Elephant encounters at Kruger

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Well I've been back in London for two months now and predictably its all been a bit of a blur - lots of nights out catching up with old friends I haven't seen in ages or new friends that I made along the way in Oz and NZ. And in between that I got a job and a found somewhere to live - yup, reality has hit with an almighty thump.. for now anyway ;0) A few peops have asked about my Africa photos so here's a couple of blogs about the last 6 weeks or so of my trip.....

My decision to leave Oz was all a bit spur of the moment, helped by the fact that it was raining and cold in Sydney and to be honest I fancied a change. So I booked myself a flight and a few days later I flew out to Johannesburg. I guess considering that my change of plan was partially weather driven I probably should have checked what the climate in South Africa was like in June, then perhaps I wouldn't have been too surprised when I stepped off the plane and immediately started hunting for a jumper! First impressions of Johannesburg - chaos at the airport as we stood on the tarmac for 20mins waiting for the shuttle to pick us up, shuttle rage as we pushed our way through to the arrivals lounge, the security guard at the car park carrying a rather large gun and being the only white person walking to the shopping mall (where I purchased some thermals and a bottle of suntan cream!).

This was my first trip to Africa and the one thing I really wanted to do was a safari, so I booked myself straight on a four day trip to Kruger National Park. At 20 000km² the park is massive (roughly the same size as Wales and the largest game reserve in South Africa) but the drive out was a long one and having been picked up at 5am we mostly slept through the first part of it. As lunch time approached though we arrived at the Blyde River Canyon and its dramatic scenery - the third deepest canyon in the world, its cliffs rise to tower 600m-800m over the river bed below. One of the advertised highlights of the trip was the chance to overnight in a 'tribal village', except it seemed I was on the posh trip where everyone else had upgraded to chalet accommodation so I was forced to spend the night in a chalet on my own, with a ensuite bathroom, air con.... heaven! Well, it would have been if I hadn't spent half the night propping up the bar with John, the rather persuasive barman from Yorkshire. Far too many 'one for the roads' later it was 6am and my alarm was going off again. :0(

Before we entered Kruger itself we stopped off at Hoedspruit - a breeding centre for endangered species like the cheetah. Interesting facts for the day - how to tell a leopard from a cheetah (the later has black tear marks on its face and single black spots; the spots on a leopard are in a rosette pattern), the fastest mammal on land the Cheetah reaches top speeds of 110-120km/h, when their stride length can be up to 8m, but they can only maintain their maximum speed for @275m.

As to our time in Kruger, well the highlights were too many to list - seeing a leopard curled up in the grass by the roadside on our night drive, following a Giraffe along the road as she elegantly sauntered along, watching lions snooze and laze around in the grass after feeding, catching a glimpse of a charging rhino through the trees, having to stop for ten minutes as a seemingly endless herd of buffalo crossed the road in front of us or perhaps our close encounter with an elephant. Whilst I spent the first night in comfortable luxury I opted to spend the next two nights at a campsite in the park itself - and it was so the right decision! On our second night as we all sat round the fire chatting, drinking and watching hyena's prowling the outside of the fence we started to hear the sound of trees being knocked around and figured there was an elephant somewhere nearby. Still we weren't quite prepared for it to suddenly appear right in front of us - less than 10m away with only a wire fence between us at it(which I'm pretty sure it would have taken down in all of about two steps) and my god it was HUGE! Our guides had been fantastic on the trip - so much knowledge about everything from animal behaviour and the food that they eat to the traditional medicines made using different plants. When we'd seen an elephant at a watering hole earlier that day they'd told us all about the 'mock' charge of the elephant. Apparently you can tell the difference between a 'mock' charge and a 'you're in big trouble' real one by things like the position of the trunk and head (raised vs. lowered) and the ears (flat against the head vs. out) but at that point it time I couldn't remember any of it... and afterwards, well the only thing we could remember was just how darn big it was! I expect the elephant found us really quite dull.

Next up - mountain villages in Lesotho, Hippo heaven in St Lucia and lazing on the beach in Mozambique

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Comments

[Ail]

wow - superb photos AIl x