SA: Kruger National Park – 2016 Highlights (Oct)

October 25, 2016

A wonderful trip with family - Paul's Dad first trip to SA with us - so very special. Our first trip to Buffalo Brooke - blown away!

🙂 Family! Golf at Skukuza. Stunning and spacious Buffalo Brook.

🙁 All perfect!

DAY1: Friday: 22 October 2016

DAY 2: Saturday 22 October 2016

Coffee and Rusks at 4.45am! What a stunning welcome back to Africa – the sky was ablaze with colour – a most beautiful sunrise!

5am: everyone loaded in the cars and ready to drive from Mjejane to Crocodile Bridge for our morning Bush Walk (Jaco had kindly allowed us a lie in to allow a start an hour later!). We were nearly out the gates at Mjejajane when Judy realised that she had left her Doctor’s note certifying that at 82 she was fit and able to participate in the Bush Walk – not a problem, the others continued to Croc Bridge and we turned back and collected her note. Unfortunately there were roadworks which meant we crawled along at 20Kms per hour so we ended up starting the bush walk at 7.30am and not at 6am as Jaco had planned – it was already warm with temp gauge reading 35C and the weather forecast was for 42C!!!

We drove to an unspecified part of the park and the walk started well – then the wind had changed and these buffalo had caught our scent. Jaco advised us that we should not let them think that we were concentrating on them and walk on and then they would not pose any danger – as predicted when we moved on, they soon relaxed and started grazing again. But this was not before we nearly lost Jack. Jaco was pointing some tracks out to us and he started meandering towards the watching buffalo – thank goodness Jaco noticed in time and called him back reminding him to stay within the group at all times! My nerves! 🙂

…we caught sight of a very thin white *** – you can see all his ribs…he was blissfully unaware of our presence as the wind was in our favour.

Jaco said that on previous bush walks he had watched the resident pride of lions lie in ambush and take them as they came to drink – easy pickings in these times of drought. You can see that not all the flesh has even been consumed by scavengers as is usually the case – this is because the carcasses were so numerous – we counted 16. The size of the buffalo horns are incredible.

We were very excited because the pride also had small cubs that they are denning nearby and we were hoping to catch a glimpse of them. Unfortunately Judy got caught up in a ‘Wag ‘n Bietjie’ branch and we all helped to untangle her – that bush has certainly earned its name! By now the temperature was soaring and we stopped for a drink in the what little shade there was.

This black rhino clocked us and started to follow us! In the end we had to get our Number Two Rifle to retrieve the vehicle, but not before he was chased up a tree by another black rhino with a calf!

The vehicle arrived to rescue us! Phew! What a great bush walk!

Paul and his dad enjoyed a round of golf while we relaxed and had lunch in the heat of the afternoon.

We had some fantastic sightings…One amusing incident was at a lion sighting. We were behind Andy & Libby’s car when we noticed their read door being opened – Judy was calmly opening the door to get a better loo at the lions next to her!!

And a Honeymoon Couple in the shade…

We were fortunate enough to have a great black rhino on our bush walk.

White rhino

Newly born rhino – you can still see the umbilical cord

We had a great wild dog sighting – woo! hoo!

A lovely leopard in a tree and one hiding from us!

Elephants are always our favourite.

Gentle Giraffe!

A lovely healthy buffalo and one which we were not so sure about!

We had great hyena sightings

Lazy hippos

A cheetah hunting in dense bush just north of Crocodile bridge – the impala leapt right across the road! Here are our series of photos taken with great excitement and therefore blurry!