Brenda and Brent - Trip Diary

South Africa - Kruger National Park

Our experience with our bicycles on the first trip was enough to allow us to package the bikes quickly and get them through the ticket agent with no problems.

It was a long day though - we started biking the last 40 kms to the Lisbon airport around 11am, actually flew out of Lisbon at 8pm, connected to Johannesburg at 12:45 the next morning.

We were sitting waiting for the flight when someone appeared behind the counter. People immediately lined up even though the flight would not load for almost an hour. When they called for people in the last 10 rows to board first, EVERYONE got into line.

Spain is a little different from other countries in what it puts on its tickets. Rather than departure time (when the plane actually takes off) they put the time when they start to load the plane. The planes routinely take off 30 minutes after that. Seems weird, but they planes arrive on time so it must be what they intend.

The bikes arrived when we did with no damage and no lost luggage. We were picked up at the airport and taken to the RV Rental offices, where we spent an hour learning about the RV and getting the paper work sorted out.

Here is the camper with our bikes on front.

When they heard we had bikes, they charged us an extra 100 Rand (less than $20) for a bike rack. They appear to have made up this rack from steel bits and attached it to the vehicle. It worked pretty well, except that the rear axles block the left light making driving at night a bit of a problem. (They drive on the left here, so all the road signs are on the left.)

This is the campground at Loskop Dam - a huge site in what we would call a desert, but the South Africans call the Bushveld or perhaps Lowveld.

There is little game outside of actual game parks and national parks, but we did see this lizard.

We spent two nights here, recovering from the flights and figuring out the RV. It was sunny all day and hot, but ok in the shade.

From Loskop Dam we headed to the Blyde River Canyon escarpment. The colourful rock and the jungle combine for terrific views. We stayed one night at a resort called Panorama. This is the view from their patio/pool.

I took a lot of pictures of the escarpment, here and at several view sites along the way, but none give the sense of the place - it is a remarkable place to visit.
One final view, from the base of the escarpment.
The Blyde River Canyon is a place of great natural beauty - and locals selling handicrafts.
This small canyon is called Burke's Luck Potholes.
From Blyde River we headed into Kruger National Park. Most people who go into the park are looking for the BIG FIVE. Well, here they are. We saw lions several times. On our one escorted drive, a night drive, we encountered a large family grouping - 11 cubs, 4 adult females - resting on the road. They reluctantly walked slowly off into the bush. The pictures are not very good. During our daily scouting around the park we found lions 3 times, with this pair the only ones that were close enough to the road to get a decent picture.
Elephants are all over the place, usually in small groups. They have no fear of people in cars, but rarely get too close. They just turn around and walk slowly away. EnviroQuiz: The park produces enough elephant food in a year to support 7,000 elephants but currently has 10,000. In the past the 7,000 elephant level was maintained by culling - hunting of the excess animals. Similar management systems are used in Canada to control deer populations. Recently a decision was made to end the cull, allowing the population to exceed the capacity of the park to feed the animals. As you drive through the park you see many trees broken or uprooted by the hungry elephants - they rip branches off and eat the bark, or uproot entire trees and eat the roots. As a result, the carrying capacity of the park is being reduced. There will be a population crash within a year or two, with lots of dead animals all over the park. Which method of population control makes more sense to you?
On our last day in the park we found this Leopard - it was visible for only about 30 seconds and I managed to get just this one shot. Sightings are rare since Leopards usually hunt only at night. They will hunt during the day on cool cloudy days. This was about the fourth cool cloudy rainy day in a row.
Rhinoceros are more common than Leopards, but we only saw two in our time in the park. This one had just crossed the road and walked slowly off into the bush.
This is a poor shot of a Water Buffalo, but it was the only close encounter we had. We saw large herds of them, but always in the distance at water holes or lakes behind dams.
Two other large animals that are common in the park are the giraffe and the hippopotamus. During our drives looking for animals, we both were always looking into the bush on either side of the road - searching as well as we could. In the end, we saw almost everything right on the road.
We never saw a Hippo crossing the road - we did see their tracks, but never the Hippos themselves. They seemed to spend all day snoozing either in the water or close to it. This fellow was one of about 100 Hippos in one of the few remaining lakes in the park.
Another road sighting was this sleeping Hyena. When we were approaching it, I thought that it was a dead animal, killed by a passing vehicle. We pulled right up beside it and it showed almost no signs of life. Eventually it opened its eyes, then went back to sleep.
Baboons are fairly common, especially not far from rivers. The problem this year is that all the rivers are dry. Most of the usual watering holes were also dry. We often drove a fair distance along gravel (washboard) roads only to find a dry hole and no animals. The first two days we were in the park it was very hot and sunny - almost 40C the second day. There was an overnight weather change and the temperature dropped down to under 20C and it clouded over. It rained on and off for the next week.
Zebra were pretty common as well.
We spent a lot of time looking at bushes, so a few real trees were a nice change. This is a Baobab tree, with me standing in front of it. Strange tree - it grows big around and not very tall. Not sure why Brenda insisted that I pose in front of it instead of her.
This is a Nile Crocodile - they were fairly common around water, one of the reasons no one swims in the lakes or rivers. The other reason is the Hippos - which do not take well to people in their bath tub. Enviro Quiz: The sex of crocodile young is determined by the temperature of the egg while it is growing, with cooler eggs producing female offspring. The female digs a large hole in the river bank, deposits the eggs, covers them up, then abandons the eggs - the adults play no part in adjusting the temperature. If a new plant colonizes the nesting area and that plant tends to shade the river banks, the crocodile eggs will be cooler during incubation and hence produce more females. If the new plant shades all banks, will crocodile populations drift so far toward all females that the species will be at risk?
Of course, we also saw a few birds. This one, a Red-crested Bustard, posed for us. It is about 20" tall.
These two Yellow-billed Hornbills were looking into the window of the restaurant - not sure what they saw in there. It is also possible they were just resting in the shade provided by the post. This was the hottest day we had in the park - it was almost 40C in the shade with the wind blowing, but was in the mid 50s C in the sun. I saw many birds with their bills open - apparently panting to cool down.
We also saw several different types of antelope, although no where near the number of different kinds we saw in Kenya. Impala are everywhere.
This is a male Kudu, a fairly common sight in Kruger.
This is a Steenbuck, a much less common sighting - one of perhaps 5 we saw. Most tours ignore the smaller antelope, concentrating on the big 5. No one is interested in birds, even the larger birds.
This is a Klipspringer, our only sighting. In fact, there are two Klipspringers in this picture. These rocky ridges occur now and then in the park, and the Klipspringer is found only on the rocks.
Brenda posing beside this Hippopotamus skull - these are really large animals. This appears to be a land of extremes - either very hot or very cold. After 3 or 4 hot days, we actually adjusted to the heat. We were able to sleep when the temperature inside the RV was 30C. Then when it cooled off, we found 23 degrees quite cold and had to put on all our warm clothes.
The seven month drought has been one of the worst dry spells the park has had. This is the river outside the Leteba rest camp. It has some water in it, but is no longer flowing. This is only the second time the river has dried up. As another example of the extremes in this part of Africa, in February 2000, this river flooded up to about 1 foot below where I was standing to take this picture - the restaurant patio.

This is a panorama made up of 15 pictures taken from the top of a small hill in Kruger. Scroll right to see the whole area.

The vegetation on the veld is very sparse and very short. This is typical of many parts of Kruger. Other areas near rivers have more trees and larger trees, but away from rivers it looks like this. Most of the animals stay near the rivers, so most of our animal shots show the river vegetation.

The vegetation at the top of the hill, seen at the left of the picture, is very green - the hill is a bit of a cloud forest. The "trees" are in fact a type of cactus.

The Park Experience

Kruger is a great place to go hunting with a camera. Anyone can have a great time here and see lots of great wild animals. It is a really easy place to do a safari.

The park is a huge fenced area in which the animals roam free. People are allowed inside the park between 6 pm and 6 am, more or less, as long as they stay in their cars. Outside those times you have to be outside the park or inside some large people cages inside the park, called rest areas. There are more than 7 rest areas, each rest area having some combination of tent sites, small huts, large huts, and really fancy guest houses, as well as caravan areas. The smaller huts (often round, called rondavels) are relatively inexpensive - the very nice chalet below is about $60 CDN a night. As well, you can reserve ahead so you can be sure there is room. If you come outside the main season for locals - over Christmas and New Years and various other school holidays - you would have no problem booking very nice accommodations.

Yes, that is a fridge outside. They commonly put the kitchens out doors in all but the very largest units.

There are 3 or 4 plant/animal regions in the park, with different plants and some variation in animals. You could book one night at each big rest area, and see the whole park with no problems. The park offers game drives with a guide to spot the animals - about $15 CDN per person. We chose to just drive around the park slowly each day - we ended up spending 10 or more hours driving each day looking for animals and birds. Most people will spend less time.

The food in the restaurants in the big rest areas is very good - several offer a buffet dinner, which includes typical South African food, for about $15 CDN. The locals who tent or have trailers are very keen on cooking their own dinner over a BRAAI, the South African barbecue. They usually don't use charcoal. They use some kind of fire starter and burn wood - down to coals - on which they then cook some beef (or chicken wings in a kind of small broiling pan).

The South Africans have beer figured out, but have some problems with wine. A one-half litre can of beer is about $1 CDN in a beer store. South Africa is famous for its wines, but we had a lot of trouble finding a good one. I don't think the locals drink much wine (at least in Kruger and the Western part of the country) and if they do they prefer it a little sweeter than we like. As well, there are zillions of different labels - not easy to find a good wine.

Car Travel

The roads from Johannesburg to Kruger are not great, but they are good. The speed limit is 120 on most roads, and the locals do it. However, there are very few cars on the roads - nothing like a busy highway in Canada. In fact, the most surprising thing about the highways in South Africa is the number of people walking along them. We spent one night in Port Shepstone and headed out very early in the morning. For the first half hour (50 kilometers) there were lots of people on the roads walking into town to work - they were dressed as if they worked in stores or were clerks of some type.

In fact, we often saw people walking along the highway when there was no obvious to or from. Amazing how far they are apparently prepared to walk, and how unhurried they are about their trip.

The RV was a big clunky vehicle to take down the gravel roads that lead to all the interesting areas for birds and big animals. The RV was also underpowered, so we had to go up some of the steeper hills in second gear at around 35kph. It was difficult to average more than 60kph on long trips. As well, while traveling the south coast toward Capetown we had pretty strong winds most of the time and the RV was all over the road. So, unless you have a really good reason for choosing an RV, I would recommend some smaller vehicle, even a standard car.

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