On Safari With Karen From 9 February 2014

9 February 2014

After picking up the guests at KMIA we headed towards Phabeni gate to enter the Kruger Park. On our way we were already spoiled with a sighting of impalas that roam the airport, a huge water monitor that risked its life crossing the main road and vervet monkeys in the trees next to the road.

Once we entered the park we continued our journey on a more leisurely pace and saw impalas almost straight away. Then we were very lucky to spot a leopard lounging in a tree just kilometres from the gate and not far from the road. He seemed uncomfortable so we waited a while for him to move but apparently he disagreed and didn't move.

We tore ourselves away from the sleepy leopard to see an elephant feeding on the other side of the road, just a couple of 100 metres further.

Another stop gave us an amazing sighting of 2 white rhinos sleeping in the riverbed, and what was lying in the overflow riverbed on the other side of the road? Two buffalo! We hadn't driven 2 kilometres and we saw 4 of the big 5!

It was a bit more spread out after that, but we spotted blue wildebeest, zebras, warthog, more buffalo and a couple more elephants. We also paid attention to the colourful birds like the lilac breasted roller, woolly necked storks, woodlands kingfisher.

At one of the sightings we got a tip about wild dogs on Watergat, so we drove down to take a look and found them flat out in the grass. We waited for over an hour but more then a flick of a tail, a twitch of an ear and the occasional head raise we couldn't see them properly. Guess our luck was coming to an end so we decided to head to Skukuza, our camp for tonight.

What an amazing lucky start to this safari! Well worth skipping our lunch for. Now let's hope we'll get a nice look at those wild dogs tomorrow as we are going to try and find them again.

 

10 February 2014

This morning we left bright and early as the sun came up. Before we were even out of the gate we spotted Vervet monkeys on the top of the roof sunning themselves to start their day. Just outside the gate of Skukuza we saw our first giraffe, kudu and honeybadger all in the same spot. The kudu got a fright and hid in the bush, the honeybadger looked up and then continued crossing the road and disappeared but the giraffe was curious and watch us while we were watching him.

We drove a loop around the river and came across a large family of baboons playing in the road, impalas with a late born young, bushbuck, more kudus, hippos, a bateleurs couple, pied kingfishers, three kinds of bee eaters, marabou storks, and big webs of golden orb spiders.

After our breakfast at the golfclub the hippos in the dam came close for their photo shoot. The purple crested turaco and woodlands kingfisher joined in and when all the fun was over we climbed back on the vehicle and continue down watergat.

We spotted zebras with very young babies, steenbok, elephants, buffalo, common grey duiker, a well hidden male waterbuck and had a giraffe crossing the road in front of us.

We returned to Skukuza for a little break as it started to get very hot.

In the afternoon we went for a little bumble out in the park and soon enough we saw the vervet monkeys inside the camp again. Disturbingly a youngish male was trying to mate with a little baby so we decided to continue. We had multiple baboon sightings, more vervet monkeys, warthogs, a fish eagle that had caught a fish, a lovely kudu bull and a leopard tortoise.

Tomorrow we go on the road again, bright and early!

 

Keep watching for more!