Kruger National Park

After leaving the beautiful peaks of the Rustenburg area, Jeremy and I made the 6 hour drive to a small town located near the Kruger National Park called Nelspruit. We checked in to a hostel called the ‘Funkey Monkey’, and like the name suggests, it sure was funky! The following morning, we headed to the infamous park that we had heard so much about. But we had just been on two awesome game drives at the Pilanseberg National Park so we did not really know what to expect. We were now going to be driving the park by ourselves and in our own little midget car - yikes. Within ten minutes of entering the park, Jeremy and I spotted a rhino and her baby – we were not sure if it was a black or white rhino, but were guessing a black one because the baby was following behind the mother unlike the white rhino who follows her baby. Humbu (from our Game Drives) gave us a liitle tip to help remember this...he told us that the black people, similar to the black rhino’s, carry their babies on their back and the white people, similar to the white rhino’s, carry their babies on their front ). While we were admiring the rhino’s, we looked up and saw an SUV driving in reverse down the road at a very high speed. We thought they were backing up to see what we were seeing but then suddenly, from around the corner came a large bull elephant walking down the center of the road. At one point while we were filming the elephant, we must have scared the rhino and her baby as they charged toward our car – for my family out there, you know I panic in almost all situations, so this one was no different!!! Thank goodness for Jeremy who was able to talk me through my reversing skills. After our heart rates had settled, I continued to drive around a curve where we spotted two water buffalos catching some rays in a nearby pond. So...in a mere matter of 20 minutes, we spotted 3 of the ‘Big 5’ (for those of you that are not familiar with the Big 5, they are the cheetah, lion, rhino, water buffalo and elephant). We drove for the entire day throughout the park from 7 in the morning until 5pm at night. Jeremy drove the painful 150km back to Nelspriut.

Tip No. 6) Another tip to know about South Africa is that a mere 40km on the highway is not 1/3 of an hour but rather could be two hours even on the highway. Therefore, when planning a trip be sure to give yourself triple the time because you will run into a village every ten minutes and are sure to cut your speed in half every time.

For example, the GPS had predicted 3.5 hours for this 150km drive and we laughed because we thought how could this be??? Well, sure enough we pulled into the driveway 3.5 hours later after dodging potholes, goats, cows and PEOPLE – rain or shine, night or day, the highways are lined with people. They are quite oblivious of a vehicles right of way on the highway and not only walk on the road but do so in groups of two or more in a line perpendicular to the road (and keep in mind the shoulder in many rural areas is only 10cm).

Other than the cats who where hanging out in the shaded areas (or so we were told) we saw every other animal possible including monkeys, impalas, kudu’s, wildebeests, giraffes, zebra’s elephants, hippo’s, jackals, rhino’s, water buffalos, zebra’s and tons of different birds.

Day two at Kruger was not as exciting as day one as we got off to a bad start. We slept in (or let me rephrase that, I slept in) till 6 am so by the time we arrived at the gates of Kruger it was already 9am and the sun was beating down on us (and the animals). We had decided the night before that we would spend a night in Kruger so when we went to look at accommodations the day of, much to our surprise the place was nearly all booked up. We were able to get a hut for $300 Rand (~$50 Canadian Dollars) but we did not like the location of the place. We then cancelled that reservation and booked a spot at the campground at the Berg-en-dal campsite thinking we would just sleep in our car. After twenty minutes of this idea floating around in our heads, we went back to the first place and cancelled the campground and rebooked the hut – the place was filled with laughter as everyone in the office was laughing at how dumb and indecisive we were. We drove around for the remainder of the day encountering lots of animals, but we still had not seen any cats.

Day 3 at Kruger had the potential to be a very exciting one as we were up at 5am and the first ones in line at the gate for when it opened at 5:30am. We were told by a number of people that the best time to see the animals was first thing in the morning. More often than not, the animals would be nestled on the roads to keep dry as the daytime heat cools off in the evening and turns to dew soaking all of the grass and in turn, soaking the animals. So we were amped to be the first ones out and just cruise the roads in search of cats. Some jack ass decided that we were going too slow (speed limit of 50) and quickly passed me – I was obviously upset because he would be scaring off any animals that may be on the road. I decided I would try and keep up with him in case he did run into something. We were not going to let him scare away `our animals` although he was driving like a maniac. As we were turning a corner, we noticed him slow down and there in front of us, with the sun rising in the background was a giant Rhino sleeping on the road (he also had a bird sleeping on him too – it was so cute!). We continued to follow the maniac until he thankfully took a different route than us and within one minute of heading down this main road, we came across a pride of 4 male lions just lounging on the road. We were so close to them and they were absolutely beautiful (and bigger than the ones we encountered at the lion park). They finally ventured off the road but were never too far from our line of sight. Jeremy and I actually had our breakfast watching them – nothing like a bowl of Corn Flakes watching the ones you love.

All in all, Kruger was absolutely FANTASTIC!!!!! Our highlights included:
-Driving down a minor slopped valley and having two baby elephants run across the road (and right in front of our car)
-Turning around a corner and having to slam on our brakes as a bull elephant (very very BIG!!!!) was walking right towards us (on 2 separate occasions)
-Losing our minds from the +40 heat that we were driving in all day, for three days and singing Hakuna Mattata and I Just Cant Wait to be King.
-Treating ourselves every hour or so to a little bit of heaven (aka AIR CONDITIONING in the car). We are after all trying to be frugal (haha!) and if this is one way to save some bills, then so be it! Jeremy and I would also monitor dumb moves like opening the car windows while the a/c was on (Jeremy forgetting it was and trying to take pictures on multiple occasions) and infractions would be an additional 30 seconds of the losers fan while on AC.
-AND...last but certainly not least (well for Jeremy anyways) was all of the beautiful trees we encountered along the way. And yes, there were lots of them...I would know because he made me pull over on each and every one of them so he could take tons of pictures. My heart would briefly stop for a split second as he would ask me to stop and back up as though “he saw something” and every time I would be disappointed that it was just a TREE.