Big Five Country

Driving from Graskop into the valley below felt like we were descending right from the clouds themselves. We began the new year by entering Kruger, South Africa's oldest and flagship national park. By 7:00 am, we were already inside the Phabeni gate in the southwest corner of the park and ambled over to the main camp at Skukusa before arriving at Lower Sabie later that morning. I am convinced that Kruger is the best place in southern Africa to see wildlife, and we were not disappointed.

What was a disappointment however was the campsite at Sabie. With South Africans still on school holiday, the camping area was absolutely packed and what was available was not attractive. We literally squeezed our tent onto the corner of a lot, with room for just two chairs and a tent.

South African, and more specifically Afrikaaner, camping takes the outdoor activity to a whole new level. While there were some caravans, what dominated the campgrounds were compounds comprised of multi-room tents, elaborate outdoor kitchens, and comfortable seating areas with entertainment. It was not uncommon to see a portable satellite dish with flat screen tv (there was of course the five day test between the South African and Indian cricket teams). Very impressive. Most of the people we talked to had been there for a couple of weeks; theirs was not a setup to take down after one or two days. It was a nice community - very quiet and collectively around 7 pm, the smell of meat cooking over wood fires filled the camp. That is one of the best smells.

Not to say that there weren't non-white people camping either. Black South Africans pitched tents, along with several uitlanders(foreigners). The Afrikaans I had learned in Namibia came back fairly quickly. In fact, on a few occasions, people spoke to us in Afrikaans, and understanding them, we replied.

We noticed that there were not so many mosquitoes, although we did start taking our malarone tablets since this is a high-risk malaria area (thankfully without side effects unlike mefloquine of days gone by). What did annoy the hell out of us were the bees and flies.

Every section of the park has its own unique terrain and so there are specific animals that will prefer one area over another, and some who seem to roam the entire park. The Lower Sabie camp is right on the river, which seemed to come alive in the mornings and late afternoons with hippos, crocodiles, and elephants.
I'll describe more of the highlights later.

Despite the crowded nature of the camp, we enjoyed our game drives. Our routine for the week was to get up around 4 am, leave the camp at 4:30, drive for a few hours, come back to take a nap and eat breakfast, walk or sit and read, eat lunch, maybe go for a swim, and then another drive mid afternoon, before coming back for dinner, followed by a walk and shower.

It rained the first night, but we were relatively unscathed since we stayed there another night and could dry out. However when we moved to Satara camp, further north where we had camped eleven years ago, there was a particularly heavy storm that set everything off. That storm drenched everything we had hanging on the clothesline, and left the tent muddy and soaked on the outside (we stayed dry inside). But to have to leave the next morning and pack everything out was a little stressful.

We arrived at the last camp - Letaba - which was as far north as we had ever been in the park, and still only half way up. It was by far the loveliest campsite, but when we arrived it was still drizzling. The tent was already wet and muddy, so Russ set about washing it and we hung it to dry when the rain stopped. Then we decided the best thing to do at 10 in the morning when we were feeling so discouraged was to drink beer and have a braai. We bought some meat, lit a fire, and made braai bread. We spent the next three hours, sitting, talking, just chilling and then eating a delicious lunch. During this break in the day is when our a-ha moment came.

There is no way we can camp straight out for the next four months. We are not long-term car campers, and especially not in the African rainy season. We are seasoned backpackers, who happen to have a car, and who will occasionally camp when the situation calls for it. Huge relief when we made peace with that.

We did enjoy Letaba the best, and because of a Sanparks reservation error, we have 900 rand credit. That is a spectacular place to which we would go back. They also had a wonderful elephant museum which played educational wildlife videos throughout the day, which is exactly what we did when it started to rain again. This was big tusker country, and it was amazing how many large elephants we saw. We spent two nights in Letaba, and were all dried out until late on the last night, when it rained incessantly. Again, we had to throw everything in the car and take off. Not nice, but we know now that we don't have to do this forever.

Because animals are the reason people go to Kruger, here is the lowdown of what we saw:
Black backed jackal - elusive and solitary
Blue wildebeest - numerous, liked to hang with the zebras
Bushbuck - just a couple
Cape buffalo - more than I had ever seen, large herds, a few in very close range. Very impressive animals.
Chacma baboon - numerous, once one troop completely blocked the road. Because they are so unpredictable, we gave them space and just sat and watched them for awhile.
Duiker - a very small deer, like a lawn ornament.
Elephant - one of my favorites, saw several large herds and a couple big tuskers. One gave us a mock charge. Massive amounts of dung. Saw quite a few babies.
Giraffe - again, we saw several. It is really something to see them run. A few babies.
Hippo - I had never seen them active outside of the water. In and out of water, they were really moving. One highlight was to see two males battling it out for territorial rights. Boy, the can run. Saw a few babies.
Impala - an unique antelope with no close relatives. Felt like we saw most of the park's 100,000 herd.
Kudu - incredibly large animal with impressive curled horns (male). Saw several.
Leopard - hard to ever spot one of these so it was a highlight to see two, one of which was a very good sighting in the early morning.
Lion - a small pride sat in front of our car for awhile, laying around as we've seen most lions. But their sheer size a few feet away was amazing.
Nyala - similar to the kudu but smaller. Had never seen one before.
Serval - a small cat we found in the early morning. Never seen one before as they are quite elusive. A big find.
Slender mongoose - they're everywhere.
Spotted hyena - came across a whole pack in the early morning, playing around in a river bed. That was really something to see as they are nocturnal.
Steenbok - much smaller than an impala, but look similar. Lawn ornament variety.
Vervet monkey - very playful. Saw many babies.
Warthog - the little ones were endearing.
Waterbuck - a rather shy creature that we saw quite often. They have a large white circle on their butts.
White rhino - another lucky sighting, we saw three of them.
Zebra - plentiful. We saw one zebra chasing a lone hyena.

We also saw lots of birds, most notably the Lilac-breasted Roller, African Fish Eagle, Burchell's Starling, Cape Glossy Starling, Giant Kingfisher, Marabou Stork, and the Pearl-spotted Owlet among numerous others.

We took the long scenic way home, hoping to avoid the toll road, which we did. However, it took us on some treacherous mud roads which were only safely navigated by Russ' driving (he likened it to driving in heavy snow on ice, but like nothing he had ever done before) and our trusty Rav4. It was really lovely on the back roads, driving through banana, mango, papaya, and avocado orchards, making it seem more tropical than anything else.

It feels great to be back in Gabs!