South Africa – Joberg and Kruger

Sara and I have had a trip to South Africa on our minds for a long time and in September we got the chance to go.

We started our African journey in Johannesburg by visiting an old friend of Sara’s from Milwaukee named Dan Palay. He picked us at our hotel and gave us a great tour of JoBerg. We wnet all around the city, out for burgers and “chips” and even his home to meet some of his family. Here we stopped for a drink and pretended that we that we were over our jet lag.

We were picked up early the next morning by a Nhongo Safari transfer van to take us from Joberg to the Kruger national park gate. This is about a 4 hour trip on the freeway and the roads are very good.

We entered at the Numbi Gate inside the southwestern corner of the park. Below is a map of Kruger National Park. This park is huge, about the size of the country of Israel. It was created about the same time as the US national park system and has paved and dirt roads throughout it as well as places to stay and eat.

We stayed visited these camps in the park over the 5 days on Safari.

Pretorius Kop which is the oldest camp, stayed here the first night
Nkambeni Safari Camp – Stayed here a couple of night in a tent camp
Pestana Kruger Lodge – Very nice stayed here one night
Skukuza which is one of the largest camps, stopped here a couple of times for lunch etc.

This is our guide Michael, he is an amazingly knowledgeable about the park and all of the animals we encountered. Michael picked us up at the gate and took us to our first camp in Pretorius Kop.

The truck you see below was our home during the day for our five days on Safari. We sat in the back searching for animals where ever they walked in the park.

The African Big Five consist of the following animals…Elephant, Rhino, Lion, Cape Buffalo and Leopard….

Elephants

A female and her baby

An old Male

Lions

A male lion taken just a few feet from our truck after he fed on a cape buffalo

A female sitting in the open trying to stay cool in the morning shade. She walked off a couple of minutes later to get into the shade as the sun got hotter.

A female sitting in the shade in the late morning, this was a really hot day. Cats are very lazy when the sun it hot.

Rhinoceros

Cape Buffalo

A female and male Cape Buffalo. You can tell the difference because the male has more impressive horns

Leopard

We were so psyched to see a leopard on one of our first days. He was hiding up in a tree like they do most of the time, but I could just see him through the tree’s.

This leopard we heard was in an area and while driving there he must have been hanging by the road because we stopped quickly and he walked right past the side of our

truck and back into the brush and rocks. He was beautiful to watch.

Those are the big 5, but there are so many other amazing animals to see…

Just an aside. Every time there are a bunch of land rovers collecting along the road, it means that a cat has been spotted. We were so lucky to see all these cats but didn’t get to see a Cheetah. Until this trip I didn’t even know the difference between the two cats. Do you know?

Hippos

I saw this baby and its mother in the water just outside our last camp. She kept on submerging and doing this, I am not sure why, but her tusks and teeth are impressive and
her baby doesn’t seem to mind.

Giraffes

These animals move so gracefully and look as beautiful as you can imagine…

Greater Kudu

Warthog

Male Hyena with two cubs
I really think that the Hyena’s got a bad rap in the Lion King. To see these animals live and play together was amazing.

Zebra – to pronounce it like a local it is “Zey-braaa”

It was fascinating to see these animals mains that stand up like mo-hawks and how rich their white color is. You would think that they would stand out so much until you see a group of them walk into the brush and disappear. A male usually has a harem of females. They walk in a straight line and he is at the rear because that is usually where they get attacked.