African Safari

‘Safari’ is the Zulu word for ‘journey’ and preparing for the African leg of our’s brought about almost the same feelings of excitement and anticipation as when we left for India almost nine months ago.

That’s not only because of all of the imagery and feeling that an African safari evokes, but also because it is a completely different type of travel from what we’ve done in the past due to the more difficult access to some of the interesting parts and the large distances between them. To get around, most people either go on an organised tour or rent their own 4X4. We’ve opted for the latter for the freedom, adventure and flexibility that it gives. Having no 4X4 experience is adding to the adventure!

One of the other challenges we’ve found is extremely limited mobile internet access, particularly in Botswana which has meant a throwback of working from guidebooks and phone. This has actually been quite refreshing for a change and we’ve also enjoyed not torturing ourselves by being moths to the flames on a daily basis to the latest Trump outrage or BREXIT dramas.

We kicked off in Johannesburg where we met up with friends, Lou and Cornell who showed us an amazing time at the Leopard’s Creek resort south of the iconic Kruger National Park. We then spent several days traveling the park from South to North and then entered Botswana to the serenely beautiful Makgadikhadi salt pans surrounding Kubu island.

We were spoilt in a big way while staying with Lou and Cornell. The resort where their house is was a slight cut above our tents!

And the golf course a slight cut above our local one in Karori!

From the resort’s ‘recreation centre’ we spotted three of the ‘big five’ (elephant, lion, leopard, buffalo and rhino) in the first day without even entering the park.

Lou and Cornel organized a guided safari for all of us which gave us some great basic animal knowledge to build on. The beginning of our day was a little less than auspicious as our buggy ran flat on the way to the resort’s main gate…

…But our luck was good as we were spoilt with several Leopard sightings including this fella.

White rhinos were also plentiful in the south of the park. We saw none at all later on in the northern parts.

Hippos and crocs were in almost every water hole

The noise from the burn off on this sugar cane plantation just outside of the park was incredible. Equally incredible was how quickly the fire burned out – within 30 seconds of this photo, the fire was completely extinguished!

This hyena was hanging close to our fenced campsite at Moera on our first night inside the park.

As we headed north, the vultures were always a telltale sign of where there had been a kill and where we might find a predator eating its remains.

Which was probably the furthest thing on the minds of this pair of mating lions. Apparently a male lion can mate up to 100 times a day!

Little wonder she needed some rest…

The highlight of the trip for all of us was on the second day on the way to the Letaba camp where we came across two herds of elephants at a waterhole swimming and munching on the surrounding flora. It felt truly humbling to be completely surrounded by forty or fifty of these majestic animals.

For all of us, the elephant is the real king of the jungle. Not just because of their massive size, strength and indestructibility to predators (other than man!), but it is their adaptability and their EQ that sets them apart from many other mammals. Their numbers have been steadily increasing in Kruger since culling ceased in the 90s and ongoing protection efforts against poachers. Unfortunately, the trend in other parts of Africa is heading rapidly in the other direction due to poaching and habitat loss.

The park was truly alive and we were amazed at the number and variety of what we saw…

One of the days was unseasonably cold and windy. This poor fella looked miserable.

Not a pond to play stepping stones on!

We waited for almost half an hour for this guy to look our way. Not even a stirring rendition of ‘total eclipse of the heart’ got his attention. Unfortunately, we had to leave to get to Sirheni bushcamp before the gates closed.

The next day we left Kruger and overnighted at the Mapungubwe National Park on the border with Botswana. We did a quick lap of the park, which was very much like watching provincial rugby after a World Cup final. The highlight was some gnarly 4WD tracks for us to get a bit of experience which was needed since neither of us have driven anything bigger than a family sedan.

Then it was across a dry river bed which signified the border with Botswana at the Pont Drift crossing.

Other than a number of lonely outposts to sanitize against foot and mouth disease, there was very few signs of civilisation for a couple of hours.

After over-nighting in Francistown, we made tracks for Kubu island.

Kubu ‘island’ is surrounded by the largest salt pans in the world where the inland sea dried up long ago.

…Of course, salt pans can only mean one thing – perspective photography!

The sunset was beautiful…

Sofia and I are getting assembling and dismantling the tents down to a fine art.

I’m pretty sure our insurance didn’t cover this!

This mini tornado added a bit of spice to some bumpy driving on the way north to Gweta.

After a pretty solid week of driving for many hours a day, some downtime was needed and we’ve managed to find a great place for that at Planet Baobob before heading shortly into the Okavango Delta.