues and
crises in Muslim Cape Coloured families living along Essex Road that made The
Bold and The Beautiful look tame in comparison.
I spent a couple of days waiting for Terri’s arrival while trying to
sort out car insurance for Stanley. It
shouldn’t have been complicated, but it was, and we have only just now received
confirmation that our bank transfer to pay the bill has gone through so that we
can get our insurance certificate that we will need as we drive into new
countries in Africa. I got back to Cape
Town from a flying visit to family and friends in Switzerland on Tuesday, April
26th, but Terri didn’t arrive until 3 days later from her trip to
New Zealand. We had a delicious Cape
Malay curry that Shanaaz cooked for us to celebrate Terri’s return, then packed
and re-packed until late before a 5 am alarm woke us up. A taxi carried us off to the airport, where
we managed to get our excessively heavy hand luggage past the watchful people
at Mango Air without having to pay excess baggage fees.
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| Glossy starling |
We got to Johannesburg Airport by
9:00, but with one thing and another, we didn’t get out of the airport until
10. We had a deadline to meet of noon to
pick up Stanley from the garage as it was a Saturday and they were only open in
the morning. A Gautrain and an expensive
taxi ride got us back to the suburb of Linden where Stanley had been undergoing
a few repairs (new leaf springs on the rear axle, a change of filters and oil
and a few tweaks of the electrical system) during our two weeks away. We paid our bill, picked up the car
registration papers and loaded our luggage into the back. We walked a block down the street to Linden
Cycles where our
Giant Express folding bicycles had arrived (they had been out
of stock two weeks earlier and had had to order them in specially for us),
folded them up and threw them in the camper.
An hour of stocking up on groceries and basic supplies in the local mall
and by 3 pm we were headed west out of Linden, crossing the huge sprawl of
suburbia that is greater Johannesburg.
Our new GPS had some personality quirks that we had not yet mastered and
it took us much longer than it should have to get onto the big toll road
heading east across the Highveld, the open plateau that makes up much of South
Africa. We made decent time until it got
dark and a dense, cold fog rose up to envelop the road, reducing visibility to
twenty metres and progress to a crawl.
Road construction compounded our woes, as did a GPS that missed our
campground by twenty kilometres. We
didn’t roll into Elangeni Tourist Lodge until 10 pm, whereupon we had barely
enough energy to pop up the roof, have a celebratory beer and fall asleep after
320 hard-won kilometres.
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| A grey lourie (aka the go-away bird) |
The next morning we awoke at 7:40
and spent the next six hours sorting through all our gear and food, trying to
figure out where it should be stored. We
had arrived with the camper an indiscriminate jumble of equipment and
groceries, but Terri’s organizational gifts came to the fore and we managed to
put almost everything away in the places that they occupy to this day. Our 55 litre refrigerator/freezer was crammed
to the gills with meat, cheese, milk, lettuce, beer and wine, while our many
hanging zipper pouches held our clothing and dry foodstuffs. The area under the foot of the bed was
crammed with plastic storage boxes that we sorted through methodically, trying
to keep the items needed every day near the side for easy access from outside
the camper. Finally by 2 o’clock we were
ready to roll again, with the camper interior now an immaculately organized
space. We had a very short day, only 145
km of driving, to Hazyview, on the south-eastern edge of Kruger. We dropped down off the Highveld into lower,
warmer, more heavily populated areas dotted with big commercial citrus and
avocado orchards, interspersed with poor-looking black towns. We stopped at a roadside stand and spent 8
dollars on avocados, tomatoes, macadamia nuts, oranges and pecans; they lasted
us almost a week, so they were a great investment. As we turned off the highway onto secondary
roads heading north, the landscape was transformed into a continuous series of
settlements along the road, townships that hugged the crests of the
hilltops. It was hard to believe that 15
km east of here was one of the great wilderness areas of Africa. We camped that night in a small tourist joint
that had had its campground close down recently; we parked Stanley under a tree
and popped the roof up, ready to camp, but the owner felt guilty about not
having a proper campground and let us stay indoors for no extra charge in one
of his cottages. We reveled in the
luxury and slept well.
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| Lilac-breasted roller |
On Monday, May 2nd, we
were ready to enter Kruger National Park.
It had been hard getting campground reservations, and we had rescheduled
our trip around the availability of camping at Lower Sabie and Satara
campgounds. This was why we hurried past
Blyde River Canyon and the Drakensberg as we made a beeline for Kruger and its
scarce camping spots. We drove into the
park fairly early in the morning at Numbi Gate and immediately ran into
elephants, kudu, impala and giraffes.
The woods and undergrowth looked parched and dry thanks to the El
Nino-powered drought afflicting the eastern side of Africa this year. We drove towards Pretoriuskop and ran into a
young male elephant running amok beside the road, charging cars, flapping his
ears, trumpeting loudly and generally raising a little hell. He had dissuaded vehicles in both directions
from passing him, and we eventually found ourselves nearest to him as other
cars rapidly backed up to escape. Terri
was at the wheel and very nervous, but eventually she nosed past the annoyed
pachyderm and off down the road, heart thumping in her chest.
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| Yellow billed stork at Sunset Dam |
Following the advice of our
guidebook, we took a back road to our campsite at Lower Sabie, along the old
Voortrekker Road. The bush was parched
and dusty and almost devoid of animals.
Twice we were told by oncoming traffic of rhinoceri beside the road
ahead of us, and twice we struck out. We
eventually popped out onto the tarmac at the picnic site of Afsaal, glad for
the chance to stretch our legs. We drove
up an equally barren stretch of road to the Sabie River and finally found a
strip of green amidst the brown desolation, as the river was still flowing,
supporting a riverine strip of trees.
Just outside Lower Sabie, the Sunset Dam provided a plethora of hippos
and crocodiles along with birds, including the large, beautiful African
spoonbills whose nests filled one of the trees in the pond.
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| African spoonbill and its huge nest |
The campsite at Lower Sabie proved to be the
best wildlife viewing spot of the day, located beside a dam on the river. We just missed seeing a leopard from the café
terrace, but a pair of white rhinos came down to drink at the river, while
openbill storks, black-winged stilts, egrets, herons and Egyptian geese teemed
beside the life-giving water. It was a lovely spot, and we found a great
campsite to cook up lamb chops and pumpkin soup.
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| Elephants at Ntandanyathi |
Having spent hours at the wheel the
previous day, we did very little driving on May 3rd, as we were
sleeping back at Lower Sabie again. We
got up early and went out to watch animals at dawn beside the river. When the restaurant staff set to work noisily
cleaning and opening up for the morning, we retreated further along the
electrified boundary fence, hunting in vain for noisy birds inside thickets of
thorny vegetation. We cooked up
flapjacks for breakfast and went back to Sunset Dam to admire the crocs, hippos
and spoonbills. We then drove a few
kilometres to the Ntandanyathi bird hide, another chance to get out of the car
and admire wildlife, including big elephants, hippos and very pretty
yellow-billed storks, wooly-necked storks and a big tawny eagle. We drove back to camp via a bridge across the
Sabie which gave us views of more elephants, buffalo, tortoises and birds. We took the afternoon off from wildlife and
stretched, skipped and did pilates, before returning to the riverside café
terrace to watch kudu and waterbuck while sipping sundown beers. It was an idyllic setting.
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| Giraffe drinking at Sunset Dam |
On the 4
th, we got up
early and headed out without eating, trying to catch the early-morning
game. We headed north towards Satara
Camp, described in our book as lying in the richest game concentrations in
Kruger. We passed by Sunset Dam one more
time (it was quiet this time) and then north to a lovely hilltop lookout and
picnic spot at Mlondozi.
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| Stanley atop Mlondozi Hill |
Kruger is full
of great picnic spots where you can get out of your car (which sometimes feels
like a prison on wheels as you aren’t allowed, for safety reasons, to get out of
the vehicle except at specially designated spots), and Mlondozi was a
wonderfully scenic place to eat our cereal and toast, looking down on a
waterhole that was almost devoid of animals, despite the surroundings of
dessicated dust that should have driven thirsty animals to the waterhole by the
hundreds. All the way to Tshokwane there
was almost no game except for a few pairs of the large, endangered and very
striking southern ground hornbills, impressive with their red facial markings
and their sheer size. At Tshokwane,
another picnic spot, we bought a couple of meat pies and some cookies and sat
down to enjoy them under the shade of some big trees. The trees are infested by bands of thieving
vervet monkeys, and Terri had a serious tug of war with a bold monkey that
jumped right onto her lap to try to grab a bag of cookies. Terri won, but was amazed by how unafraid the
vervets are of humans. We had great
views of a huge male elephant and a tiny duiker, one of the dozen or so species
of small antelope that skulk around the park in small groups. Driving north from Tshokwane to Satara we did
see more animals than previously, with a big herd of buffalo, several groups of
zebras and brindled wildebeest, plenty of impalas and three impressive brown
snake-eagles. A couple of red-necked
spurfowl completed the species seen; compared to parks like Chobe and Serengeti
and Ngorongoro crater, this section of Kruger had very few big animals to be
seen, although our excellent Kruger guidebook (
Exploring Kruger, by Brett Hilton-Barber and Lee Berger) claimed that the area around Satara boasts the
densest concentration of game animals in the entire park.
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| Young zebra |
Satara is the largest camp in
Kruger and is, sadly, not on a river or dam, so lacks the impressive views of a
place like Lower Sabie. It’s a big
enclosed area on a plain, and the most desireable camping spots, along the
perimeter electric fence, were already occupied by campers who looked as though
they had settled in for a couple of weeks.
In fact Kruger is full of retired South African couples who spend weeks
or months at a time camped in the park; there seems to be no restriction on how
long you can stay, and so since it’s relatively inexpensive, secure and
surrounded by lovely scenery and animals, it’s a good place to be retired. Unfortunately, although South African campers
are generally very considerate by world standards (very little noise, very neat
in the common areas like the bathrooms and dishwashing spots), the one area
that they do fall short of their high standards is in staking out larger spaces
than they really should, using cars, fences and furniture to spread over more
than their allotted campsite, and sometimes taking more than one electrical
outlet to run their multiple fridges and freezers, their TVs and their air
conditioners. We eventually found the
last available electrical outlet and set up camp in the interior. At dusk, however, we wandered out to the
western perimeter fence to watch the sunset and spotted a young hyena who
patrols the fence all night, hoping for handouts from campers; sadly, not all
campers were obeying the signs not to feed animals, and were tossing food
scraps over the fence to him, making him into a problem animal.
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| One happy, very pink hippo near Satara |
The next day we were lazy; we
were staying two nights in Satara and given the lack of big animals around, we
took the morning off from driving and did some exercise. One of the downsides to doing a safari in
Kruger is that you end up spending almost all your time imprisoned inside your
vehicle and you end up craving physical exertion. We have a few exercise options in
Stanley: yoga mats, skipping ropes,
running shoes, elastic resistance bands and our Giant Express folding
bicycles. Cycling is forbidden in the
Kruger campgrounds, and it wasn’t a brilliant place to run, so yoga, skipping,
pilates, pushups and arm exercises with the resistance bands had to do. I also carry my travel guitar (the Martin
Backpacker that I have been carrying around for 15 years already) and a set of
5 juggling balls, so I had some other more intellectual diversions. Finally at 11:30, after a big eggs, toast,
avocado and tomato brunch, we put down Stanley’s roof, left our table and
chairs in place and power cord plugged in to claim our spot and set out for a
game drive.
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| Two waterbuck |
We headed due east to
Nwanetsi, a picnic point in the Lebombo hills that mark the Mozambique
border. There was almost no game to be
seen in the parched plains: a few zebra
and waterbuck, some kudu and impala. The
picnic site was occupied by a group from Kids in Parks, a program that brings
children from the townships of Johannesburg out into Kruger. It is a great program, trying to bridge the
cultural divide that sees 95% of the South African tourists to Kruger being
white; there are very few black, Coloured or Indian faces in the vehicles
driving around the park. However, they
were a fairly noisy group of 50, so we climbed up to a higher birdwatching
point that looks down on the river, which was actually quite full of
water. A hippo and a croc lounged in the
water, and a few egrets and herons stood stock-still in the water ready to
spear lunch, but there was little game coming down to drink. It was very pretty, though, with red rock
cliffs topped by yellow-leaved trees, and I scanned the horizon, more in hope
than in expectation, looking in vain for leopards. On the drive back to Satara, we saw spurfowl
and sandgrouse and stopped to watch them.
After the sandgrouse, Stanley’s engine wouldn’t start and we were forced
to ask for help from a passing ranger, who gave us a tow to get us
started. It made us realize that we
hadn’t been letting the diesel ignition warm up for a few seconds before
turning the key, and that we had to be more conscientious about it. We had another gorgeous sunset along the
fence with gins and tonics and another appearance by the hyena, while Terri was
able to spot the silhouette of a distant owl atop a tree from a distance of 100
metres, an impressive piece of spotting.
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| You lookin' at me? |
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| A dusty herd of buffalo near Letaba |
May 6
th, our fifth day
in the park, saw us head north to Letaba Camp.
We managed to get rolling by 6:50, fortified by tea and coffee, headed
first west and then north along the dirt Timbavati Road. The grass was tinder-dry and there was little
game to be seen, although we did spot quite a few impala, some spurfowl and a
big korhaan (a type of bustard, a tall ground bird that kills snakes with its
powerful legs and big talons), along with a pair of cute little steenboks,
small antelopes with tiny toy-like horns.
We breakfasted on toast, avocado and tomato at Timbavati picnic spot,
watching three tiny bushbucks with their delicate, striking leg markings, then
continued north through more dry desolation.
We eventually spilled out onto the main north-south asphalt road and
continued through a patch of unexpected greenery, full of giraffe, zebra,
buffalo, impala and kudu, to the crossing of the Olifants River. This is the dividing line between the south
and the north, and we had been told that north of the Olifants there had been a
bit of rain and hence there was more game, but that it was harder to spot. We stopped on the bridge to look at
waterbirds, and then turned off to see the Balule bridge, which was full of
birdlife. Balule is one of the “rustic”
campsites (no electricity, no shop, a small number of campers) which book up
quickly with Kruger aficionados; we later tried to book in at a couple of them
and found them booked solid for weeks.
We turned back to the main road and drove up to lovely Letaba, our
favourite campsite yet, situated on the banks of the broad Letaba River. On the way into the camp, we saw a secretary
bird, a very tall, slightly comical-looking ground bird, loping along the
ground, half-heartedly trying to fly to get away from cars. I love secretary birds and was glad to see
one; we read later that their numbers in Kruger are in steep decline.
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| Pretty little bushbuck |
We got a perfect spot to camp, at
the very end of the campground, against the perimeter fence. We found time for some late afternoon yoga,
and then strolled along the riverfront looking for birds and game. That night we grilled some steaks on the
braai, chatted to our neighbours and watched a huge adult hyena pacing the
perimeter fence; his size and power were fearsome to behold at such close
range. We also used our spotlight to
pick out distant animal eyeballs in the dark, and spotted some bushbabies (tiny
nocturnal arboreal animals that are impossibly cute) in the trees above
us.
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| Steenbok |
We were sad that we had only one
night in Letaba, but we were excited to head further north the next morning on
the long drive to Shingwedzi. We set off
a bit later than usual (7:15; no rest for the wicked on this safari!). We stopped for brunch in pretty Mooiplaas (it
lived up to its Afrikaans name of Pretty Place). The drive led through scorched grasslands
bereft of greenery and game, although we also spotted some more steenboks and some
klipspringers, another species of small antelope, in the rocky hills that the
road passed over. The scenery around Red Rocks, a lookout point off the main
road just before Shingwedzi, was pleasant enough and the rocks were home to
dozens of colourful white-fronted bee-eaters who sallied forth constantly on
brief insect-hunting missions before returning to their perches. I love bee-eaters, and was pleased to see
them in such profusion. In Shingwedzi,
we found another prime location along the electric fence and settled in for a
late lunch, some exercise and then a wonderful sunset over the river.
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| Klipspringer |
As we were cooking up dinner, we used the
spotlight to pick out a genet, a small cat-like nocturnal creature that came
for two visits, giving us a great view of him.
There were also a couple of tiny duikers, yet another pint-sized
antelope, prowling around in the night.
I was glad to have a
guidebook to African mammals (by Chris and TildeStuart) to help identify the various more obscure animals we encountered along
the way. We also saw a Mozambican
nightjar, a nocturnal bird that is usually hard to spot, sitting in the picnic
area beside the river, and were able to see its pretty feather patterns and
watch it doing short insect-hunting runs.
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| Terri with a Shingwedzi sunset afterglow |
Sunday, May 8th was
originally supposed to be our last day in the park, but we had heard good
things about the far north of the park (like the fact that there were more
animals to see, and lots of bird species) so we booked a couple of extra nights
in Punda Maria camp, the most northerly campsite in the park and the only one
that always seems to have space available; it’s just too far from Johannesburg
for it to be popular with many campers.
We drove along the road through endless flat stretches of mopane forest,
almost a monoculture of trees that are beloved by elephants and by tiny
caterpillars (mopane worms) as a food source.
Mopane forest is fairly dense, and it’s hard to see anything through the
branches, so we didn’t see much game that wasn’t actually on the road. There were elephant droppings everywhere, and
every once in a while we would come across a lone elephant or a small herd
crossing the road; by now we knew to give them a very wide berth! It was by far the most elephants that we had
seen since entering the park, and our guidebook said that the majority of the
park’s 11,000 elephants live in the north.
Along the road we were lucky to come across a black-backed jackal and
followed him for hundreds of metres, waiting for him to get off the road to one
side or the other, but he kept trotting along the asphalt; we felt bad for
stressing him out and making him run, and were relieved when he finally
disappeared into the mopane forest.
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| Black-backed jackal north of Shingwedzi |
We stopped for a big cooked
brunch at Babalala picnic areas. Kruger
does a great job with its facilities, and the picnic grounds always have gas
barbecues available to rent for 20 rand (just over 1 US dollar). We had been tormented for days by the smell
of cooking bacon when we stopped for our breakfasts, so that morning we cooked
up bacon and eggs to go with our avocados (we were still eating the avocados we
had bought 8 days earlier, and they were absolutely delicious) and toast. We turned off the road to drive up Dzundzwini
Hill for a lookout over the flat mopane veld, and then drove into Punda Maria
through large flocks of birds, mostly turtle doves but also weavers and quelea,
with more Natal spurfowl scurrying across the road at regular intervals.
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| Elephant |
Punda Maria camp is significantly
smaller than the camps to the south, and was barely half full. We found a pleasant shaded spot to park
Stanley, then walked down to the wildlife hide overlooking a waterhole (bereft
of animals) and up along a short birdwatching trail in the forest above the
camp, where we caught tantalising glimpses of birds that were too quick and too
fond of dense thickets to really identify.
We also saw lots of nyala, another species of large antelope that we
hadn’t seen before, with very impressive shaggy males with long horns that look
very unlike the females of the species.
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| Juvenile leopard near Punda Maria |
We decided to treat ourselves to
a twilight game drive late that afternoon, since that’s the only way to be out
in the park after dark, and also gives the best chance of spotting the elusive
leopard. We set off at 4:30 and had a
great time. Our guide, Velly, styles
himself the Leopard King, and within minutes of setting off we had spotted a
leopard; Velly had seen it on his dawn drive and it was still in the same tree
10 hours later. We got great views of
the leopard, although he was tough to photograph because of the shadows
(although Photoshop Lightroom did a great job of improving the exposure
later!).
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| Nyala ram |
It turned out he was a
7-month-old cub whose mother was probably out hunting. After spending quite a lot of time with the
leopard, we headed off as the sun set to see what else we could spot with the
aid of the three powerful spotlights on board.
We spotted several chameleons (I was amazed at Velly’s ability to spot
them in a tree while driving past) and lots of springhares, strange bounding
nocturnal animals nicknamed “Africa’s kangaroo”. We also saw a few Sharpe’s grysbok, the
smallest antelope species we had yet seen, and (as a special treat since it was
Mother’s Day) we had a pit stop under the stunning southern skies to sip South
African red sparkling wine and nibble on biltong and other snacks. On the way back to Punda Maria, we passed
more springhares, chameleons and grysbok and returned to camp very satisfied
with the money we had spent (R 350, or about US$ 24) to see so many new animals
in the wild.
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| Chameleon |
Monday, May 9
th was
spent in camp. We were both feeling a
bit tired of sitting in the car for long stretches, so we took the day off,
taking care of bureaucracy over the (very slow) internet, uploading photos,
doing laundry, exercising and birdwatching.
Kruger’s campsites are actually pretty good places just to hang
out: they’re reasonably priced (R 250,
or US$ 17, a night for 2 people), have pretty decent grocery stores at
reasonable prices and have great laundry facilities at very cheap prices
indeed. It’s easy to see why retired
South Africans sometimes set up camp here for weeks at a time.
On Tuesday, May 10
th
we drove to the northeast extremity of the park, Crooks’ Corner, named for the
fact that lawbreakers 100 years ago could escape justice in any of the three
countries that meet at the corner (Portuguese, Mozambique, British Rhodesia and
independent South Africa) just by crossing over to one of the other
countries.
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| Buffalo near Punda Maria |
We left very early (well
before 7) and drove first around the Mahonie Loop, a very pretty 30 km loop through
dense montane forest that had lots of yellow autumnal leaves that showed up
picturesquely against the blue sky. We
hoped to see leopards again, but luck was not on our side, although we met one
leopard-obsessed couple who were sitting waiting for a mating couple to emerge
from the bushes; they had been there for an hour already, and there was no sign
of the leopards, so we pushed on, spotting a few elephants and a few more
steenboks. We returned to camp to cook
up another bacon and avocado on toast feast before driving north. Lots of dusty elephants were to be seen
beside the road, along with new bird species.
We turned off the tarmac onto a magical strip of riverine forest, full
of big trees and overlooking a river absolutely teeming with crocodiles, hippos
and lots of new species of birds. We saw
a juvenile martial eagle in flight, many bee-eaters, a saddle-billed stork,
white-backed vultures, lots of nyala and (Terri’s personal favourites for the
day) long-tailed paradise whydahs, whose males sport immensely long tail
feathers out of all proportion to the rest of the bird. At Crook’s Corner the mighty Limpopo River
was a tiny trickle thanks to the failed rainy season, leaving a wide expanse of
sand stretching to the Mozambique border.
We could have crossed the border to Mozambique here, but the road was
reputed to be terrible on the Mozambique side, so we had decided to cross
further south, at Giriyondo. The drive
back to Punda Maria gave us sightings of huge herds of buffalo and zebra and a
wonderful encounter with 4 elephants bathing, playing, mating and fighting in a
waterhole; we had to leave in a hurry when one of the male elephants got very
aggressive and chased us away.
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| Helmeted guineafowl |
Back in camp, we had to fight off
a troop of invading vervet monkeys intent on raiding our food supplies, and saw
a new bird species, the crested guineafowl, a colourful alternative to the
flocks of helmeted guineafowl we had been seeing for days. That evening after dinner Terri managed to
pick out more bushbabies with the spotlight.
We went to bed highly satisfied with the day’s game viewing.
Wednesday, May 11th
was a travel day. After withstanding another monkey attack (they made off with the dried mandarin slices that Terri was about to put into our cereal, and then spent a few minutes jumping on a neighbouring popup tent as though it was a trampoline), we drove south for
several hours along the main road towards Letaba, where we had managed to
secure a last-minute reservation. We
wanted to be close to the Mozambican border crossing at Giriyondo, and our
first choice, the “rustic” camp at Tsendze, was booked out. We had enjoyed Letaba the first time, so it
was a reasonable second choice. We had a
good drive in terms of wildlife, with lots of vultures, zebras, elephants and
impalas, along with our first three ostriches so far in Kruger. We got to Letaba by 2:30, getting another
nice perimeter fence site, and did some paperwork for the next day’s border
crossing as well as visiting the small but excellent elephant museum featuring
the life stories and tusks of some of the huge bull elephants of the Letaba
area, including the so-called Magnificent Sevan. That night as we sat eating our steaks, three
thick-tailed galagos, a larger relative of the bushbaby, came down out of the
tree and walked right under my camp chair.
I wasn’t fast enough on the draw with my camera, but managed to get some
shots as they disappeared back into the trees.
It was a wonderful send-off from Kruger!
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| Thick-tailed galago (larger version of the bushbaby), Letaba |
Thursday, May 12th was
D-day, and the hour and a half drive to the border post went smoothly, past a
few zebras, impalas, elephants and francolins.
By 8:10 we were crossing the border and (we thought) saying goodbye to
Kruger forever.
However, two weeks later, after
we turned back from heading to Malawi through the conflict-torn centre of
Mozambique, we found ourselves making an unexpected flying visit to the
southwest corner of Kruger, the one part of the park we had neglected in our
10-day stay. We stayed the night of
Saturday, May 28th just south of Kruger in a strange residential
development called Marloth Park, where South Africans buy property and build
houses inside a fenced game park full of impala, babboons, wildebeest, steenbok
and all sorts of game except for elephants, lions and leopards. We camped in the excellent Marlothi Park
campground and saw all sorts of bird species that were new to us. Since it’s not inside Kruger, we were free to
cycle around on our folding bicycles down to the Crocodile River (the southern
boundary of Kruger) to peer across the fence at crocodiles, hippos, waterbucks
and rich birdlife. It was nice to be
able to move around more freely than inside the park.
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| Mother and child white rhinos |
The next morning we cut across
the park, from Malelane Gate to Berg en Dal campground, then onto the main
north-south road and finally west to Numbi Gate, where our Kruger journey had
started almost 4 weeks earlier. We had
been disappointed that we hadn’t seen more rhinoceri on our first visit to the
park, and everyone who had been to Berg en Dal recommended that area for white
rhinos. It did not disappoint! We drove to Matjulu waterhole, just north of
Berg en Dal, and there we saw no fewer than 4 white rhinos at quite close
range, including a baby who was still nursing.
We sat for a while mesmerized, trying to take decent photos, and then
drove off quite satisfied. We stopped
for hamburgers at Afsaal picnic area, and soon afterwards, right beside the
main road, five more white rhinos were grazing.
More photos, more oohing and aahing.
I reflected that the nine white rhinos we saw probably represent close
to one percent of this critically endangered species, under such intense
poaching pressure. A couple of days
before, a
National Parks helicopter had come under fire from heavily armedrhino poachers, and the future of this beautiful, huge animal hangs very much
in the balance. We drove out of Numbi
Gate relieved to have seen so many rhinos at last.
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| Baby white rhino near Berg en Dal |
Overall, Kruger National Park was
not nearly as impressive as I had hoped, but it was still pretty good
.
The huge herds of elephants and diversity of birdlife that we saw acouple of months ago in Chobe just wasn’t there. Neither did the game viewing compare with
what I saw in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro years ago: no vast herds of wildebeest, zebra and
Thompson’s gazelle.
Kruger has a more
discreet charm that rewards a longer stay, a slow exploration of the landscape
and (most importantly) having your own wheels and camping gear. It’s brilliantly set up for self-driving
trips (as long as you manage to get reservations in the main campgrounds in the
south) and the variety of landscape as we headed north compensated a bit for
the lack of adrenaline-pumping “wow” moments.
In the end we did very well on the wildlife-spotting front, with
cheetahs, black rhinos, wild dogs and some of the smaller antelope species the
only things on our to-see list that we didn’t get to tick off. Birdlife was excellent, and we loved the
campgrounds. The only real downer to a
long Kruger trip is the lack of opportunity to walk (or cycle) around freely;
you do spend too long cooped up inside your vehicle, although we learned to
take advantage of wildlife hides, picnic spots and other get-out-of-your-car
spots. As the flagship of South Africa’s
national parks, SANParks does a great job of maintaining the park. Perhaps if we had visited in another season,
or in another year that wasn’t a drought, it would have been a more impressive
place, but it still richly rewarded our visits.
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| Tawny eagle |
One practical thing that is an
important tip for visitors is to invest in a
Wild Card. For R3000 (US$ 200) for a foreign couple, we
get unlimited day access to the parks (campgrounds are paid for separately). With day use fees of about R280 per day, within
6 days we had paid off the card entirely just on this one Kruger visit. Since we want to visit other parks as well
over the next year, it’s going to be a great savings. The SANParks website doesn’t play nicely with
non-South-African applications for the Wild Card, but if you perservere through
frustrations, it will be worth it in the end.
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Baboons at prayer drinking water |
The other key thing to do is to get your campsite reservations done early on the
SANParks website, or in person at the
SANParks headquarters in Pretoria, where you can also get your Wild Card done in person, or pick it up if you ordered it online.
Thanks for wading through this
post all the way to the end; hope you enjoyed it and the photos. Next time:
Mozambique!!
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| Southern red-billed hornbill |
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| White-fronted bee-eater |
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