Hunting the Big Five

Sorry to my many loyal followers (like the half a dozen of you out there) for not posting during the last week. But there is no internet access when you're in the middle of one of the finest game reserves in the world.

We spent five days on a self-drive safari through Kruger National Park in north western South Africa. The park borders Mozambique and is home to wonderful array of iconic animals.

Self-drive is exactly as it sounds - we drove our rental car throughout the park, keeping to both paved and gravel roads (as is the rule), in the hope of spotting as many animals as we could.

Annie broke one of the rules of Kruger right away. Not only are you forbidden from leaving your vehicle while outside the protection of the camps, but you are also not supposed to put hands or heads outside the windows.

It only took about 15 minutes to spot our first elephant. Crikey, that's big!

The posted speed limit is 50 km/h inside the park, but we rarely went above 30 km/h. You never know when the animals are going to want to cross the road, so you are always on alert.

Although I love my little Canon S95 point-and-shoot, I really did miss my bigger camera and zoom lens during this portion of the trip. We did our best with what we had, and we've posted a selection of what we saw during our five days at Kruger.

This was our home during our stay - the Lower Sabie guest camp.

Here is Shirley outside our hut - it sleeps five, has the luxury of air conditioning (although it's winter here and quite chilly in the mornings and evenings), but doesn't have it's own bathroom. Our room selection has shared bathroom and cooking facilities (not in the same building). I would call it quasi-camping. But completely adequate and very inexpensive.

As we did many of our drives along the Sabie River, we never had to look far for hippos - saw hundreds during our stay.

And always close by were the crocodiles.

Hmmm.....I wonder who has right of way?

We actually didn't see this guy until the last 30 minutes of our last day - just a few minutes after Shirley wondered out loud if there were any ostriches in Kruger.

The park has great facilities and just proves that you do not need to spend a small fortune on a visit to a fancy lodge on a private game reserve to enjoy a safari experience (but it would probably be nice).

We cooked for ourselves each day, but there are plenty of tasty options available for purchase. This lady was making the traditional boerewors and pap.

Nice addition to the sunset.

And just when we thought our day was over, we saw this lioness on our way back to the camp.

We couldn't stay too long to watch her - the Kruger has very strict rules about returning to the camp. At this time of year it's 5:30 pm, otherwise you face a hefty fine. At that point the gates close and the electric fences are turned on. This is for the protection of guests. And with lions just a few hundred meters from your bed, I'm not complaining.

The following morning we were treated to one of our most fortunate spottings - three male lions casually strolling down the road. At one point they were within four feet of our car window. Quite awesome.

Share the road.

Sunrises look a lot like sunsets - hard to tell them apart.

We didn't get to see too many hyenas during the visit. As ugly as they are, they are one of my favourites.

This is the endangered Southern Ground Hornbill.

From a distance, we would sometimes mistake the great mass of grey of a hippo as a rhino. This was always a bit disappointing, because one of my goals when coming to Kruger was to hopefully see a rhino in the wild. Even in Kruger, they are being poached at an alarming rate. 

So I was thrilled when we saw our first one (well two, actually).

And later that evening we were treated to these three rhinos. We happened to be the only people out on this stretch of road, so we simply stopped the car and turned off the engine and watched as they munched on grass and then crossed the road into the sunset.

The end of another great day.

This was one of our luckiest sightings - a cheetah. We so badly wanted to see one, but they are extremely difficult to find in the tall grass. Often they are lying down which makes it nearly impossible to spot them. The picture isn't great, but we had our binoculars with us so we were able to have a nice look.

On our last day we also saw another hard-to-find resident of the park - the jackal.

Despite all of the photos, there isn't a non-stop procession of animals. Long periods of time can go by without seeing anything. But for me it was great fun to be on the lookout. There was a constant heightened level of suspense as we wondered what was around the next corner. And searching the plains, trees, rivers and bushes was like playing a non-stop game of 'Where's Waldo".

In the end we probably saw 20 rhinos and 15 lions, among the many other animals. And there was only one animal which eluded us - the most difficult to spot of the 'Big Five' also failed to make an appearance for us - the leopard. But that's okay. We now have a reason to come back!

Kruger National Park is one of the great treasures of the world, and ranks among the best travel experiences of my life. Among our motivations for doing this trip was to see some of the world's beautiful animals before they disappear. Mission accomplished.