South Africa - Johannesburg, Kruger National Park and looking for lions.

 

As I write this blog, I am watching the sun go down in Hlane Royal National Park, Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland.

I am looking over the watering hole and there are hippo’s, a number of impala and numerous animals I can’t name. This is only a hop, skip and a jump from our camp site, it’s all very surreal and a beautiful experience.   

We started our Intrepid Kruger & Coast tour in Johannesburg, I arrived 1 night earlier and had a full day to fill in before meeting our group that night at 6:00 p.m.

 I decided to do Atholl Parkrun, which was only a short 3 km from my hotel, I caught an Uber as this is safest way to get around South Africa. I am not going to lie, it was great opportunity to get a win at an International Parkrun, the course was more like a trail/cross country race with numerous hills and was situated at 1700m altitude which would be about 10 seconds per km slower on a sea level course.

I ended up running 19 minutes for the 5 km distance, it was a pretty good result being only 6 days after Comrades. 

By the time this was finished, it was only 9:30 a.m. and the plan of attack would be to go straight to the Apartheid Museum which was 16 km from my hotel.

As you walked into the entry of the museum you were given ticket, my ticket was for European /white people only, this was their way of trying to explain what it would have been like when this was going on and it got you thinking from the first minute you entered. As far as museum’s go, this one was very informative, sad and well worth a visit if you are ever in Johannesburg.

 

From here I made my way to Nelson Mandela’s house, the interesting thing about this is that there two Nobel Prize winners from the same street. The other one being Desmond Tutu. This was also well worth the uber fair and something to tick of the bucket list.

By the time I got back to my hotel It was only 30 minutes before we had our tour group meeting, I had quick shower and went to the function room.  

This was the first opportunity to meet the other Intrepid group members, in our group we had 4 Australian’s including me, two Americans, 1 New Zealander and a Zimbabwean born gentleman now living New Zealand.

This is where we were introduced to our group leader Christian, our driver Patrick and our cook Somkhele. We were quickly briefed on some cultural etiquette, group rules and the itinerary for the next day. 

Our day started bright and early at 5:00 a.m. and we would travel 12 hours in the truck/bus to the Kruger National Park, along the way we went through Mpumalanga Province and along the famous. Beautiful Panorama Route.

This is where we stopped off at Three Rondavels, this was a stunning mountain range looking over the most beautiful river network you would ever see.

We spent about 45 minutes at this location and the locals were selling handmade products that would support their families and the community.

We jumped back on the truck and only travelled a short 6 km before we ran into some mechanical issues. Our driver, Patrick, tired several times to start the vehicle but informs us that the clutch has broken and we would need to wait 2 hours before getting a replacement van that would take us the rest of the way to Kruger National Park.

We were told that Richard and Somkhele would join us later.

This meant we were pushed for time and had to hurry to make the closing hours of 5:00 pm. into the national park, otherwise we would be forced to find alternate accommodation for the night.

Luckily this didn’t happen, and we made into the park at 4:45 p.m., leaving us 15 minutes to spare.

Once entering into the National Park, we were lucky enough to see some African wild dogs, as we were running so late, we didn’t have any time for tea and we went straight to one of the restaurants in the park, I was very surprised how touristy Kruger was and how many shops there were and how developed these were, there would have been over 100km of networked roads in and around the park.

This would have been the first opportunity we had to set up our tents, luckily, we didn’t have to do this and these were already set up and ready to go for us on arrival back to the camp site.

I am not going to lie, I am not much of camper, and this was the last thing I felt like doing at 9 p.m. after 12 hours of sitting on the truck.  

 I was pretty tired and went straight to bed and we were informed that we would be leaving at 6:00 a.m. for a morning game drive and this would be the first opportunity to see some of the big five.

The buzz and enthusiasm on the 4WD jeep was evident, everyone was pretty pumped to see all of the amazing animals Africa offered.

It wasn’t long and we were greeted by Giraffes, this was the first time I has seen these amazing animals in their natural habitat. It was just so lovely seeing how big they were and how unfazed they were to see us less than 15m away.

 I think the best way to describe a safari it’s like a massive lucky dip of Where’s Wally and you begin to look out for whatever you can see hiding in the bush, it was usually a good sign when you saw 3 or 4 cars pulled over to side of the road, this meant that there was something worth stopping for.

We saw a lot of Elephants, and our tour guide Chris was very informative and explained how destructive these amazing beasts can be and pointed out some vegetation that had been decimated by the elephants.

 He said - “They have one job to do and that is to eat.”

We drove to one of the watering holes and got our first opportunity to spot a hippopotamus, unfortunately they were submerged under the water, and we could only see their heads popping out.

It literally looked like a scene of the Lion King or Madagascar. If you know the movie scene you will know what I am talking about (“moto , moto”)  

Only just a short distance away there were some crocodiles baking in the sun and some amazing bird life.

We had a short drive back to café and had some lunch, one of our tour members, Lachlan, started talking to some other tourists and they told him that a group of rhinos were about 1 km away in the direction we were heading.

They informed us they didn’t get up close and they were a few 100m away from their group, after a quick bite to eat we were back on the road and literally only travelled 1 km ourselves and saw them on the side of the road.

Our tour guide explained why the rhinos’ tusks were cut off and how this stopped poachers from killing these majestic prehistoric animals. It was a sad but necessary truth to save them.

I think the most pleasing thing for me is how close we were able to get to these animals and how calm they would remain if you didn’t make a noise and slowly approached them.

I am sure this happens as they don’t see us a threat and they are used to the amount of foot traffic/tourists visiting the park.

It wasn’t long and we weren’t disappointed again and came across some more hippos, but this time they were out of the water and this was great time to grab a few selfies with these amazing animals in the background, some of them had some birds sitting on them and it was just like you see in a David Attenborough or National Geographic film, it was all very cool and surreal. 

This great day ended with heard of Elephants walking across the road and back into the scrub, we literally only 10m away from these mighty animals, and they made a big noise, looked our way and ran back into the bush.

We couldn’t have been luckier and ticked off 3 of the big 5 in the first 24 hours since arriving to Kruger.

Our second Game drive
would be the same day and would be from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., we were all pretty amped to spot a Lion or Leopard, and we weren’t let down, literally in the first 5 minutes of the game drive starting we spotted one.

I was lucky enough to be on the left-hand side of the jeep which put me directly in front of it, understandably everyone was very excited and made a lot of noise, I think this scared this amazing cat and it retreated back into the bush. I wasn’t even quick enough to get my phone out to take a picture, but it was nice to live in the moment and experience the beauty of this amazing feline.

The rest of the game drive was full of elephants, I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but these became as common as dogs walking down the street and we really wanted to see and experience a lion in its natural habitat.

Photo - Simone Kesler

Our next part of the trip would be a 2hr and 30-minute drive to Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, we were told that it changed its name as people were getting confused with the European country Switzerland.

If you got this far, thanks for reading and look forward to writing about my adventures in Swaziland.

Will we spot a lion???