We decided that given we hadn't seen cheetah or a leopard in 7 days in the park that we should maximise our chance and drive as much as possible in the park before heading to the airport. We left at 5:30am and headed south to Satara. On route at one of the waterholes we saw hyena (with a piece of meat/skin). They kept looking in one direction and then finally took off with their skin/meat and...
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Today was somewhat disappointing in terms of game and we only added another 6 birds to the trip list taking us to 128. I was targeting 150 for the trip so unless we do spectacularly tomorrow on the way out, it seems we will be short of that target. Most of the migrants don't seem to have returned yet - in fact the only migrant we have seen was the European Bee-Eater. We did our usual...
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Today was going to be a scorcher. Weather service was predicting a 'heat wave' for the area and 41 C. Fortunately it 'only' got to 39 C. When we left on our 5:30am drive it was already 22 C. It was a short drive as I had a meeting I needed to do at 8am and wanted to have some breakfast before we started. There are some very good game spotting roads that run along the...
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We were packed and ready to leave at 5:30am. We had a long drive - 211kms - to Letaba which is our next (and last) camp. We decided to go north first on a dirt road and then head east on the tar road to Skukuza where we would have breakfast. It was a good call as there was plenty of game to be seen on the dirt road including elephant, impala, kudu, zebra, wildebeest, waterbuck,...
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We were up and out at 5:30am this morning again. We headed south east on the old Voortrekker road. It was the first 'official' road in the Kruger Park and has arguably the most historical significance. It was a road used by traders at the end of the 1800s. It connected the Mozambique (then called Portuguese East Africa) ports to the goldfields to the west of Pretoriuskop. Game was wiped out by the traders in the...
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We were up to go out as the gates opened this morning. The plan was to head north to Mestel Dam for our morning coffee and rusks and then do the loop south again back towards Pretoriuskop and then do the Fayi Loop to the south of the camp and then back to camp for breakfast. It was again overcast in the morning and so birding was sparse (birds like the sun in the morning). Game...
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It was very hot yesterday and so we decided to do a short evening drive yesterday just to the nearby dam and back. It is only about 10 kms away. As we got near the dam there is a turn just before the dam and there were numerous cars parked off there. We turned off and immediately saw a two male lions lying and sleeping in the shade of the tree. They weren't going anywhere and...
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We left home yesterday just after 7am for 8 days in the Kruger National Park (KNP). Second trip to KNP this year. This time our good friends (B&S) are with us as well. We flew from Cape Town directly to Hoedspruit on CemAir (apparently pronounced Sem not Chem - or at least that is how all the crew said it). Left bang on time and arrived 10 minutes early. After a quick trip into Hoedspruit for...
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We did get home safely on Wednesday. Unfortunately our flight back from London to Cape Town was delayed as Heathrow has a shortage of workers to do things including loading the baggage. We sat on the plane for over an hour while they loaded the bags and eventually took off at 11:45pm just before Heathrow's midnight curfew kicks in. As you may remember from pre-Covid days, I like to finish off with a series of thoughts...
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H & I went for breakfast at Sunset Grill - yes we saw the irony of the name. They were much more friendly than the diner we went to the previous day and they had a better range for breakfast. After breakfast, we did some last minute maple syrup shopping and then headed back to the hotel to do our final packing and check out. We wanted to do some wine tasting before we headed back...
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