For now, though, these things have been replaced with what has to be the Best Experience of the Trip So Far, which was our visit to Kruger National Park.
Kruger is a giant national park in South Africa, home to an insane plethora of animals. It is one of the biggest parks in the world, bigger than entire countries. It has nine different entrance gates, and we went in to one of the more southern called "Crocodile Bridge," right along the border of Mozambique.
There are lots of different ways to visit, including luxury guided tours, staying in the park, expert wildlife spotters, and flights in and out. One of the options, though, is to drive yourself through the park! Being on the budget we are, we went for this option. We rented a car from the airport in Johannesburg and drove the ~5 hours to Komatipoort, a small town about 10 km from the entrance. We stayed at "Meerkat Manor Guesthouse," which was a lovely little place that gave us ample time to roll out of bed and to the park gate before it opened at 5:30 am.
We got to the entrance gate about 10 minutes before it opened, feeling very proud of our foresight, to find a line of about 40 cars already waiting.
I was very worried at this point, as we had put all our eggs in this one basket of driving ourselves through the park instead of paying for a guided tour. I imagined bumper to bumper traffic through the park, hoping to see one wildebeest somewhere.
I've never been so wrong!
Despite the line waiting to enter, once in the park the size of it meant the cars disappeared, and we spent our time almost entirely alone, with maybe a car or two nearby from time to time. Sometimes we drove whole hours without seeing another soul.
My fear of not being able to find animals was also completely unfounded. The wildlife in the park, in number and variety, is completely astounding. It almost seems like a joke--different species of animals frolicking together in beautiful vistas. In the first 5 miles of our drive we saw impala, giraffe, zebra, elephant, kudu, and a lion. There are entire herds milling around and crossing the road.
I don't really even have the words to describe it. I will just let the pictures speak for themselves.
Impala
Wildebeest
Giraffe
Zebra
Hippopotamus
Rhinoceros
Terrapin
Tortoise
Dwarf Mongoose
Baobab tree
Monkey
Baboon
Kudu
Fish Eagle
Nyala (males fighting)
Dung beetle rolling a dung ball across the road
Lion (hard to see in this photo, but it is sleeping with its head is next to the tree)
Egret?
Termites
Wild dogs (also hard to see, sleeping in the shade)
Hyena
Elephants! Dozens and dozens of the, alone and in big herds. They had babies of various sizes, which they defended ferociously. At once point a whole herd of elephants was walking towards us in the road, and we had to slowly back the car up for almost a quarter of a mile as they kept coming and coming on the road.
They had little paths they liked to walk on, so when crossing the road they would stick to those if possible. That meant that if your car was in the way, well, you better move. At one point an elephant suddenly appeared in the bushes next to our car (the photo of the big head up close) wanting to path, which led to some great video I took of it while Subash yelled "put down the f-ing camera and drive."
We also were once watching a dung beetle beside the car very intently and looked up to find an elephant already halfway across the road in front of us. They should make a new saying about missing the elephant for watching the beetle in our honor.
Another time a group of elephants crossed the road with their babies close in front of us. The adults would look at our car and shake their heads at us while walking, a very clear warning not to move.
You can see it in this picture:
It was amazing to me how incredibly clearly we could understand what they meant. I guess even though we are removed from nature in our lives now those instincts are still there. There was absolutely no question what it meant.
We also saw a whole variety of birds, a monitor lizard, more tortoises, and a male and a female lion lounging in the shade of a tree in the distance. There is good video of it, but no photos worked. There is also better video of the hyena, which I will have to load at some point.
Last but not least, on the morning of our second day in the park we saw a cheetah!!!!!!! It was laying in tall yellow grass, and I never would have spotted it in a million years. Luckily another car was already there and pointed it out. Without a crowd jostling to see, we were able to turn off the car and just watch. Again, something I have video of but was too hard to see in the photos. It groomed itself for a while, looking every bit like our own cats, and then sat in the sun. Finally it got up and walked away into the bushes, giving us a clear view of its beautiful spotted coat. I loved cheetahs as a kid, and had not one but TWO posters of them in my room. A few years ago my parents found a drawing I had made of myself riding one--apparently while other girls went through their horse loving phases I had a cheetah one. To see one in the wild was something I'll never forget.
Edit: my dad sent me this picture of me as a kid, proof of both my cheetah obsession and excellent Ninja Turtle fashion:
Over two days we spent about 26 hours in the park, driving almost that entire time, covering about 370 miles. The second day we took a long route north into the park in search of lions (which we did find!), and definitely pushed it to the limit. The park gates close precisely at 6:30 pm, with untold fines and consequences if you miss it. We had to race back, speeding past giraffe and zebra and elephants on the way. We made it over the Crocodile River bridge and out the gate with a few other cars on Christmas Eve, at 6:29 pm.
We had to take a short domestic flight from Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth at 10 am the next day, so we went back to the guest house, took a short nap, and then left at 2 am to drive the 5 hours back to the Johannesburg airport to return the rental car. It was a bit insane, and one of those moments where you suddenly become aware of your space in the world--"I am driving across South Africa in the middle of the night"--and wonder how you got there.
It was such a mind-blowing amazing wonderful experience. It's the kind of thing you want to call "once in a lifetime," but I am already hoping to come back again. The next time I would stay in the park, camping in a different place each night and driving there slowly during the day, searching carefully for animals.
I can't even believe it really happened! What an amazing place.
Last night, when we finally slept, I dreamt of animals roaming.
