Skukuza, South Africa
Our game drive today left at 5:30 am. The sun was just beginning to rise. The Kruger National Park is very different from the Kalamazoo Game Lodge. Kruger is a National Park and Kapama is a privately owned reserve. There is a single paved road through the park that is travelled by jeeps from game lodges and those traveling on their own. There is a campground in the park and those people also travel through the park. In the center of the campground is a “sightings” bulletin board where information about game is shared. What really happens here is that vehicles drive along the road until they see stopped cars. That is usually a guarantee of a large game sighting. There is no off roading in this park and some of the game can only be seen from afar. At the Kapama Lodge, we were able to get writhin 6 ft of lions and other game.
The following pictures are from the morning game drive. The drive ended at 8:30 and we went into the lodge for a great breakfast. The next game drive was at 4pm and we had the day to enjoy the area.
We walked into Skukuza and on the way we passed the steam locomotive that used to pull the cars that are parked on the bridge. About a mile or so we found ourselves at the campground store. Quite a large store with camping items and souvenir type stuff.
We walked around this area a bit and then went did some shopping.
Dinner tonight was in the bush after the game drive.
We left for the drive but didn’t see many animal. We did go up on top of a small rock mountain. Here many go to watch the sun set. We did see the sunset and also saw a young man get down on one knee and propose to his girlfriend. I’m guessing she said yes by her reaction.
Shortly after we arrived at a location where the dinner in the bush was hosted. Many large fires were already burning and the tables were out and set. The wait and cook staff sang some traditional folk songs from their tribe. They were quite good.
Dinner was great and it was a fun experience. After dinner we did some star gazing and one of the guides showed us the southern cross and also how to find north from the constellation Orion. Fascinating.
We headed back to the Train on Bridge and called it a night. We decided to skip the morning game drive tomorrow. This will give us a chance to catch up on some sleep.
We fly to Capetown tomorrow.…