Tag: South Africa

I am going to start this blog by stating how affordable Safari is in South Africa…Kruger National Park allows for some of the finest wildlife and bird watching in the world…….You can book it yourself, I call it DIY Safari….but if you don’t want to Rosie Price at DialaFlight. (44+161-841-8179 or email rosie.price@dialaflight.co.uk) will book it for you.
You probably think I am mad …..but you’ll see from these quick figures that I am not it really is a very reasonable holiday….PRICES FOR 2 PEOPLE= Airfares with Virgin Atlantic are £1571 ( BA is cheaper but we prefer virgin) Hire car for 17 nights with Avis is £1084 ( yes you can get a lot cheaper but this is for a high clearance vehicle good for dirt roads and seeing over tall grass…we usually have a Toyota Urban Cruiser, no need for a 4×4, this actually was the cost of a new Toyota Cross Corolla, about the height of a Rave but more comfortable) 12 nights accomodation in Kruger National Park is £890 ( we book 2 bedded with en-suite, some were perimeter rondavels throughout the park) We also stayed 5 nights with friend in Johanesberg, but if you stayed somewhere like The City Lodge Morningside near Santon ( like a Premier Inn) it would cost £225. However you probably would only need two nights one when you fly in and one before you fly out so you could save three days car-hire and accommodation….. The total cost of this is £3770 ….. Not bad for a 2 week holiday in one of the top wildlife destinations in the world…….the only extra cost is the daily concession in Kruger National Park…I am uncertain of this price because if you’re in the Park longer than 10 nights it pays to buy an international Wild Card which we do …it last a year and we work it so we get 2 years holidays out of the one card ( we go September/October one year and May/June the next year) Yes you also have fuel and food to buy….in Kruger you can self cater…we do this for breakfast and lunch but we eat in the Camps restaurant for our evening meal.

OK!!!!!!! Having spent nearly 3 weeks in Botswana we flew into ORTambo airport Johannesburg, collected the hire car from Avis and drove to our friends house. We stopped two days, catching up with each other’s news..we keep a cool box and some pillows at our friends ( because I am a very fussy sleeper and love a nice goose down pillow!!!)

We then set off to Kruger. Unlike tour companies we don’t go into the park at the Paul Kruger Gate, neither do we ever stay at Skakuza, it’s far too commercial for our liking…..so we stay on the N4 – a good toll road ( tolls are cheap, but you do need Rands for them as they don’t take foreign credit cards – petrol filling stations do).

We go through Nelspruit 210 miles/330Km east of Johannesburg, ( Nelspruit is now known as Mbombela) and on to Malalane. We enter Kruger at the Malalane Gate (don’t forget to lock your car when you park up to book in at the gate) Our first stop was 2 nights at Berg-en-Dal in a perimeter chalet.

We arrive in time to take a Sunset Drive on a Parks vehicle…we love these, because although it’s great to self drive, the Sunset and Night drives means you are out in the Park after 6pm when the gates shut and everyone else has to be in camp….only Parks vehicles are allowed in the park between sunset and sun rise..so it’s very quiet and you get to see the nocturnal animals…We were lucky on this drive…Sometimes “Mother Nature” just wants you to see it all……wow, wow, wow…. Our it’s sighting before we even got to the main road….

We turned onto the dirt road along the river towards Crocodile Bridge…..there dancing in the road and chasing around the bushes was a pack of Wild dog sometimes called The Painted Dog…..…..these are very rare and nearly extinct …

After watching them a while they disappeared into the bush and we proceeded along the track….we were amazed when our guide shone her torch on a chameleon…what spotting …

We were still buzzing from the spots when our guide put the spot lights to the left and there was a heavily pregnant leopard….we tracked her slowly, as she was walking parallel to the road, for about a kilometre before she turned away from the road and disappeared into the bush.

Considering ourselves extremely fortunate we turned around and headed back..passing an elephant and a hippo at the side of the road …….

Then just when you think it’s all over for the evening we see a pride of lions, well that’s the big 5 seen on our first evening !!!

The start of our Kruger adventure was off to a bang!! We continued up the Park to Lower Sabi for one night. Our self drive game viewing was as usual productive. The tar road towards Skakuza was closed due to the heavy rain washing the bridge away…this however didn’t prevent the resident leopard from strutting it’s stuff in its normal area….

Day 4 in Kruger saw us heading up North. We don’t usually go past Satara but it had been full so we went up to Olifants. We don’t get as excited in the North of the Park…it’s very dry and the wildlife aren’t as prolific as in the central and southern areas of the Park. We saw a few elephants the occasional zebra, wildebeest, impala and steenbok…..but wildlife was few and far between.
Thankfully we had been able to get into Satara for the next 4 nights……we enjoy this area…lots of lions, “Casper”, the famous white lion, it’s an area full of big herds of buffaloes and where there are buffalo there are cats !!! We had 4 days of great game viewing and a sunset drive…our cameras clicked happily away….

The area really does teem with lions and their associated acquaintances…..

The big herds of buffalo really do bring the predators out….

We didn’t just see lions during the da, but we saw loads at dusk and even ‘bonking’ lions in the road !!!!!!

I seem to have made it sound as if we saw nothing but lions….that’s really not the case we saw elephant herds and lads of the usual impala, zebra, wildebeest, kudu, the odd nyala, steenbok, klipspringer, crocodile and numerous bird species…to name but a few.

After 4 wonderful days driving ourselves around the Satara region we headed back down to the southern end of the Park for a 2 night stay at Pretorioskop. Once again we got there in time to take the Sundowner Parks drive ( these drives are very reasonably priced and we often take them so I can have a rest from driving and can really relax with a game drive) Once again we were so lucky…I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves …

There were 30 lions in this pride, which had been feeding off a buffalo…this really is a once in a life time sight. After 2 nights at Pretorioskop we took the long dirt road across to Berg-en-Dal for our final 2 nights in Kruger……On the way across we were surprised when a cheetah walked out in front of us and proceeded to walk down the road in front of us. We were even more surprised when about 5 minutes later a second cheetah joined the first …then we were flabbergasted when a third wandered into the road. We spent about 20 minutes following them along the road. Unfortunately another car then came up behind us and with their sudden arrivals the cheetahs all disappeared out of sight into the bush.

After 2 nights at Berg-en-Dal and some more great wildlife viewing we headed back to Johannesburg. We spent a night in The City Lodge so we could see some very close friends and another night at our friends house before driving to the airport, returning the car and boarding the plane back home……We had, had an amazing time in South Africa and Botswana…6 weeks of superb Wildlife Viewing …at one with Mother Nature.

We regularly Safari in South Africa…our knowledge of where to go and where to stay is extensive and our experience spans nearly 40 years…in that time we’ve seen a lot of changes. I was just 24 years old when I first visited Kruger National Park and I’ve clocked up an accumulative time of over 3.5 years in the park…YES! I love it and it’s wildlife. John joined my love for Kruger after first visiting 11 years ago. This is what he wrote at that time about his initial introduction to the park…..

Impressions from a first safari

It’s 04.45 when we are roused from our semi conscious state. It’s the ‘early morning’ alarm sounding in our roundavel, and its pitch black and there’s a nip in the air. We are at Berg-en-Dal camp Kruger National Park.

But, let’s rewind 24 hours or so. My wife, Jenny, and I had left London’s Heathrow Airport the night before on an overnight South African Airways flight to OS Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg. Picking up our Toyota Fortuner we had headed north eastwards away from the conurbation of Jo’burg and Pretoria picking up South Africa’s N4 motorway to our destination. 

Several hours later, we had entered the small town of Malalane which sits at the southern end of what is to be our home for the next two weeks, Kruger National Park.

So, we are in the northeastern corner of South Africa in what is South Africa’s oldest national park, established way back in 1926. With the Zimbabwe border to the north and Mozambique to the east, a vast area of 7,500 square miles of SA is designated by UNESCO as part of the Kruger to Canyons Biosphere. If that all sounds a bit highbrow, then don’t be put off because that is not what Kruger is about to us. It is simply our heaven on earth.

With vast swathes of Africa’s natural habitat lost to man’s intervention, this is an area where human beings are privileged to enter a land that the wildlife can call their home. Kruger stretches around 220 miles from north to south, and approximately 40 miles from west to east (and the Mozambique border). To the south and west, nine entry gates control access to the camps dotted across the park, which covers an area roughly the size of Wales.

With a combination of tar and dirt (gravel) roads and a global speed restriction of 40 kph, the national park is ideal for safari lovers like us to self-drive. Yes, there is a place for the park controlled safari drives, too. With the rest camp gates closed from sunset to sunrise, the SAN Parks’ organised game drives, particularly at sunrise and sunset, offer an ‘escape clause’ to witness the wildlife in a nocturnal environment. The additional height offered by the safari vehicles can be an advantage too, particularly when the bush grass is long.

And so, back to 04.45 and a Berg-en-Dal wake up call. A quick refresh of the body and we’re ready to go when the camp gate opens at 0530, we are ahead of sunrise by about half an hour. The feeling of anticipation is intense. What will be the first sighting of the day? An impala? Probably. Hopefully, a night predator returning after a kill. Or lions sleeping on the tar, with the roads deserted overnight of course. The tar retains the heat, offering a treat for these big cats when man has gone.

Around half a dozen vehicles form an orderly queue as the impatient wait for the gate opening continues. After a few minutes, despite it seeming like an eternity, the SAN Parks officer allows our ‘escape- at a shade after 6am. That nip in the air is still evident as we await the heat of the African sun to dramatically change this landscape later in the day. This morning, our first sighting is not to be an impala but a spotted hyena about to end its night’s work, scavenging for food. 

We both wonder what other sights the bush has in store for us today……

With John’s love of Safari firmly embedded from his very first moments in Kruger National Park 2J’s continued most years to make what can only be described as their ‘pilgrimage’ to South Africa…people always ask why we don’t get bored with going to the same place and I always answer “The Bush (Mother Nature) only shows you what it wants you to see and that is always different, every hour, every day every year”….and so we continue to Safari with the same excitement we had the first time we went.