Day 8 South Africa - Scenic Drive & Kruger Park

We left the hotel at 8:30 today and headed on a scenic drive towards our destination. We stopped at several photo stops. The first one was an unnamed little river with some lovely boulders scattered throughout the water. The road leading up to the spot was red dirt. Piet said it was due to the red iron oxide in the soil.

Bourke’s Luck Potholes was our next stop. We walked on a trail for about half an hour and saw some fascinating rock formations. The canyon was quite deep. Several bridges had been built in order to traverse the area.

The next viewpoint was a stunning one by the name of Three Rondavels. They are 3 distinctly shaped mountains in the background. The foreground was spectacular, with a river encircling a large pointy smaller mountain.

Lastly, we pulled over by the side of the road to see a waterfall. We went through a lot of different terrain today and changed altitude considerably.

Just after noon, we arrived at our lodging for the night and what lodging it was! It is called the Timbavati Safari Lodge. I think it gets it’s name from the nearby Timbavati River. There is a Timbavati Game Reserve but our lodge is not in that area. We are in a delightful little, round, private cabin. What luxury!

We had a few minutes to unpack and freshen up before beginning our Kruger Park game drive. Our guide, Briton, picked us up in a 10 passenger jeep. Besides the front 2 seats, there were 3 rows of seats, 3 to a row, and each row was higher than the one in front. It was early to be going out to look for animals but we started seeing them right away – what a thrill!

Some of the animals were quite far away and I was soooo glad I brought my 100-300 zoom lens. It worked as well as my binoculars did and I needn’t have even brought those along. Oh well, I needed a new pair anyway. Then we started seeing animals up close.

The rule on safari if you want the driver to stop is to yell “Stop!”, not say the name of the animal you think you see. Briton said that false alarms were all right. He even stopped when he thought he saw something and it turned out to be nothing. He sure was good at spotting though, and found some rhinoceroses way, way off in the distance.

It was a great afternoon! Altogether we saw elephants, impalas, rhinos, giraffes, several types of birds, baboons, ostriches, warthogs, a leopard, kudos, eland, jackals and hippos! Not bad for our first trip into the wilds of Africa I’d say J

The guides have radios and let each other know what’s happening where they are. Apparently earlier today, an elephant overturned a car but no one was hurt.

The sunset was gorgeous and the giraffes, impalas and elephants seemed to line the road to say goodbye as we were leaving the park. The sun set just after 5 PM and it was spectacular. It got quite cool after that and I had to put my hoody on. We travelled about 120 kilometers in all including the15 minutes from our lodge to the park gate. All visitors must be out by 6 PM.

Supper was served in the area by the pool and it was wonderful. A leopard came into came the camp last night and we were told that impalas, giraffes, and monkeys wander around as well. We didn’t see anything of the sort on the way back to our cabin.

We will see what the morning brings!