Day 5 is when we said bye to Cape Town and said hello to safaris! Getting to the Krueger Park was a mission in itself, involving a flight to Johannesburg, a propeller plane (didn't know those actually fly commercially lol) to Hoedspruit, and an hour transfer to the resort. I have to say that it was the best transfer ever as we got to see giraffes, zebras, and watch an elephant eat and take a bath along the way :)
At the risk of being mushy, I must admit that this was a very special experience for me. I never thought what a rush of excitement it is to see all these amazing and exotic animals up close in their natural habitat. I also have a whole new understanding of the animals' life and behaviours, the conservation aspects of national parks, and a great respect for and appreciating of the schooling, skill and experience that it takes to be a ranger or a tracker.
We chose a private reserve neighbouring Krueger Park called Shindzela (or honey badger in English) as our playground for spotting the animals. The guys working there were absolutely amazing in going above and beyond to show us the animals (including a night chase for a herd of buffalo and tracking an elephant and a rhino off road through the bush). They also taught us a tonne about the animals, their interaction in the wild, their behaviour towards humans, and how they could be tracked. When I say 'taught' I mean share 0.0001% of their knowledge, but since we came in with 0 knowledge and a ton of misconceptions, I consider it a great learning :) A special shout out also goes to Gerdie - the awesome cook who kept us full on delicious meals full of 'mmmmm'.
We would have 2 drives a day: one morning one (involving waking up at 5:30 am) to catch all the animals as they wake up and start going about their day (be in grazing on trying to eat the grazers), and an evening one, starting at 4 and going into the nigh time to catch all the nocturnal animals in action. The most popular animals on the safaris are called the Big 5, a term coined for animals that are most difficult to hunt for on foot, and they are: elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion and leopard. There are also Little 5, which is a fun way to categorize 5 smaller animals found in SA whose name correspond to the Big Five i.e. a rhino beetle. Finally, there's the Secret 7 - animals that are the trickiest to find as they are nocturnal. Our count was 3/5 for the Big 5, 2/5 for the Little 5, and 3/7 for the Secret 7. Not bad at all as we were told; the only pity was that we didn't get to see any of the big kitties: the lions or the leopards.
We literally managed to have an adventure every single time we drove out. We also did a walking tour where we didn't encounter anyone bigger or badder than a millipede, but were told that just a few weeks ago people ran into a herd of 60 elephants. I will let these pictures and story blurbs describe our animal encounters :)
Our accommodations in the bush. Other than a small electric fence around some of the perimeter, we were pretty much out there with the animals. Supposedly all sorts of critters come to visit, elephants, leopards...we only got visited by an impala-boo.
We saw this guy hanging out on the side of the road while driving to the safari lodge. He didn't seem to mind us and ate some leafs then took a mud bath before strolling off
We drove into this herd of buffalo by the dam after tracking them down all night in hopes that they would bring lions on their tail. There were 100+ of them and the one staring at us from the middle wasn't too happy with our arrival. We were told that buffalo is the most dangerous of the Big 5 because it will charge you if it doesn't like you, so having dozens of them around was pretty cool and unnerving :D
These are the impalas aka McDonald's of the bush, because everything with teeth is trying to eat them. Them also have a black M on their bums hehe. We also tried eating it...tastes like steak :D We saw these guys all over the place, they were like squirrels back home.
The kudu. These guys are really pretty large antelope like animals...and also tasty :) We stumbled upon a whole family of them by the dam. As most animals, they didn't mind us and went about their business snacking and hanging out.
Meet Gina the giraffe. I was blown away by how tall these guys actually are. Surprisingly, they are not as easy as one might think to spot. We only saw the one up close.
Harry the Hippo...he's a loner because he ate his friend and the other hippos exiled him. He now hangs out by himself around the dam. We didn't know this, but it's actually very hard to see a hippo on land as they only come out at night to feed. Even still, ou don't want to be around them as they get very aggressive. They begin opening their mouths and roaring when they want to come out to warn you to go away (which we didm, because these things are 3 tonnes and run 40 km/hr).
Warhog aka Pumba...These things are quite skittish and don't like people too much.
The janet is part of the secret 7. It can only be seen at night when it hunts.
The moment I thought I was going to get trampled...
We found this guy with Sam's tracking help. He heard him break a branch when we were watching the hippos and lead us right to it. We had to do some crazy driving through the bush to follow this guy, but he eventually ended up following us right back to the water. In this shot, he's actually standing 10-15 m away from the car. He was very surprised to see us and walked right behind the car to get a closer look (and this is where I thought I was going to die because I was half expecting it to charge hehe). He was cool though, and proceeded to go about his business-drinking and taking a mud bath. Whew!
We spotted a fun family of zebras during one of our rides. These are absolutely gorgeous animals with perfectly flawless hides. Loved them!
Rino the white rhino. This guy was crossing the road when we found them, but he paused for a few minutes for us to admire him. He was at least 3 tonnes-these guys are massive! Also, nerd fact of the day: the name white rhino actually comes from the Dutch word for 'wide', which sounds like 'white', hence it's called the white rhino.
Our adventure car for our safari adventures. The ranger drives and the tracker sits in the front and looks out for animal clues.
Our awesome ranger Mike taking us on a supervised walk through the bush. We didn't have any incidents other than meeting the millipede that I'm playing with in the next picture. Never had a giant millipede crawl on me before...it felt like a toothbrush :)
That's it for now! :))
You are very lucky. Mike is one of the best rangers there is.
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