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We were on the road again for the next part of our exciting South African world cup adventure. Every stage of our rainbow nation odyssey so far has been exciting for different reasons. There was no doubt, though, that the next episode would be one of the highlights of the trip,something that myself and Laura had been looking forward to for a long time. You see we were heading to Kruger National Park. Kruger is one the most famous national parks in the world, home to some of the most awesome animals inthe world, including the so called 'big five' - The lion,the leopard, the elephant, the rhino and the buffalo. We were desperately hoping to see all the big five and in addition many other animals but as we were warned, there are no guarantees that you will see them all.
We set off early from Johannesburg. We needed to catch a lift to the airport to pick-up another hire car. This was our fourth hire car of the trip! I also needed to pick-up some malaria tablets - essential for a visit to Kruger and book some accommodation for Kruger before the main business of the day - driving to Kruger from Jo'burg. Booking accommodation was to be a bigger challenge than I had anticipated. I perhaps, foolishly, thought that there would be plenty of accomodation available and we had not booked anything in advance. I had heard from several sources that it wouldn't be a problem,especially with the World Cup into it's last week and many fans already on their way back home. We rung around in the morning and quickly realised that there were no cabins available anywhere in any of Kruger's rest camps. Camping was available as a possibility, but after experiencing a sub-zero night in Jo'burg,this option was not ideal and we didn't have any equipment. We decided to try some of the backpacker hostels located just outside of the park.These backpacker hostels were not located within the natonal park,but close enough to base ourselves and drive to the park in the mornings. Luckily we found somewhere - the Kruger Inn Backpackers and it looked like a decent place to stay. With accommodation sorted out we headed out of the airport and in the direction of Kruger.The journey was expected to take a good five hours.
We got out of Johannesburg without any bad experiences. This was a bit of a relief to be honest. I was delighted not to have been mugged, car-jacked or worse! The journey over to Kruger was relatively straight-forward. Once we got closer to Kruger the roads turned into dirt tracks and bumpy stone roads and with fresh memories of Lesotho we were understandably concerned about wrecking another hire car, however the roads were nowhere near as bad as Lesotho so our concerns were alleviated somewhat. We arrived at the backpackers late afternoon,checked in to our dorm room and then ventured a few hundred metres up the road to the local village where there was a supermarket and, thankfully, a pub! We settled in and had a few beers before heading back to our backpackers for an early night in preparation for our first day exploring Kruger National Park.
The Kruger Inn backpackers is a very good hostel. With the hostel being situated in a relatively remote area close to a national park,you can't expect the comforts that a hostel in the city would provide.The main things you want are a decent room, good facilities and a good vibe. This backpacker hostel had all of those things. Moreover, it turned out the owner was originally from Woking but she had moved to South Africa around 25 years ago.Another Woking born person not living in Woking any longer. You'd think there was something wrong with Woking or something given the amount of people I have met on my travels that have grown up there and now live as far away as possible! As we couldn't get accomodation in Kruger National Park this hostel, as an alternative, was the next best option.
It was an early start (or what we considered to be an early start) the next day.However, it turned out that really we should have got up at least an hour earlier, which we learned from the following day. We arrived at the Crocodile Bridge entrance after a one hour drive from our hostel, bought our tickets and guidebook and set about exploring the southern area of Kruger National Park. Kruger is pretty vast and as we were only going to be exploring the park for a few days we decided to focus on just driving around the southern area. We were told that we would have a good chance of seeing all the animals we wanted to see in this area.The main trick is obviously having a great set of eyes to spot animals while we were moving around in the car. After hours and hours of driving around peering into bushes hoping to see something you do start to see things that aren't there though!
We spent two days touring around Kruger trying to spot animals, especially the big five. Whenever something was spotted it was very exciting. We spotted giraffe, elephants, rhinos, buffalo, hippos along with all sorts of other animals. The photos we took tell their own story. It really was amazing to see these animals close up in a natural habitat. At times we saw elephants and giraffe just walking on the same road as we were driving on. It was incredible. The most elusive animals for us were the leopard, lions and the cheetah. We were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a leopard on the first day but unfortunately that was the only time we saw a leopard and we were not able to capture this memory on camera as the view was very obscured and the leopard made a run for it when it was disturbed by the increasing numbers pulling up in their cars to catch a glimpse. Neither were we lucky enough to see a cheetah,which was to remain elusive, even though we got up very early the following day to try and catch the predators on their way back from their night's hunt. The lion, it seemed, would remain elusive as well. However just when we thought we wouldn't get the chance of seeing Aslan's relatives fate played it's hand and we saw two lions - a male and female - just lying down in the grass close to the road. Then, the lions got up and walked right in front of our car! Absolutely incredible. That, was undoubtably the highlight of the two days. Once you see one then you see another. Just like buses. And we got to see two other lions shortly after.
Seeing the lions was the highlight of the two days but the whole experience was just amazing. We saw so much considering we were only there for two days. A family of giraffe, two rhinos going toe to two in a duel, groups of elephants everywhere - those were just some of the more defining moments. Kruger is massive and two days is a very small amount of time to spend there. You could spend a lot more time there and you wouldn't get bored. It's that vast and full of such variety. The two days we spent there were, without doubt, two of the most awesome days of our South African adventure.
During our stay the semi-finals of the world cup were going on and luckily we were able to catch both matches in the local pub. Holland and Spain had advanced to the final to be played in a few days time. Meanwhile we were planning the final stage of our South Africa trip which involved driving through Swaziland, another new country to visit, and then on to Durban - the final stop.I was especially looking forward to Durban, which was apparently a very relaxed and chilled out city with some brilliant weather. It would be a hard act to follow after an amazing few days in Kruger though!
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