Kruger National Park Safari with Doug and Madeline Pratt Johnson 23rd - 26th January 2010

Doug and Madeline were picked up from Craighall House in Sandton, and we started to make our way to Nelspruit, after changing vehicles in Nelspruit our way onto the Kruger National Park. The camp that we were staying at was Pretoriuskop. After checking in and a chance for some lunch, we left the camp at 15h30 for our first game drive. We managed to see elephant, Rhino, Kudu and also lion just before the transport dam turn off on the Napi road.

Next morning, it was up early and out of camp after a cup of tea and coffee. We were making our way in the direction of one of the picnic spots for breakfast. We managed to get more lion, rhino, elephant and buffalo en route leaving jus the elusive leopard as the one not seen yet to make up the big five. Nobody was to worried as we had a whole halfo of the day as well as the following day to find one before they left to go back to Johannesburg and then on with there holiday throughout the rest of South Africa. After breakfast we carried on down to the camp of Lower Sabie and then onto the H10 towards Tshokwane. We managed to have good sightings of hippo, Crocodile, Kudu, Elephant, Buffalo and more Lion, before making our way back to camp in the late afternoon. That evening was spent having a good dinner in the camp restaurant and then having an early night as the guests were quite tired from the hours spent on the open safari vehicle looking for animals.

The next day, we left camp at 05h30 after tea and coffee and made our way in the direction of Skukuza only to be called and told about a leopard lying in a tree on the Doispan road. It was determined by the actions of the leopard that he was not going to move too quickly, so i decided to make our way in that direction. We cut accross from the napi road to Doispan via the road known as watergat and were able to find the leopard lying not even 1 km from the junction in a Marula tree. Upon arriving at the sighting, we were lucky as the large amount of traffic experienced by other guides while on the sighting had completely disappeared and we and another two vehicles were the only ones left on the sighting. After about a half an hour we decided to make our way to breakfast as we were already late and the guests were hungry.
For the rest of the day, we encountered large herds of elephant, buffalo, hippo, crocodile and more lion. We then had to make our way back to camp as the guests were going on their night drive that left at 17h00. While on the night drive guests experienced many nocturnal animals as well as some very good giant eagle owls standing on the road in front of the truck.

The following morning, we conducted our last game drive. After breakfast we made our way out of the park and back to Nelspruit and then onto Johannesburg. We dropped the guests off back at Craighall House in order for them to pickup there rental car before continuing there journey onto Natal.

Doug and Madeline said they had a good time, and will be returning to visit us again.