Crocodile Bridge, Kruger Park

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The bride and groom had left for their honeymoon, some of the guests had gone to Cape Town, some had gone home and that just left the UK contingent who were flying back that afternoon. We had decided to all go for breakfast before we went our separate ways so all packed up and made for the local shopping centre for a cooked breakfast - I think not! Good old power sharing, no electricity for the entire centre meant that all the restaurants - the pizza, seafood and burger ones could not operate. The spar shop had some cooked food on display so before they sold it all or it went cold we bought some and arranged with the pizza restuarant to use their outside chairs and tables to eat it - well they weren't using them were they?

We weren't sure where we were going to spend our last few weeks so had only booked the first 3 nights in safari tents at Crocodile Bridge in Kruger Park but because of all the rain we'd had the river was too high to enter at Crocodile Bridge and we had to go in at Malelane gate and drive along. Croc Bridge is one of our favourite camps, small and quiet, it really gives you the chance to see animals close to the fence, we were lucky enough to have buffalo within feet of our tent. We also saw the hyena walking round the fence, but that is standard at all the camps, still great to see though.

Malcolm wasn't impressed with a large scorpion which appeared as we were sitting round the braai. We heard lion and hyena at night. The great thing with canvas is that you hear all the night sounds.

The weather was hot but not unbearable, and the animal sightings were quite good. One morning leaving camp at 4.30 as soon as the gates had opened we came across 4 lion lying in the road, it was still dark, that is when getting up at 4am seems worthwhile, if you follow another car the animals move off the road and into the bush. We drove a bit further down the road and came across 3 male lions walking towards us.

We also saw a herd of at least 150 buffalo (yes, we counted them) and over 50 zebra, these were the herds that we hadn't seen at Christmas time. We found a hyena den with a mother lying outside and about 3 or 4 cubs, all different ages. We sat and watched them for ages, they are so entertaining and the little one was so cute, why is it that adult hyenas are so ugly and the cubs are so cute?

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Photos

Hyena cub
I didn't know they were black when they were young.