Gates open at 4:30am until the end of the month. Sunrise is only at 5:30am so that means it is still pretty dark at 4:30am. We believe you need some light to see the game and the birds aren’t really active either until around sunrise. We planned to head out at 5am but we were a little disorganized and only managed to get out at 5:10am.
Our order of seeing animals this morning was (1) elephant (2) leopard (3) hyena. We hadn’t even had a chance to see impala. The leopard was a fantastic sighting. On the side of the road and then he walked down the road and scent marked a few bushes on the side of the road before finally walking 90 degrees from the road into the bush and vanished. One of those Kruger moments – pure timing and a special sighting. Leopards are probably my favourite animal to see in the game park. We did see 4 of the Big 5 today – just missing rhino.
One of the ‘problems’ we have at the moment because of the floods are that no dirt roads are open (or very few to be precise). The flooding has damaged many of the roads and they need to re-graded to enable them to be safe for tourist travel. In addition, some of the bridges are washed away. So if you stay in the south and east of the park (like we are doing) then you really only have two tar roads you can drive which for us is east toward Mozambique and then south down to Berg-en-Dal camp. That is what we did today. It is a long drive though and as you have to drive there and back with no alternative way to return to the camp, we only got back after 1pm.
The other ‘problem’ is since everyone is restricted to the same two roads, the volume of cars and traffic is much higher than usual. In addition, at any predator sighting you are competing with the OSVs (open safari vehicles) who collect guests from outside the park and bring them in for a day sighting. The drivers are generally tip remunerated so there is obviously a big desire to ensure that their passengers see the game and it doesn’t really matter whether other people (like us) get blocked. There were two sighting of lions today where that occurred. At the 2nd sighting (we didn’t even bother to stay to try and see them) there were around 12 OSVs parked off and blocking any viewing really from other cars. To be fair, all the drivers we have engaged with have been very polite and pleasant and they have been very disciplined in not blocking the traffic but it still is something we don’t really experience in the north of the park (and hence why we prefer the north). Even a sighting of Bateleur with a kill had about 10 cars backed up.
We had some drama in the camp tonight when war broke out. It was a trifecta. A troop of vervet monkeys was around and one of them decided to chase and catch a squirrel. Incredibly it managed to do that and I thought it was going to eat the squirrel but it basically traumatized it and then let it go. Then it re-caught it again (or another one). H was not impressed and jumped to the defense of the squirrels. Then when the vervet monkeys left, a woodlands kingfisher (yes that’s a bird for all the non-birders reading the blog) started to attack the squirrels. Definitely felt like they were being ganged up on!
Finally, I forgot to tell you yesterday about our neighbour. On arrival back from his evening game drive, he comes over and introduces himself and then I get his life history including relatively recent divorce, career, his camera equipment value, that he believes you must be out of the gate at 4:30am, that he has seen wild dog everyday he has been here etc etc. Between last night and tonight I am not sure there is anything more we need to know about Brett. When he exhausts conversation with us, he heads over to our other neighbour (lets call them the heavy drinkers and late eaters) and updates them on his days sightings and why they should have driven behind him as they would have seen more if they did (not kidding – actual overhead conversation). Other neighbours are quite chilled from alcohol consumption (drinking wine in gin glasses). They only started their fire when H and I were already sitting down to eat. And boy was it a big fire. Must have had 20 pieces of wood on it (not exaggerating). It is 8:50pm and they are just eating now. At 8pm when H and came inside the chalet that fire was still going strong and nowhere near ready to braai on.
Saying of day (repeated numerous times by H and me) … “Restricted Kruger, even with annoying OSVs, is better than no Kruger” …
P & H
