After a long night and a few casual drinks at the local bush bar,I headed off to bed around 4am and two hours later was woken up by my roommate who asked me if i was going into Kruger.Without any hesitation I said no thanks have fun! As I laid in bed trying to go back to sleep I wandered “should I have gone”? Luckily for me Owen an Australian student came banging door to door to see if there were any stragglers left behind who wanted to go ? so I threw on some clothes and headed out for Kruger. When we got to the Orpen Gate of Kruger I had to buy a Wildcard which will allow access to Kruger for one year. Owen, James the Canadian and I drove into Kruger with our small rented car. As I opened the park map I was overwhelmed by all the endless roads and sighting possibilities. Considering Kruger is the size of Israel It is easy to see why I felt this way. In the beginning we were trailing behind a line of cars. You could quickly tell who the newcomers were by what animals they stop at and for how long. At first the park felt too tourist based with all the cars, cameras and annoying drivers, but the more you drove off the main road the more special and secluded it felt with the occasional car passing bye. We were at Kruger for about 9 hours and saw plenty of giraffe, impalas, gazelles, wildebeest, cape buffalo, kudu, many bird species, elephants, crocodiles, baboons, vervet monkeys and zebra but sadly no big cats.
We stopped at these little tourist shops around the park a couple of times and looked at the sightings board where tourists mark the places in the park where they had a good sighting. Red dot for lions, yellow dot for wild dogs, white dot for cheetahs, blue dot for elephants, black dot for leopards and so on. There were about 5 lion sightings, no wild dog sighting which wasn’t a surprise considering how rare and endangered they are, and a couple leopard sightings. By the time we got to the watering hole where a male lion and 2 females were spotted, they had left with no trace other than a fully eaten carcass left baking in the sun. I couldn’t believe how close the animals allowed us to approach. We were literally within feet from them. The best sighting of the day was watching an elephant bathe in a watering hole. He was completely submerged in the water with just the top of his head and trunk sticking out above. I wanted to join him considering how hot it was that day. When we got back to campus I was pleased to find out that the other group that went saw the BIG FIVE ( leopard, lion, buffalo, elephant, rhino) I was sooo jealous of all the awesome pictures and stories, I think everyone has seen a cat now except me , why am I being punished!! the way this is going im probably going to get more than i bargained for with a cat when one finally does show up!! anyways in all it was a great day!
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