Blogs from Mpumalanga , South Africa, Africa - page 32

Geo: -23.926, 31.4209Today was the start of our most anticipated Safari adventure!We started off from Graskop @ 7am, looking forward to arriving at the infamous Kruger National Park.It was around 9am when the Kruger Gate appeared before us. The Park was opened in the 1920's and is essentially a massive fenced off area of land in the north east of South Africa where animals roam free and do as they please.Upon arrival we picked up a guide, with all the inhabitants listed, and would tick off each animal as we spotted them. Our safari here would be driving around the area, in our tour vehicle, stopping wherever we spotted something.We spent the day enjoying the park, seeing all kinds of Spectacular wildlife including; Impala (not so exciting), Rhino, Elephant, Giraffe, Hippos and many types of exotic ... read more

Geo: -24.9337, 30.8405So here we are in South Africa! The currency is the Rand and 1 AUD = approx 7.5 Rand. The weather is cool nights (down to around 2C) and moderate days 15-25C with minimal to no rain. We emerged in the lobby @ 6am for breakfast. Our tour was scheduled to leave at 6.30. Our group consisted of 12 members, and was generally an older age. Aside from Nat and I, theres a Belgian couple around our age (Bert & Nela), an American couple (50s; John & Paulie), two Australian sisters (70s; Margaret & Lesley) and four non-English-speaking-Russians 50-80 (didn't even learn all their names; Olga and Zoya were two of them).We have two tour guides for our tour, Jonathan and Shanli. Our transport is an all-terrain style twelve seater truck with full length ... read more

Three white rhino sightings in the first 30 mins of entering the park.. Sunset dam as always a smorgis board of game. Cooling off now at lower sabie swimming pool, hot as hell :)... read more

In keeping with the routine at the lodge, we woke up early again for the morning game drive. An early encounter on the morning drive was an enormous bull elephant that was “in musk”, meaning he was looking to mate. Alfie told us this elephant’s testosterone level was 9x greater now than at other times, made obvious to Alfie by both his smell and the wetness surrounding his underside and legs. We quietly watched him pull branches out of high trees by stretching his trunk, but at some point his elevated testosterone got the better of him and he decided we should leave. Our guide and tracker remained calm throughout, but the change in their tones made it clear that they were taking his behavior quite seriously and before we knew it, our land rover was ... read more

We were up early to shower and grab breakfast before heading to the airport. Another guide from Rhino Tripping arrived right on time for the short drive to the airport. We had a nice chat with him about the history and current political challenges of South Africa. It has been very educational to hear some of the many emphatic but different views on these issues during our short stay in Cape Town. The commonalities as well as the differences in points-of-view provide a deeper view into the complexities of these issues than could be easily obtained from home. Check-in for our South African Air flight to Kruger went smoothly and we were on our way. During the flight we worked on our travel journal, with Andrew stepping in to write the section on the cheetah encounter. ... read more