Safari in Kruger National Park

As long as you are in Kruger, there is hope. That’s a phrase our safari game driver in Kruger always said. Hope for what? I mean, I was in South Africa, the sun was shining and I was just happy to be there. But of course, now that I was here, I’d have liked to spot the animals in their real environment for once and not just behind bars, like at home at the zoo. And I certainly wasn’t disappointed. We saw EVERYTHING: Buffalos, giraffes, elephants, birds, hippos, rhinos… We saw everything BUT the big cats. We started to think that they were on strike. But as long as you are in Kruger, there is hope, so our small group in the safari car kept hoping.

How it came that Italians got me to eat snails in Africa

Our tour to Kruger National Park started in Josie (as the residents call Johannesburg or Jo’burg for the tourists). We didn’t really know what to expect since there are so many different options you can book. We chose a glamping option with sleeping in a treehouse. The tour began with a lot of driving. First, all the tourists in our area of Johannesburg were collected by Viva Safaris and then we started heading up to Kruger. We stopped for lunch in a restaurant with delicious food. An Italian couple even ordered the garlic snails. However, they didn’t understand the word snails and only knew that they loved garlic, so it had to be good, right? In the end, they didn’t want to eat them and offered them to the group. My chance to try one, since I always said, that I would never eat a snail. Well, now I can confirm my opinion; I won’t eat one again if I can avoid it. It took me lots of M&M’s to get that weird taste and feeling out of my mouth.

Other than that we pretty much just drove the whole day. We reached Balule game reserve (which joins together with Kruger) shortly after 4pm and noticed that this safari was a class higher than what we had done previously in Africa. First of all, we had a beautiful bungalow and not tents and the beds were so comfortable and everything in the lodge so nicely put together, that we could just relax for once. There also was an animal spotting terrace where we saw some baboons, warthogs and big elephant bulls. The elephants were as big as the safari vehicle we boarded afterwards and they came so close that we were glad that they were feeling friendly.

Sunset safari drive in Balule Game Reserve

Somehow, I just don’t get lucky with night drives. Like in Botswana, we “only” saw a few and very general animals like impalas, giraffes and luckily a few genets. When it was dark, we stopped somewhere in the bush, where the staff had set up dinner with tables and lots of candles. It was very romantic and the star spangled sky amazing. We had another South African specialty called pap (?). I had heard a lot about it. Mostly that it doesn’t taste like anything, it’s comparable to polenta and it’s so thick that you could kill somebody with it. Luckily, it did not taste like polenta and I actually liked it with the tomato sauce and chicken they served it with. Unfortunately, the hyenas that usually come by after dinner didn’t show up that evening but still, we all had a smile on our face when they drove us back to our nice room.

Enjoying a safari in Kruger from sunrise to sunset

The next morning, a different safari jeep picked us up and we entered Kruger at Open Gate. We spent the WHOLE day driving around Kruger, spotting animals. Our driver, Dominic, had amazing eyes. I don’t mean their color, I mean that he spotted every animal! Sometimes, he’d stop the car, leaving us all wondering what had happened until he would say: well, don’t you see the rhinos? And even then it took us a moment to find them. How could he have concentrated on the roads, the cows and impalas next to the road and still see the cool animals (no offence, cows)? If anyone would find us a leopard, it was him. But at 2pm, still no cat had showed up. We stopped for lunch at Satura camp, where they had a pizza place and Mugg and Beans. If you go to Kruger, you don’t have to be worried about the infrastructure.

After lunch, we kept hoping. We still awed at the cute elephant and hippo babies but it would have been nice to see some predators (they just wouldn’t show up, everything else, we were lucky to be able to observe in huge groups). So, when we saw a lot of cars stopping at one spot, we knew there had to be something special. And indeed, there was a giraffe, which only had a hole where its head and neck used to be with two big female lions and four cubs enjoying the rest of its body as a meal. You could really see that their mouths were red from the blood!

Then it already was almost sunset time again and we had to drive to our camp for the night. It was called Marc’s Treehouse Lodge and when we arrived there, we wished that we could stay longer. We really slept in a treehouse with our own bathroom. There are no fences around the camp and so there is the chance of encountering an animal.

After dinner we went straight to bed, as we were exhausted from all that driving around in the dry heat and we had to get up at 5.30am for a bushwalk. On the walk we learned some more things about plants and termites. After one hour, we were glad that a good breakfast was waiting for us and then, unfortunately we had to start our journey back to Johannesburg, as our flights were leaving the next day. I would have loved to stay in Africa for longer. I could also have spent many more hours watching the wild animals. However, I think two days of straight game driving are enough. Then it would be good to plan a day of swimming or hiking, to relax the eyes and butts, before climbing back onto a safari vehicle and stare in awe once more.

What is your favorite picture? If you have already been on a safari, where was it and what was your highlight? Please share your story in a short comment.

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