On Safari With Karen From 27 June 2014

27 June 2014

Before we reached the Kruger Park today we had already spotted some wildlife, as some brave baboons crossed the road in between all the holiday traffic. We then entered the park through Phabeni Gate, almost straight away spotting a herd of buffalo. They were lounging in the riverbed, on both sides of the bridge.

While continuing on Doispane we saw impalas, malachite kingfisher, kudus and wildebeest. We made a stop at Nyamundwa Dam where a big bull elephant was just having a drink. He splashed around with the water, so we started hoping he would go swimming, but no such luck. At the opposite side of the elephant there was a group of hippos standing outside the water. We also saw a fish eagle and white breasted comorants as well as an African darter.

We followed Doispane again where we encountered zebras, more wildebeest, lilac breasted rollers, dark chanting goshawk, and two beautiful kudu bulls.

We turned down onto Watergat where we stopped for two elephant bulls walking on our right. While positioning the car nicely we also got to see a giraffe on our left. We stood here for a while seeing 7 giraffes in total on the left, another one on the right passing the two bull elephants, which, by the way, didn't even greet, and also a nice large herd of impalas. Later on we saw more kudus, yellow billed hornbills, a tree squirrel, cape glossy starlings, a water monitor and a sounder of warthogs that was so startled by our appearance they took a run for it.

We were lucky of seeing the orphaned hyena cub outside one of his dens. For being an orphan he looks rather well. Then it became rather quiet. Not even the impalas were showing. We did however get a glimpse of the back of a rhino and a twitch of an ear, but he didn't comply in showing his full greatness.

We made a quick turn into Shabeni to see a lovely red-purple-blue sunset. But when the sun had set it had taken all the warmth with, so we retreated to Pretoriuskop, our camp for tonight.

28 June 2014

After yesterday's windy day we woke up to an overcast morning. We had a quick breakfast before we set off as soon as the gates opened. It was still dark, so that brought a lot of suspense. The first thing we saw was a scrub hare caught in the headlights. He got scared by us and zigzagged over the road, so we gave him some space and turned off our lights.

When he was gone, we drove on, taking a loop around Shabeni Koppies. It was still quiet in the morning. We studied some elephant and buffalo tracks as well as hyena tracks, rhino middens, buffalo and elephant dung, but we didn't see animals.

By now it had gotten light and we turned across the road towards Fayi Loop. There, hidden in the long grass, we saw a herd of buffalos still sleeping in the early morning. In the dark, we had driven straight past them, but they were only about two meters away from the road. One by one they slowly got up and stretched their legs.

Continuing our drive we spotted an elephant, with zebras on the opposite side of the road. While watching those we heard the funny whistling call of a reedbuck, but did not see him. We also came across multiple waterbuck sightings and a common grey duiker.
 
Continuing on we spotted 4 white rhinos in the high grass. They were grazing noisily as we heard all the plucking and chomping. They were slowly walking towards a fire break so we waited on the road to see if they would show in the open area. And this time we were lucky. Not only did all four of them show their full greatness, two of them kept grazing and came closer and closer to the vehicle. One was so close we could almost touch him!

Then we had to leave them as we had to make our way to Nelspruit to make a transfer to Jo'burg.

We spotted two more rhinos hidden in the high grass, but time had run out. It was a short safari, but I hope Christina, Laura and Christina nonetheless had a great time!!