South Africa Day Eleven: Kruger Park

Sure enough, we were up by just after 4am, and our guide came to collect us at the ungodly hour of 4:30 for our morning game drive. The time might not have been so bad had our sleep not been disturbed by a car alarm going off at the middle of the night (though, honestly, having gone to bed at 8:30 it might have gone at 10pm). The vehicle was one of those open safari vehicles with absolutely no protection from the wind from any of the sides, and as a result we were freezing while driving around the park in search of game. For the first 90 minutes or so we were in complete darkness but for the light of the stars (which are amazingly numerous here; coming from China we had completely forgotten what a night sky could look at, since in Beijing we count ourselves lucky if it’s clear enough to see the moon) and the powerful flashlights we were supposed to use to scan the passing scenery. We managed to spy a few animals this way, including some genet cats, impalas, and other animals, but for the most part we were skunked on this journey. At least the scenery as the sun came up was pretty.

We were back in our lodge by 7:30 and immediately set out on our own to see what else we might see today. For the first hour or more it appeared that the South African fauna are very religious and spend their Sunday mornings in church or something, since none of them was out for us. But eventually we caught sight of a real find--a white rhinoceros calmly eating breakfast and giving us loads of opportunities to shoot photos from all angles as he (or she) moved around. Later on we found a few cars stopped by the side of the road and learned that they had found a pair of cheetahs, though they were very far away and hard to make out and impossible to photograph. We also started to see more zebras, giraffes, impalas and other “common” animals, and then a few hippos wallowing in a pool and some elephants eating. But for the most part this day was much less fertile than yesterday.

We got back to our lodge in time to go on a sunset game drive, using the same vehicle as in the morning but this time with one other couple joining us. Since we started in daylight, the start of the drive was warm enough, but by 6:00pm, when the sun had started to set in earnest, the temperature dipped noticeably and we all started to put on our jackets, though it never became cold enough to use the blankets that they provide. Again we did not see a whole lot of animals on this drive, and certainly none of the ones we were hoping to see, though we did see a ground hornbill, which is a seriously endangered bird, an owl, and several zebras, giraffes and elephants, including a few elephants right outside our camp’s gate.

Back at the lodge we got a fire started for our dinner of grilled boerewors and sweet corn on the cob. The dinner was delicious, as was the wine we chose to go with it (one of our wines from our visit to Franschhoek), and we spent the rest of the evening going over our photos of the day and planning for tomorrow, when we move to a new camp.