Sadly we had to drop our friend Allison off at the Joburg airport before continuing our trip to Kruger National Park. 

Chico, Levi and I spent one night in Pretoria and then Nelspruit before heading to Kruger Natinal Park for four nights. The two million hectare park is full of the big five, antelope, baboons, and many other types of animals. The scenery in the park was stunning.  It is what someone would think of when they they think of Africa.  Grasslands, acacia trees, small brush, and meandering rivers.  The only downside to exploring Kruger at this time or year is that its the rainy season, which means the vegetation is much lusher and the grass much taller making it challenging to spot certain types of wildlife.

Every day we drove north a good 50km within the park to reach another rest camp for the night.  The rest camps were a mix of tenting and car camping facilities, and smalls huts.  One the camps had a outdoor movie screen where we watched a film about cheetahs.  Even though it was a film it was cool to be watching it so close to the scenery where they lived.

Along with driving ourselves around looking for animals we also went on a 4:00am safari drive and a 4:30am 3hr bush walk. By far the most exciting part of our stay was the bush walk. We drove to the spot that we were going to start our walk but it was raining heavily and our guides advised us that it would not be a good idea to head out since their guns wouldn't work (I was a little relieved). As we were heading back to the camp, the rain let up. We pulled over and turned the engine off to have a listen and by chance we heard lions roaring not to far away (it was more like a heavy grunt).

So off we went in search of lions on foot! We were with two armed bushmen and another couple. We had to abide by a few rules. No running from animals ever, and we had to be very quiet and click our fingers if we wanted to get the guides attention. Before starting the walk I of course had to ask if there had ever been anyone injured going on a bush walk. His response was, of course! People have been killed! It was too late to turn back. The two bushmen walked in front of us, and we all walked in single file.  It was actually very scary for the first part of the walk. Our adrenalin was pumping heavily. 

Thankfully, we found out later that lions are normally scared of people (thank you two hundred years of poaching, not) and usually run away. Although we heard lions roaring several times (one time particularly close) and saw their footprints in the dirt, we never caught a glimpse of them. We did see lots of different types of antelope, wildebeast, an elephant, a jackal and a few others. By the time was started walking back to the vehicle, we felt a little more at ease. It wasnt an experience I am planning on doing any time soon. Once was good enough!

We did have several other animal highlights. Some of which were seeing a huge number of elephants and hippos. At one point we saw at least 30 elephant making their way into and out of a watering hole and a good 20 hippos doing the same actions. It was great!  We also got really lucky and watched a family of hyenas playing around for a while right on the side of the road and saw several lions and giraffs.

One sad storey that we heard about after our stay in Kruger was about poaching.  Although poaching has been banned for a while, it still nevertheless occurs. A hostel owners in Nelspriut who used to work in the park told us about an armoured bank vehicle that got busted with 20 impala in the back of the truck. They had all been intentionally run over by the truck, and would have sold it as game meat outside the park.  Nice heh? The rest camps within the park still have posters mounted up depicting gruesome poaching techniques used on animals, and ask for visitors to be watchful if they see anything suspicious.

All in all our stay in Kruger was great and to be able to drive ourselves around was really cool. Though Nelspruit would be the last stop for Chico, she did well for us in South Africa.