Kruger

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Change of plan, Rob (Hostel manager) came to us about 10 minutes after I wrote the last blog and said that there was now enough people to do the Kruger tour on Friday. Obviously we jumped around all excited for a while before getting down to the important business of packing. So, 5:30 friday morning, bleary eyed and grumbling we managed to get ourselves showered dressed and onto the mini bus. Little did we know we were in for a 8 hour journey up to the park itself! Not helped of course by the fact that we got lost in Pretoria for about an hour looking for somewhere that we were picking another girl up from.
So we finally arrived at lunchtime, where we dumped our bags in the tent and headed straight to the swimming pool, as you do. After a quick rest we went on our first safari!!! Just around the concession which isnt in the actual park but still has alot of animals. So we drove around, got all excited over seeing kudu (a type of antelope) and giraffes, and ending up going almost vertically up this big hill!!! We actually thought the guide was joking when he said we were driving up it. But we just about made it up, had a bottle of cider whilst watching the sunset and got jealous at the other group who had seen a herd of elephants cross the road right in front of them.
So we went back to camp, and had a beautiful bbq (the african term is a braii). It was lurvely, and then we all sat round the camp fire chatting, and we made fun of Justin (a guide) as a girl we met a few days before really fancied him. Went to bed ready for our wake up call at 5 the next morning : s then got out of bed again 10 minutes later to pull on as many clothes as we possibly could. It was freezing!!!!!
Next morning, still blimmin freezing, crawled out of bed and drove to the actual park where we had to wait an hour before we could even drive in. Lucky for us we did though, as after 5 minutes drive we had a whole herd of buffalo crossing the road right in front of us!!! We were ecstatic, 5 minutes in and already seen one of the big 5! Then after 10 minutes the novelty kinda wore off, and we were still just watching buffalo. There must have been hundreds of them!
So after 15minutes of buffalo we were off again. Throughout the day we saw all of the big five (lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant and rhino), although the lions were reeealy far away and the leopard was literally a glimpse as she ran after something through the bushes, but hey its still a sighting! Our guide was awesome, she was an afrikaans woman named Ansu, and she was soo enthusiastic about everything still as she didnt qualify too long ago. I learnt quite alot it was great. By the time we had lunch at 2oclock we had seen all the big 5, plus giraffes and zebra galore, baboons, countless impala and kudu, blue balled monkeys (cant remember their proper name whoops), a really rare antelope called a nyala, and hippo out if the water!!!! Including a baby it was soo cute, and a baby elephant which looked tiny!
Then the afternoon was pretty quiet, probably due to the fact that it was 43 degrees!!! We were actually melting in the heat. So again we got back and jumped in the pool! Rested for a bit and then went on a night drive which is reealy cool. We get given big torches and look out for eyes gleaming in the light, we saw some but mainly just birds.
The next morning, up again at 5:15 to go for a bush walk and look for tracks! Beth felt ill so didnt come, but we had an interesting talk about termites, and saw elephant tracks, just no elephant hmmm. Breakfast time, then back into the park where we saw more of the same animals. After this we drove down to the 5star lodge we were staying at for the night, and wow could you tell it was 5 star!! It was beautiful.

To be continued... (running out of time!) xxxxx

Pictures of my trip thus far on the following link -

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