We headed home today. But first we had our last game drive. From Letaba to Satara (where we would have breakfast) and then from Satara to Orpen gate and out the park and then to the Hoedspruit airport. We decided an early start is better as it would give us plenty of time if we saw something on route and best game viewing (if you haven't learnt this already!) is in the morning before it gets...

Another day at Letaba, another run in with elephants. H now has a new view of Letaba and it has fallen from second best camp in Kruger now. Not sure we will be able to stay here again soon! We decided to go north (to avoid elephant in south). It rained last night and so we aimed for a slightly later start. It was still heavily overcast though and the bird life was unfortunately non-existent. Shortly...

It rained overnight and it was still overcast this am. We decided to just go out for a short drive. Our usual is to go to Engelhart Dam on the north side and so that is where we headed. Not far out of camp there was a grouping of cars and on approaching we saw lions. About 4 of them (at least). Not far off the road and somewhat active. We watched them for awhile and...

Today was a fairly long drive of 170 km. We decided to leave at 5:30am as that really is the best time to be out game viewing given the heat. It was already 26 degrees when we left at 5:30am and it eventually rose to 46 degrees at 12:40 today - it was an absolute scorcher! While yesterday was a good birding day and yet I only managed to add one lifer in Punda Maria region,...

The intention of coming to Punda Maria was so that we could go to Pafuri to do some birding. There are some birds that are only found in this region and so it is an important place to come to do some birding. We headed out at 5:30am as is our practice. Pafuri is about 50 kms away from Punda Maria so it takes roughly 2 hours to reach (allowing for stops for game viewing). On...

We changed camps today as we went from Shingwedzi to Punda Maria. It is only about 70 kms away and as you can only check in at 2pm (usually) we decided to take a slow drive to get there. The problem is that the best game viewing is definitely early morning so we didn't want to leave too late either. We compromised slightly and got up at 5:30am and packed up and left just after 6am....

As we had seen the pride of 20 lions at Kanniedood Dam, we thought this AM we should head back there and see if we could see them again and maybe they had killed overnight. So at 5:30am that is the way we headed with the plan to drive the 6 kms quickly, check if we could see them and then head back to our favourite road for the balance of the morning drive. I was...

Up at 5:15am (our routine now) and off at 5:30am when the gates opened. We tried a new road heading south. Game drive turned into Bird drive ... very little game to be seen. New experiences don't always turn out for the best it seems! Best part of the drive was stopping for coffee overlooking 'Red Rocks' which is a river pool where they used to pan for gold in the early 1900s before the KNP...

We were up at 5:15am as the gates now only open at 5:30am since we have moved into February. Our plan was to drive my favorite road in the Kruger - north from Shingwedzi along the river. We have seen everything there is to see in the Kruger on that road and so we had high expectations again today as we set off. The road yielded a lot of game but unfortunately we only saw hyena...