A Real Menagerie

Well, here I am in Hazyview, South Africa. It is about 10 km from Kruger National Park. We are staying at the Casa do Sol- a little bit of Mexico on South Africa. Our guide, Adrian, picked us up from the hotel in Johannesburg at 8:00 AM and away we went. We took the road called the Panorama and it was just fantastic. I never realized that there were so many mountains here. It really was panoramic.

Arriving at the hotel, we were told that our rooms were not ready. This was a ploy to ensure that we would order lunch in the hotel. Our rooms are basic but it has a nice little balcony with a table and chairs. Comfortable! The heat does not work in the room which is fine with me but uit does get pretty cold at night.

At 2:00 PM, Adrian picked us up for our first game run. We enter the park through the Plabeni  Gate. First thing upon entering we saw a mother and child giraffe. They were just nibbling on some tree leaves. We were in an open vehicle and had great open views. The vegetation was savannah- dry grasslands with some not very tall trees. There were a few streams but for the most part everything was dry. We saw many impala and zebra. The impala were everywhere and they would freeze and run at the slightest noise. At one point, we came upon 2 cape buffalo- our first sighting of one of the big 5. The Big 5 are: cape buffalo, leopard, lion, rhino and elephant. Next we came upon a sleeping lion. He was very difficult to see. He blended so well into the grass. Adrian would bang a stick to get him to move but only once did he raise has head, look around and go back to sleep. Fascinating. We continued to see impala, zebra and giraffes. We did catch view of a jackal which Adrian said was very rare. On our way out of the park we finally spotted 3 rhinos. They were far away and difficult to photograph but hopefully tomorrow we will see more. We have another run at 2:00 PM.

This morning we took a scenic drive. We stopped at several of the places we passed yesterday. There was a workers strike at some of the attractions and we chose not to go to them as they were closed. We did get to see others that were spectacular views and they were just fine. We stopped for an hour in the town of GrasKopf.  More shops but I did get some locally grown Macadamia nuts. They were delicious!

Back in the park at 2:00 PM, Adrian was guiding us again. We were also joined by a couple from Australia. This time we headed way into the park via a straight road. At first we were seeing very little- a few impala and a giraffe. Then all of a sudden we came upon 2 elephants –one was an elderly female and the other a young female. They were eating away at a couple of trees. We continued to see elephant all through the afternoon. All of them were up close. We saw squirrels, mongooses, kudu both male and female (kudu males have horns that have turns in their antlers- up to three depending on their age,), and Zazu birds.

Just as we were heading for the gate at 5:30, Adrian turned the vehicle around in a flash. He went back down the road to where about 10 cars were stopped. Adrian maneuvered the truck right up front. There in the clearing was a female lion looking to get what we think was a kudu to feed her 4 cubs who were there under a tree. It was just fantastic. The mother still perfectly still watching her prey and the cubs sat with their heads up out of the brush. What a sight! As it was getting dark, we headed again toward the gate when we saw  3 female lions on the side of the road. One looked to be pregnant and she just laid down and went to sleep. The other 2 just watched the crowd watch them.

We needed to get moving as they lock the gates at 6:00 PM. We just made it. Dinner at the hotel. BTW, this mediocre to poor hotel in the middle of nowhere has the best food.

Tomorrow morning- 5:30 AM run.

5:30 AM it was. It was dark and very cold. The wind blowing in your face at 60 miles per hour was a bit much. I don’t really think that I was able to completely recover for the whole day. We were in the park for a whole day. We saw so many things. It was very quiet in the morning. We watched the sun come up and there was little activity until full light. We drove north from the gate and went all the way up to about 8 miles from the border of Mozambique. The vegetation had changed considerably and was much thicker and there were fewer cards on the road. Today was a giraffe and zebra day. We saw herds of them. We also saw wildebeests.

 There were herds of animals everywhere. We saw herds of wildebeests around a waterhole and with a herd of zebra.  There were groups of male giraffes traveling together and a large elephant family group with babies. A family of warthogs was blocking traffic and horned billed birds were standing in the road. We finally saw some cape buffalo that showed its head and horns. Fantastic. At one point, there was a huge crowd at an intersection. Cars were everywhere. One guy said that there was a leopard with a cub in the tall grass. We finally spotted it but it was unlikely that they were going to move.

We continued down the street and there was another pack of cars. Sure enough here comes a leopard walking right out of the woods and across the road. She walked right in front of me. She was so close I could have reached out and touched her. We have now seen all of the big 5. I would still like to get a look at a rhino close up. We continued to look for a better lion sighting than the one we had but we are certainly satisfied. Impala and kudu were everywhere, as was waterbucks, zebra and giraffe. We also managed to see 2 hyenas. It was all just so exciting.

Our final run will be tomorrow at 5:30AM. Hopefully we will see some morning activity on the park.

I will catch up tomorrow with pictures etc. Too tired tonight. Tomorrow i will be in Windhoek, Namibia. Talk to you then. Just one picture for today.

A leopard crossed our path.