Safari in Kruger National Park: Day 1

This past weekend was easily one of the best experiences of my life. I can't believe how many animals I saw in such a short period of time! Here's a recap of day one of the weekend:

It started Friday morning at 7am with our guide Willem picking Adriana and I up at my apartment. The guide was really nice, and has lived quite an interesting life. He has been a safari guide since 1994, and before that he was a police officer. When the apartheid government was overturned, many of the public sector jobs were reallocated from whites to non-whites, and his job was one of the positions identified. So he took a job in an anti-poaching team, and eventually began guiding safaris.

After 5 hours of driving we arrived at Kruger in one of the north entrances. In fact, Willem had asked us when we booked (Tuesday of that week), because normally safaris begin in the south where there is much more diverse wildlife--this is where you are most likely to find the big predators (lions, leopards, hyenas). North is elephant and buffalo country. Unfortunately, there were no accommodations available in the south, so we had to stay at Letaba and Shingwedzi. Needless to say, I wasn't exactly happy to hear that we were going to have a difficult time finding the big cats.

We drive into the park and one of the first animals we encounter are impalas. Whats funny is that we probably spent 5 minutes watching these guys; throughout the weekend we ended up seeing them hundreds of times more.



But the next animals we saw were much cooler: zebras. They are absolutely magnificent; it was quite the experience to see them up close. An interesting note we learned from our guide: they can be domesticated, but that their backs are too weak to ride or carry cargo. Definitely one of the coolest animals we saw this weekend.















After driving around for about an hour and not seeing anything, we discovered another of Africa's most interesting animals: the giraffe. These guys blend in surprisingly well given that they are the tallest animals on the planet. They also were very helpful the next morning, when they alerted us about an incoming predator (more on that later).

After about 3 hours in the park we had seen zebras, giraffes, a few elephants from very far away, and a lot of deer like animals (impala, bushbuck, steenbok). However, I still wanted to see what eats these animals. At one point in time we saw a vulture flying overhead, which I was hoping was there because lions were about to leave a fresh meal, but our guide told us that there needs to be more than one vulture before anything good is happening below.

However, at about 5:00 PM that evening (an hour before the park closes), we hit the jackpot. A car was waiting by the side of the road looking at something in the distance, so we decided to check it out ourselves and sure enough, there was a leopard sitting about 20 meters away from the road. But by the time I could turn on my camera, she got up and walked behind a bush, which blocked our view. We kept driving back and forth trying to find a good view point, but nothing was great enough for a photo. So we waited. And waited some more. And after 30 minutes and all the others cars that had stopped to see the leopard had left, the female leopard got up and started rolling around, which is how female leopards signal to male leopards they are ready to mate. And sure enough, we saw the male leopard start approaching from the distance. Unfortunately no mating occurred, and the female leopard stood up and starting walking towards our car! I was freaking out it was so close. And then out of nowhere a juvenile who was hidden the whole time got up and started following her! Willem told us that he had never seen this many leopards in one viewing: they are solitary animals and very difficult to spot.



What a great way to end our first day in Kruger!