Monday
We departed from Maputo, Mozambique around 5 a.m. and arrived at the RSA border around 6:30. It�s always easier traveling out of Mozambique than into it so we got through with only a minor hassle (and that was on the S. African side) in about 15 minutes. We took another 45 minutes checking into Kruger entering in at the Crocodile Bridge gate. At 7:30 we were on our way. We were joined by three young ladies�Kirsten, a 14 year old South African and two American college girls, Jessica and Abby, who are here on a missions trip for the summer.
We had an exciting morning. We had only been traveling a few minutes when we made our first sighting�impala and wart hogs. It doesn�t take too long to tire of the impala at Kruger but the first sighting for folks is always a thrill. They are beautiful animals; there�s just so many of them. Shortly after this we spotted our first �Big 5��an elephant. The Big 5 received their title from big game hunters who said that these 5 animals�the lion, the leopard, the elephant, the water buffalo and the rhino�are the most dangerous animals to hunt (if you wound one of these animals, the hunter becomes the hunted). South Africa doesn�t actually have water buffalo but we have the Cape buffalo that we count as one of the 5. The elephant sighting was fun and again a thrill for the girls. Shortly after this we saw a giraffe and several other animals.
The next couple of hours were relatively uneventful except for a lake with many elephants and hippos and our second Big 5 sighting�buffalo. The buffalo were a long way off, but we could make a clear identification. Two down Three to go. We stopped at Lower Sabie for a bathroom break around 10:00 enviously listened to a lady from Alaska tell of her sighting of a Cheetah and leopard and were back on the road by ten past.
Just north of Lower Sabie is a hippo pool at which we were treated in seeing many hippos out of the water (a fairly rare sight for us) and playing. We traveled a little further up river and got our most exciting sighting of the day. As we came around a bend in the road we saw a large number of cars stopped�usually a sign of a Big 5 sighting. As we drove up next to one car I asked the driver what they�d seen. �A lion was down in the river a minute ago and was walking downstream,� was his reply. We craned our necks trying to find this lion but it was no where to be seen. Just as we were starting to despair of seeing the creature, Jessica yelled, �It�s right behind us!� We all whipped around and saw a lioness emerge from behind the car directly behind us. She then looked straight at us and growled. At this point my years of Kruger experience led me to offer the neophytes a few words of wisdom. �Close the windows! Close the windows! Close the windows!� I stated in rapid succession. The lioness seemed rather agitated. She walked up the road until she was at 9 O�clock to our car and around 2 yards away. She then walked into the bush and a moment later retuned walking in the opposite direction. At this point we discovered the reason for the lioness� agitation as Abby announced, �There are cubs!� Sure enough trailing mom were three lion cubs�what a thrill. The lioness� growl had actually been a call for the cubs to follow. She�d apparently gotten separated from the cubs by the cars and wasn�t too happy about it. It took us around 30 minutes to come down from this emotional high.
The rest of Monday was less eventful. Towards evening we saw our 4th Big 5�a couple of rhinos off in the distance around Ber-gen-dal. Also, in the same area, we saw a rather unusual sighting�a couple of elephants fighting over the same tree. Our one frustration of the day was that we had four near misses with leopards. Each time we would come up to a group of cars and ask what they�d seen we would get the same response, �There was a leopard in there but we can�t see it anymore.� We stayed the night at Pretoriskop. Four out of 5 was a very good day, but it was nothing compared to day 2.
Kruger�Tuesday
Tuesday started a bit more slowly. We had determined to travel up to Satara which is known for its lions. However, as things would turn out, it would be unnecessary to go so far north. For the first half hour we saw relatively little. At around 6:45 we got our first Big 5 sighting�a rhino. At 7:15 we got the second, an elephant.
Then at 7:30 things really began to pick up. As I was driving, I looked up to make sure I was heading the car in the right direction. I said, �Something in the road ahead. It looks like a baboon.� The animal was still a considerable distance away when it suddenly turned right and jumped�cat-like�into the brush. Its long tail and basic body shape convinced us that it was a leopard though we could not see his spots from our distance. We raced up to the point where the cat had leaped into the brush, but there was no trace of him. Now it was our turn to say to the drivers that stopped to see what we�d seen, �Yeah, we saw a leopard but now it�s gone.� One poor guy even said, �That�s my fourth almost leopard sighting in 24 hours.� We knew how he felt. We were sure we had seen a leopard, but it wasn�t the most satisfying sighting.
We drove down the road a few miles to find a hyena running in front of another car going away from us. It continued this for several hundred meters until a car coming from the opposite direction forced it into the brush. As we came up to the point where he�d gone into the brush he was there posing for us about two meters away. We got some good photos of this one. We then stopped for petrol and for the bathroom at Skukuza before continuing on the road. It was now around 8:30. We�d already seen three of the Big 5.
A couple of miles east of Skukuza we saw Big 5 number 4�a couple of lions off in the bush. Again, it wasn�t the most satisfying of lion sightings, but that was about to change. Another mile or so down river we came upon a couple of parked cars and stopped to investigate. �Lions,� Marie shouted--seven of them to be exact. They were walking through the river in our direction. Several of them continued up the bank until they were within ten meters of our car. Then they all lay down, most of them within view from a wide distance which allowed us to observe them for around 40 minutes.
We finally continued on our trip up toward Satara but no longer with the need to get there. We saw many animals including our 5th Big 5�the buffalo. This time the buffalo were right by the road and there were a number of young calves in plain view. Later on our way back towards Lower Sabie we came upon a herd of giraffe�we�d never seen so many at one time (there were between 20 and 30 together). We stopped at Lower Sabie around 2:00 for the bathroom and for ice cream. The rest of the afternoon was relatively uneventful though we made at least one more sighting of rhino, buffalo and elephants.
The Kruger gate closes at 5:30 in the winter and we were quickly approaching 5 O�clock. We were within a couple of kilometers of the gate so we decided to take one more tour down towards the Berg-en-Dal camp sight. We saw a couple of elephants and some �migrating worms� but nothing too exciting. As we were heading back towards the gate we got our final Big 5 sighting.
It always amazes me how many thoughts can run through one�s mind so rapidly when one becomes excited. In what must have been a second or two the following thoughts went through my mind. �There�s an animal on the right. Hmm, that�s not a buck. That�s a cat and it�s not a lion!� At this point my brain suggested to the foot that it would be a really good time to rapidly apply firm pressure to the middle pedal. At the exact same moment the brain notified the mouth that it might do well to inform the rest of the car�s occupants of the eyes� discovery. Now, I had been preparing myself for this moment all afternoon. When things get slow on a game drive one tends to think about how one might tell others of a really important sighting. So my plan was to calmly announce to everyone, �You know those spotted creatures that like to lie in trees that we�ve been looking for all day? Yeah, well you might want to look over there.� Instead I shouted, �Leopard!�
Just as with the first sighting the leopard disappeared almost immediately into the bush. This time, however, the others had not seen it. I was immediately accosted with statements such as, �Are you sure?� and �You�d better not be lying!� While I couldn�t locate the leopard I was pretty sure he was still there. Never-the-less my credibility rating was quickly dropping when Kirsten said, �I see movement in the bush by that tree.� We all held our breath. A moment later the leopard reappeared and this time there was no doubt. We were not able to get any pictures but the view was forever engrained in our minds. He�d appear and disappear in the brush while walking parallel to us. Finally he sat down and Jessica exclaimed, �There are two of them.�
It was getting late and we wanted others to be able to see them so we took off pointing out to the other drivers the general direction of where we had last seen the cats. We really didn�t want these folks to have any near misses. We hope they got their sightings too.
It was one of our best Kruger trips�four Big 5s on Monday and all 5 (twice) on Tuesday. The Lord is certainly good.