It’s our annual sojourn to the Kruger Park. Despite Covid, we have managed to get to the Kruger Park at this time of the year for the last 5 years now. We started for our 25th wedding anniversary and now it has become a tradition for us.

We flew into Hoedspruit airport and arrived just after 1pm. We headed straight into Hoedspruit to do some shopping. Helen broke with tradition and didn’t have KFC for lunch but I stuck with it. We then headed in to the Kruger. Before we reached the gate even we had seen 2 of the big 5 – elephant and buffalo. We entered at the Orpen Gate and headed east toward Satara Rest Camp which was our first overnight stop.

The road was teeming with game including large herds of impala, zebra and wildebeest. We saw numerous herds of elephant and more of the standard animals like waterbuck, kudu and vervet monkeys. We ticked off a number of birds as well – we would expect that though at the start of the trip. The highlight of the drive was that about 10 km short of the camp we saw a cheetah walking through the grass and then it crossed the road in front of us and continued walking away from us. A really good sighting. Then a further 2-3 kms down the road a lioness came walking down the road and she walked right past my window. We followed her down the road until she also headed into the long grass and we couldn’t see her anymore. Perfect timing and perfect start.

We got into the camp just before 6pm, checked in and started a fire for our first braai (ostrich steak). Fortunately the wind died down a little when I was braaiing because it had been blowing very strongly since we entered the park. The temperature is relatively mild at the moment – it was 28 degrees when we arrived and dropped to about 23 when we were eating dinner. I believe it is cooler in the KNP than it was in Cape Town yesterday (which is very unusual).

While we were washing up after dinner I noticed an African Wild Cat sitting right near our hut. It was clearly looking for food. It didn’t seem to be perturbed by us or our torch and so I managed to get withing 2 meters from it to take some photos.

The travel and fresh air caught up to us quickly and we headed to bed. A great start to our trip.

P & H