The Elephant Walk

Kruger. The 'granddaddy' of all the game parks.

I signed up for the 4-Day Kruger tour. Four day my butt. The first day, they were late in picking us up. I was waiting in Nelspruit, which is about 4 hours outside of Jo'burg, where the tour was starting. I was waiting with my buddy, Rolf, from Switzerland. An older, Belgian couple had gotten their ATM card stuck in the bank, and apparently they refused to just cancel the card. Something like that. So we ended up leaving 2 hours late, spent day 1 with lightning quick visits to these scenic sights, and didn't even make it to Kruger. We spent the night outside of Kruger.

As for the scenic sights, we stopped at God's Window, Bourke's Luck Potholes, and the Three Rondavels. And guess what. The Three Rondavels, with a ho-hum name, was much more spectacular than God's Window, which was a ho-hum view.

That night, we had macaroni and cheese for dinner. Let me just tell you -- it was the best macaroni and cheese I've ever had. Our guide, Tracy, used fresh cheese and macaroni noodles. Meaning, it didn't come out of a blue box. She added spices and meat, and it was quite nice. So I filled my plate once, finished, and got up for seconds. I scooped a bunch on my plate, and was going to leave, but then thought, I don't want to look like a pig and go for thirds -- I better get more now. So then I sat down, and after about 2 bites, realized I was really full. Then I looked up, and realized that everyone else was done. And I was sitting in front of a plate full of food. Man, first my British friend commented on my appetite in Chile, then Jeanne when we went to Sweet Tomatoes, and even Jimmy while we were in Cape Town! And I was stuck. I had to finish, since everyone was politely waiting for me to finish. (There was just 3 other people and our guide, which made it even more awkward.) Took me forever, but I finally finished.

But to top it off, I'm lactose intolerant. I usually just deal with the gas that results from me eating dairy, but this time, I found myself sharing a room with someone who didn't know me. So I stayed up half the night holding in my gas. The other half the night, I alternated between hiding my whole body from 1 pesky mosquito under my sheet (and sweating myself to death), and leaving my arms and face exposed, but flinching and swatting furiously every time I heard that annoying buzzing. I was in malaria territory. And this paranoia was set off when my roommate started spraying insect repellent in the middle of the night. I tried to avoid it the yucky repellent, instead choosing to half-suffocate half-sweat to death under my sheet.

Anyway, the next day, we had the most amazing luck in the first 2 hours of our drive into Kruger. The African Big 5 are the lion, rhino, buffalo, leopard and elephant, named because they are the most difficult to hunt. And so of course, that was our goal. To see the big 5. And in the first hour, we saw a buffalo. Then we saw a bunch of cars stopped -- and an elephant walking straight at the cars scrambling to get out of his way. Then we say two lions, flopped out in the grass right next to the road. We were SO close to the lions. Then we saw a hyena and her two cubs. The mom ignored us (being nocturnal and all), but the pups were curious and came over to inspect our car. The pups started gnawing on our tires, at which point we shooed it away. Our guide told us about how this pup had eaten the mud-flaps off a truck on one of her previous trips. And later that day, we saw a heard of buffalo next to the road, which was rare.

And we kept seeing babboons and jackals, giraffes, zebras and wildebeast. Zebras and giraffes get boring, but babboons never get boring. They are so human like in some of their actions, and it was great fun watching some of the baby babboons play with each other.

And that was it. For the two full days we spent in Kruger. The park is teeming with impala, but we didn't even see many of those on the second day. The second day, we again saw a lion (this time from a distance), an elephant, and a herd of buffalo. And the final day, we drove for about an hour, and barely even saw 1 impala. The night drive and bush walk were also fruitless, although the sunrise on the bushwalk was the most amazing sun rise I've ever seen. For the bush walk, we were guided by two men with shot guns. We literally could have been attacked by lions or leopards or cheetahs.

Our last night in the campsite, we were visited by a honey badger that went through our trash. Our guide told us to let it eat -- it has claws that could cause some damage. And then it came over and eyed our dinner -- it was standing 5 feet behind me. I was a bit nervous. Tracy instructed us to eat, but to give the animal whatever it wanted should it jump on the table. Another person started freaking out 'oh my gosh i'm so scared what am i going to do??' Finally, a guide shooed it away.

And that was the 4-day trip to Kruger. (more like 2 days . . .)