Kruger

Everyone who visits South Africa wants to visit Kruger. Normally I think that places and activities that are over-hyped tend to be a bit of a disappointment because expectations are so high. I am happy to report that this was not the case at all with Kruger National Park, which was every bit as awesome as described.

Sitting in the northeast corner of South Africa, Kruger National Park is one of the largest game reserves in all of Africa, covering about 7,500 square miles. It is home to numerous plants and animals, including what is known as the Big 5 – lion, leopard, rhino, elephant, and buffalo. The term Big 5 actually comes from the hunting industry, which used it to describe the 5 most difficult animals to hunt on foot. But, Big 5 is used by the safari industry to describe the 5 animals most sought by tourists. Which to me is debatable, because buffalo are not that interesting in my opinion. Plus, I’m all about the zebras.

But! I was lucky enough to see all of the Big 5 on my first safari, which I’ve been told is pretty rare because the leopards are very difficult to find. They are shy by nature, and tend to move around solo, rather than in groups.

My colleague and I arrived at our accommodation just outside of Kruger park in the afternoon, and left shortly after that for our sunset/night drive. The night drive was organized by Kruger Park guides themselves, and we were part of a group of about 15 people, all from other hotels/campsites. It was a larger group than we would have liked, but the lodge we stayed at only does game drives during the day (which we also did, but more on that later.)

On the sunset drive

The sunset drive was beautiful, and is a good complement to the day drive, because you can see animals more active at night. As this was my first safari, I did now know what to expect, but basically you meander through the park, and when anyone sees something worth seeing, they yell stop, and the driver stops for everyone to see whatever it is. A good idea in theory, as you have many eyes on the lookout for interesting wildlife, but it all depends on who you have as part of your group. We happened to have a trigger happy Afrikaner who became known to us as the man who cried eagle. Driving around, he would yell “Stooooooop I think I see an eagle!” So we’d stop…only to find out it was a vulture. Ten minutes later, “Stooooop I think that’s an eagle…. No it’s another vulture.” Insert eye roll here. Dude, 99 out 100 birds in the park is an effing vulture, sit your ass down and be quiet...

One of those HAS to be an eagle, right?! Wrong, sir. Wrong. 

Anyway, once it gets too dark to see, the driver/guide passed out giant torch lights that people held pointed into the bush to keep searching for animals. It’s difficult, but you’re looking for eyes in the darkness. It’s pretty cool though, because the guide can usually tell what type of animal by the color the eyes turn when reflected in the light. During the night drive we saw bush babies, a small spotted genet (which is like a little cat), elephants, impala, zebras, giraffes, lions, and yes, a lot of vultures. The vultures are actually good in a way because if you see a lot of vultures hanging around it usually means lions are nearby, because the vultures are waiting to swoop in and pick at the leftovers of whatever the lion was eating.

Sunset elephant 

Zebras!

Peek a boo.. we see you.. 

The coolest part I think was when we were driving through the dark, and a lioness was lying right in the road. We disturbed her slumber, so she grumpily got up and stared us down for a little while. It almost seemed like she was trying to determine if it was worth pouncing on us. She decided against it and stalked off into the night, but it was interesting to be stared at by a lion for that long.

The day drive, which started very early the next day, was where we saw all the rest of the Big 5. And while I enjoyed the night drive, I think the day drive was better, mostly because there were only five of us in a much smaller safari vehicle, and our guide, who works for the lodge we stayed at, was MUCH better than the one from Kruger itself. Our day guide had a really good eye for finding the animals, and knew a lot of interesting facts about all the animals we were seeing.

We left our lodge at 5:30am, which was not the most fun, but you have to leave so early in the morning, because once it gets too hot, all the animals take an afternoon siesta and it’s hard to see them. When we got to the park entrance, there was already a huge line of cars waiting to get in, but because we were part of a tour we got to go right in, which was nice. The other cars, which were personal vehicles as Kruger allows self-drives, would have to wait a while since the number of cars allowed in the park at any given time is restricted.

Rise and shiiiine

Driving through the park, the most prevalent animal by far is the impala. They’re everywhere. The impala is an important part of the ecosystem though because they are the main food source for the big cats and scavengers. Our guide jokingly calls impala the McDonalds both because the feed millions but also because they have three black stripes on their butts that kind of look like an “M.” Impala apparently also have really good hearing, so you’ll often see zebra hanging around with the impala because they get alerted to approaching predators.

Kruger Big Mac

#bff

Surprisingly the next most common animals we saw I think was elephants. Kruger has over 13,000 elephants that roam around freely, sometimes causing a traffic jam. We even saw some baby elephants tagging along with their mamas, which were adorable.

Pachyderm traffic jam 

Those tusks!

To give you an idea of how close they actually are.. 

As I mentioned earlier, the hardest animal to see by far is the leopard, and we were really lucky to be in the right place at the right time to see it, because the leopard disappeared a minute after we found it. Our guide said it was a female, and he thought the only reason she was close to the road was that she was hunting – there was a big herd of impala close by. But because so many cars stopped to see her, she wandered away hungry. Sorry leopard.

Leopard!

The rhino we saw was also very far away, so I was not able to get  good look or picture...just grey blobs in the distance. I would have liked to see it closer, but getting close to a rhino is not the smartest thing you can do. And to complete the Big 5, we did see the buffalo.. but zzzzz… not really interesting.

Not only did we see the Big 5, we also saw what our guide calls the “Ugly 5” – which includes warthog, hyena, vulture, hippo, and wildebeest. Most of these animals fall under the category of being so ugly they’re actually kind of cute. Except maybe the vulture. Which are just ugly ugly. 

Wildebeest herd

Here piggy piggy  

Hyena crossing

But I enjoyed seeing all of these “reject” animals as well. Warthogs are funny little things. They eat down on their knees, and when they run they stick their little tails straight up in the air. If you can get close enough, they also make little squeaky piggy noises, which I learned in Ghana because people feed them so you can get closer. The hippos we saw were all wading in the water, so again couldn’t get a good look. But hippos are actually the most dangerous animals in the park because they are super territorial and will rip people to shreds if they get too close.

And lastly, we did finally see a few eagles, so suck on that annoying bird man. 

Tawny Eagle