See you later Kruger, in a while crocodile!

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I wrote this blog in snippets over several weeks so it might be a bit disjointed, so I've added subtitles to make it easier to read!



ALL ABOUT THE ANIMALS

We feel so lucky to have been able to spend two months in the Kruger National Park. Animals are fickle things, so if you want to really have the chance to experience them, versus just check them off a list, you need to take some serious time. Of course, everything is just luck. I can't tell you the number of times we showed up to a traffic jam to be told, "Oh, the lion/cheetah/leopard just walked across the road but is now hidden in the bush. You just missed it!" It's so frustrating, but then we had to remind ourselves of the times when luck was on our side. I already wrote a blog with highlights of the first half of our time in Kruger, so here's a list of the most memorable animal sightings from the second half...



* the amazing three-leopard experience (but that had its own separate blog!)

* Watching a pride of lions hunting buffalo. Two of them (females) leapt on one and landed on its back before disappearing into the bushes. It's friend came to help as they both emerged from the bushes. A fail for the poor lions yet again.

* Having pole position on a pride of lions (moms and cubs) eating a buffalo right beside the road. It started off as just one female lion, but after a while, out of the bush emerged lion after lion until there were about 3 adults and six cubs. We watched for a long time as they tore into it. Kyla felt sad for the buffalo but we tried to explain to her the circle of life that they talk about on the kids' TV show The Lion Guard. I think she understood it!

* Taking Jake for a nap drive and at the end having a lioness walk down the road directly towards our car and even stop right at our wing mirror. It was worth waking him up to see her! When I got back to camp and told scott about it, we rushed out to see if we could see her again, and were lucky enough to see her cross the road in front of us. Definitely nailed this one!

* Spotting a lioness on a ridge looking down at the road and then watching her as she walked down the hill and alongside our car for almost a minute before walking across the road right in front of us! The best part was that no one else was around. We had her all to ourselves! She then crouched down in the bushes as if hunting. We watched her for a long time like this, with a growing crowd of cars, and even watched as a herd of elephants passed by her. In the end, the impala she was watching saw her and ran away, ending the hunt. She yawned and walked away, never to be seen again!

* Seeing a pack of about 20 wild dogs right by the road. They were mostly snoozing until something must have startled them as the whole pack suddenly jumped to attention! False alarm, they were soon back asleep. Zzzzz

* Watching from afar as a group of lionesses made a run for a waterbuck, splashing through the river as they did. They missed, but it was still fun to have seen a chase!

* Coming across a lion crouched in the gully below us and then spotting a trail of impalas crossing the road, ready to pass in front of her. Before we knew it, she'd run off out of sight down the ridge, sending the poor impalas running for their lives. Again, a miss. It's a hard life being a lion!

* After searching all morning for a cheetah and having given up and heading home, we came across a mommy cheetah with her baby right on the road, and she even started to hunt!

* Finding a white lion on a big day trip to Satara camp. Apparently a genetic mutation can affect lions once in a while, making them almost white, and there's one right now in Kruger and we found it! It was sitting under the shade of a tree with a normal-colored buddy and you could see the difference quite clearly. Too far away to get a decent photo though!

* Coming across male lions from the "Jock Pride" in the middle of the road on several early morning drives. Always a treat!

* Watching a pack of six wild dogs hunt some wildebeest while Jake napped in the back. I saw several of them jump on one then disappear into the bushes. A minute or so later they all ran out one by one and crossed the road. It was obviously the wildebeest's lucky day!

* A black mamba in the restaurant

* Any time we saw a leopard!



A MEAL WITH A VIEW

This second half of the trip was all at Lower Sabie camp. It was nice to have a little consistency and this is also our favorite camp. It's smaller and quainter than Skukuza, which is more like a village than a camp. It also has a really nice restaurant on stilts with fantastic views over the river. At any one time you can often see elephants, hippos, impalas, warthogs, buffalo, water bucks... Many times we saw herds of elephants crossing the river right in front. The food was my style. Lots of wraps and salads and even several vegetarian options (quite a treat in Africa!) and prices were totally reasonable. My favorite meals were about US$4 each. The same type of thing in America would be at least double that, and that's not even taking into account the amazing setting! On average we ate one meal a day there and just made sandwiches in the car the rest of the time. We didn't cook at this camp like we had done at Skukuza for one main reason: the braai gauntlet. The huts area that we stayed in was set all around a central square. Each hut had its own braai (BBQ). That meant that when we stepped out of our hut you had to run a gauntlet of potentially 18 flaming braais (pun intended!) Not only was it a mini-death-trap for the kids, but the smoke from them was awful as most people burnt wood. Everyone seems to be a smoker here so I guess it doesn't bother them, but to our smoke-free California lungs it felt toxic. We felt much better in the restaurant or our car! It was a shame as a lot of the social life with neighbors is centered around the braai scene, but it just didn't work for us.



THE NEIGHBORS

Still, we got talking to a few of our neighbors and a few stand out as memorable. One was a family from Mammoth in California who were also traveling the world with their 10 and 12 year old sons. They were taking the school year off and home schooling along the way. Apparently on the day they were to leave for their trip, the twelve year old locked himself in the bathroom, refusing to go! I guess there are some advantages to our kids being so little!



Another was a local man who'd been coming to Kruger since the 60s. He was a wealth of information, even down to the names and makeup of the various lion prides. He took scott and Jake for a walk after dark with a blue light to look for scorpions in the trees. Kyla and I decided we'd rather not know! Luckily they didn't find any.



OUR LOVELY AIR CONDITIONED RONDOLA

One thing that we really appreciated about this camp was the accommodation. For the same price as our pre-setup tent in Skukuza, we got an air-conditioned bungalow. Air conditioning was key as some days it got as hot as 43.5 degrees C (110 degrees Fahrenheit) so it was nice to have somewhere cool to escape to other than the car. On hot days Kyla often exclaimed that she was glad we were not still staying in the "hot tent!" The nice thing for me was that we could set the air conditioning and have a constant temperature all night. In the tent in our last camp, it was often really hot at bedtime and I'd dress the kids in short sleeved cotton pajamas. By the middle of the night, however, they'd be waking up cold. Mind you, we had this problem at home in Santa Barbara too! Most of the time we had round houses sleeping four people, but for three days in the middle of this, everything was booked out by 20 zoology students from Wales who were on a fields trip. We'd had to book a three person hut and hope for the best. We ended up having the two kids sleep in a bed of their own and scott and I had to cram into a single. It sounds crazy, but we'd tried having the kids sleep in a single bed in Pretoriuskop Camp and, believe me, it didn't work!



AN AMAZING THUNDERSTORM SHOW

One night as we were reading stories, ready to get the kids to bed, a huge thunderstorm started. Thunderstorms are so different here to any I've ever experienced elsewhere. Rather than a single flash of lightning followed closely by the associated thunder, the sheet lightning is pretty much continuous, interspersed by the odd fork lightning bolt. Of course, this means the sky is constantly rumbling in between a few deafening cracks. It's impossible to match the lightning with the thunder, meaning you can't play the game where you count seconds between the two to see if the storm is getting closer or farther away. As Kyla and Jake slept through the thunderstorms in the tent, this was their first storm that they could remember. Jake was a little scared but Kyla loved it. We turned off the lights after their stories and sat on their bed, looking out of the window at the trees silhouetted against the lightning. When I went outside to bring our swimsuits in for the night, Kyla followed me, mesmerized. Jake came out too but soon wanted to go back inside. The strange part was how warm it was. It was literally still 40 degrees Celsius, and when the wind kicked up, it was like a hot hair dryer. We all went inside and I couldn't believe what happened next - Jake said he wanted to go to bed and went over and got in and laid down with Foxy. This was so nice coming from a kid who's been a pain at bedtime recently, fighting it to stay up later. Maybe we need thunderstorms every night!



IT'S RAINING, IT'S POURING!

Speaking of weather, we brought a ton of warm clothes but haven't needed them as its been so hot all the time. The Kruger area is in a major drought right now too. The rains were supposed to come in mid-October but they never did. Watering holes that were reasonably full two months ago are now just a puddle. It's worst up north, and apparently the hippos are being shot by the Rangers as there isn't enough water and grass for them, and the meat is being donated to local villages. Finally, in the second week in November, we had a huge rain day. It poured down for most of the day, and not just showers but really heavy rain. Jake and Kyla loved standing under the porch of our room, looking out at the river that was rapidly forming right outside. Unfortunately, as we left a few days later, we never got to see the grass spring up and the plains turn from brown to green as we'd expected.



BUGS!

The rains had another effect too -bugs. Lots of them. They'd fly into our windscreen when doing our morning drives, making us glad we were not in an open air safari vehicle! Kyla and Jake soon became obsessed with all the centipedes it brought out, chasing them around camp and stamping the ground near to them to make them coil up. Our neighbor at the time was an Aussie/South African and he showed the kids how to pick them up. He also showed them what usually happened next - it pooped in his hand! Of course, being 2 and 4, Kyla and Jake thought this was hilarious but luckily didn't want to try it themselves! He also told us about all the scorpions in a nearby tree and, after dark one night, took us to see them. Seeing as we are nearing the end of our time here I decided to be brave this time and go. He had a special blue light torch that he shone. It was shocking! They were instantly apparent, glowing bright white, and he quickly found several. It was a little unnerving that this tree is only a few feet from where we always park the car and just steps away from the women's bathroom! Earlier that day, Kyla had found a scorpion squashed dead on the ground. Scary!



ELECTION DAY IN AMERICA

While we are on the subject of scary, I'll now come to Election Day. The day started out good with a leopard-in-a-tree spotting, even if it was far off. We then headed back to camp to our restaurant. We'd prearranged with the manager to watch the election results on CNN at 6:15am. I don't want to get political here, but let's just say our day went downhill. What I found interesting was the reaction of everyone else. People from all different countries walked by and paused for a few minutes to see how the vote was looking, and pretty much all were in disbelief. South Africans compared Trump to their President Zuma, who's run the country into the ground in their opinion. Craziness! It's a little bit scary to think about traveling the world with Trump and his motor-mouth as president. Not sure how other countries will react, especially Muslim countries. And I guess Mexico is off the list for sure!



A SNAKEY DAY

Scott had been talking about how we'd barely seen any snakes while in the park. I think this was a case of be-careful-what-you-wish-for. Within an hour, we saw two! The first one was where it should be: out in nature. We came across a traffic jam and soon saw a dead bushbuck (small deer) on the ground and assumed there was a leopard. Turned out it was actually a Rock Python. Apparently it had been spotted wrapped around the bushbuck but had since retreated into the bushes. With just the naked eye it was so camouflaged that it was impossible to see, but we could make it out easily with binoculars, and it was big! We'd have loved to wait and watch it eat it but it could be hours before it came out and Jake had just woken up from his nap so it was time to head back to camp.



We decided to head straight to the restaurant for a late lunch. Right after we'd ordered, a group of people started pointing up at the thatched roof ceiling. Soon the wait staff came to look, followed by half of the restaurant. It turned out there were two snakes. One was a python, which we didn't see, and the other was a black mamba. The black mamba are one of the fastest and deadliest snakes in the world and, according to the restaurant manager, both snakes are resident, living in the rafters of the restaurant ceiling. One of the guides saw and had his clients move tables. Further away from it. He said if it accidentally fell down it would freak out and start biting everyone around it. It's freaky to think about how many times it could have been above us!



A FAREWELL SHOW BY THE CATS

on our penultimate full day in the park we were really given a show by the lions and leopards. We started with two lions eating a giraffe kill in the early morning. Later we saw a leopard for a brief minute before it disappeared into the bush. We knew it had a den and a cub nearby so thought it would return. After looking for it for about 20 minutes we went on our way. Almost an hour after we first saw it, we passed back by the leopard area again, hoping to see it. We trolled up and down a few times then decided to carry on to Skukuza camp. We then spotted something on the crest of the hill, crossing the road. Bam! Leopard! We saw her for a few minutes before she disappeared, and no matter how much we drove up and down, she was nowhere to be seen. The funny thing was that a safari vehicle had come along the first time we spotted her but had missed her by a few minutes. Once again, a few minutes after we saw her for the second time, the same safari vehicle came past again only to be told by us that they'd just missed her! I felt sorry for them as we've been in that situation so many times.



After playing at camp for a few hours, it was time for Jake to take his nap while we drove back to our camp. On the way we saw two lionesses in the riverbed. They instantly walked up the bank and, after a bit of maneuvering by scott, walked across the road right in front of us. Not long after, we came across another traffic jam. There was yet another leopard just sitting down not too far from the road. She sat there for about ten minutes before running off out of sight. We tried to follow her but lost her. Everyone started driving up and down, trying to look for her. Finally one person said she'd settled under a tree. Not for long. She started walking towards the road and we thought she was going to cross, though that would be highly unusual for a leopard as, unlike lions, they are wary of cars. In true elusive leopard style, she then ducked into a tunnel going under the road (according to someone on that side of the road). Scott quickly positioned our car at the other side of the tunnel and a minute later she came out, right beside our car much to jake's surprise (he'd just woken up from his nap!) We caught several glimpses of her again before she finally went too deep into the bush to see. She's most likely our final leopard of Kruger.



TIME TO SAY GOODBYE

We have had a great innings in Kruger, but I think the animals were telling us it was time to go. They seemed to be in hiding on our final day or so. For quite a few weeks there seemed to be animals everywhere, especially elephants. You could look down the river and see three big herds all spread out along, each consisting of 30+ elephants. It looked so cool, and we thought it was always like this. We did wonder why they put elephants on the "sightings board" when they were everywhere. Scott and I jokingly referred to them as "pests" because of how it was almost impossible not to get stuck in elephant road blocks. Since the rain came, however, the elephants don't need to stay by the river so they dispersed out. It was quite sad to not see elephants all day after being used to seeing 100 or more every day. Good thing we are heading to Addo Elephant Park next!



We were sad to say goodbye to our friend Muerel at the Indigenous Plant Nursery. We'd been going there about three times a week so that the kids could play on the playground and she always greeted us warmly and stopped by to chat. We gave her my ergo baby carrier for her sister, a stack of clothes for her kids that we wouldn't need in Asia, and all of our pots and pans. We were glad we could leave them with someone who'd appreciate them. We had planned to hand her much more but the forecast for Addo is fairly cold and rainy so we thought we'd better keep hold of some more warm clothes. Maybe we will find someone nice there to hand them to before we fly to Asia?



We also had to say bye to all of our "friends" in the Lower Sabie restaurant - Makhosi, Sipho, Nicholas, Alice! Consave... They said it was nice to get to know us as most tourists stay only a couple of days and then leave. They were always very patient when our kids were terrorizing the restaurant!



Right now I'm writing this in our hotel room in Nelspruit. Tomorrow we are taking a four hour minibus to Johannesburg, where we will spend the night before flying to Port Elizabeth and Addo Elephant Park the next day. I'm pretty sure there's no wifi there, so

I'll say Happy Thanksgiving to all our American friends and family now, and I'll be in touch from Thailand in December most likely!



*** Tonnes more photos if you scroll all the way down!***

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