Kruger Day 3
Tuesday April 23
More animals. More driving. And a gourmet dinner in the bush
on the banks of Olifants River.
I woke up pretty early again for a 6am early morning game drive
with Jimbo and David. It was a lot of fun. I sat in the front row and got to
pester both of them for interesting knowledge a lot. We saw wildebeest and lots
of zebra. Lots and lots of zebra. Giraffes. And kudu. We saw a whole herd of
waterbuck at a watering hole and watched a male waterbuck get rejected by
several females in the course of about fifteen minutes. They kept on running
away from him, leading him on the tiniest bit but then running away and/or
kicking him. Gotta love the animal kingdom. One thing is for sure, it will give
you some laughs.
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| Rejection |
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| Look at those eyelashes! |
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| silly giraffe |
Then we were almost all the way back to the camp after a few
hours of driving around and we saw a herd of elephants at a watering hole. They
were leaving the watering hole and headed towards a roadway, so we drove off to
catch them in the act of crossing the road for a very up close and personal
view. Some people were pretty nervous after our fake charge encounter on
Sunday, but I was just excited. They marched in single file (and all I could
hear in my head was the Jungle Book song about the elephants). There was a baby
running along every few steps to try to keep up with his mom and aunts and
sisters. (Herds are all females. Males travel in small groups from 1-4 usually
but are never with female herds.) When they crossed the road we were so close
to them, it was amazing. I literally had goose bumps on my arms it was so
exciting.
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| Are you or are you not thinking of the Jungle Book? |
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| BABY! |
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| Here they come! |
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| Bye bye, elephants! |
After breakfast, we set out for our next camp, Olifants, not
too far away, but obviously we took the scenic route, so stretched it out into
several hours. I sat next to Jim the whole way and asked him millions of
questions about veterinary school in South Africa. He tried to convince me I should
come to vet school here because it’s “better.” Idk…we’ll see. Too many thoughts
to process. Study abroad is crazy! Anyway, we saw some more warthogs and I
decided they are cute, and that’s probably thanks to Pumba’s character that I
think that. But still, they’re funny looking but seem pretty nice.
We saw some steenbok, tiniest of all antelope species, and
they mate for life, which makes any species even cuter.
We also had a tragic reminder of the harsh realities that
sometimes happen in Kruger. We saw off in the distance a helicopter on the
ground and a bunch of people walking around near it. They had rhino DNA test
kits. Jim’s knowledge came in very handy here. He was able to explain the
forensic site to us as we watched the vets and forensic specialists take
samples from the poached carcasses that were very fresh, from overnight or
earlier in the morning. There were two of them. Ugh. So sad.
What else did we see? Some hippos and a group of male elephants
at a watering hole. We saw some weird looking birds. I don’t remember what they
were called. I remembered all the mammal names I learned in Kruger, but not the bird names. I’m not
a bird enthusiast I guess.
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| baby hippos |
We saw impalas of course and a whole family of hippos in a
little pond. They were splashing around having a lot of fun. There were a
couple adults in one area and then about thirty feet away from them, just
around a bend in the creek, was one babysitter cow and about 5 or 6 babies
splashing around and playing. So cute. Again, thank you animal kingdom for so
much entertainment!
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| Can you open your mouth that wide? |
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| Hungry hungry hippos! |
There was an odd unspoken tension in the vehicles by this
point in time. I think we were all a tad tired from our three early mornings in
a row and our busy busy days. But everyone was in surprisingly great spirits
and happy and getting aloing remarkably well. So why the tension? Well when you
go to Kruger, there is an unconscious yet powerful intrinsic desire in each
visitor to see a lion. So it was our 4th day in the park and we had
yet to see a cat of any sort. Wildcats hadn’t seen any wildcats. We made way
too many puns and jokes about that. We told Jim and David that we wouldn’t hate
them forever if they didn’t produce lions. But these reassurances we gave them
were definitely somewhat forced. There was a growing and increasing fear
lurking in each of our minds that no lions or any cats for that matter would be
seen. It was Tuesday late afternoon and we had Wednesday but then were leaving
the park on Thursday. It was stressful. And the tension was there. I told Jim
that I had started fearing that lions would turn out to be like Santa Claus.
They would tell me as I left Kruger, “muahahaha lions aren’t real. It’s time to
grow up. They don’t exist. You’ll never see a lion.” I think we all
subconsciously gave up our eye- and mind-tiring search of staring out the
vehicle into the bush hoping to see a lion under every tree. And in the car I
was in, we started telling stories. It somehow developed into a ‘who has the
most disgraceful embarrassing moment story’ session.
We were getting close to Olifants but David decided to drive
down another loop that he hadn’t driven down in years. Mostly because a bunch
of people in both vehicles had to pee in the bush and it was an especially
deserted area and there would be some safer spaces to get out of the vehicles
there without worrying about an elephant or something else hiding behind a tree
or bush. So we went down the road, everyone got out to pee, and then got back
in the trucks and we kept going down the road to look for animals. One girl was
in the middle of telling her embarrassing story when all of a sudden Jim calmly
and quietly says “lion” with the biggest conveyance of relief one word could
possibly carry. At that moment, he knew that he wouldn’t be hated by 20
disappointed American college students. He had done his duty. The quest for the
lion was over. As soon as he said the word, all of us gasped and turned to look
out the left of the vehicle where there was not one, but two lions! A lion and
a lioness sitting and bathing in the sun and licking each other. Our
synchronized gasp of shock, excitement, adrenaline, and relief naturally
startled the lions so they got up off the road and moved in about fifteen feet
and sat down under a tree but we could still see them. It was tremendously
exciting! Jim explained that the two of them were engaged in the 48 hour mating
process a lion pair undergoes where they hang out for 48 hours separated from
the rest of the pride and periodically have sex. And yes, queue “Can You Feel
the Love Tonight.” The lions cuddled and kissed for a while, got up, did the
deed and that was that. I will probably never again be able to watch The Lion
King the same way again. Hahaha! Again, thank you to the animal kingdom for
being an endless source of amusement.
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| Can You Feel the Love Tonight? |
After seeing the lions, there was a general sense of relief,
happiness, and light-heartedness among all of us. It was amazing to see and
sense the transformation of the atmosphere in the vehicles as we all felt well
even if we see nothing tomorrow, we have seen a lion and can leave Kruger
without shame. I didn’t realize how imperative it was to see a lion til I
didn’t see a lion for three days.
We saw more giraffes and kudus. And we saw a gigantic
crocodile sitting on a grassy little sand bar in the Olifants River. And as we
pulled up to the Olifants Camp, we saw a little family of nyala (antelope-like
creatures) hanging out right by the gate.
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| How can you not fall in love with giraffes? |
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| Nyala |
Olifants Camp is beautiful and like Satara is made of little
huts. There were two of us to a hut this time though. After settling in, I had
to shower to get a whole day’s worth of driving around in an open vehicle dust
off me. Then I went to check out the incredible and famous view overlooking the
Olifants River that the camp store provides. It was incredible.
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| Olifants River from our campsite |
I saw a family of elephants cross the river down below. Neha
and I were cracking up the whole time because there was a young looking
elephant. Not a baby, but an adolescent. And he was clearly nervous about
crossing the river and didn’t believe all the adults who reassured him it would
be ok. He started crossing a few times and kept nervously looking back toward
the shore and then running back to the shore and staring pleadingly at the
adults to not make him go. It was so comical! And then finally he started
crossing for good. Made it about half way and just stopped dead in his tracks. The
adults kept going and turning around to look at him but not stopping so he
finally started up again. Then he got almost all the way to the other side but
there was a deep part right before the shore, and the adults were all pretty
deep in at that point. So he stopped again right before he got there and
started turning around again. Realizing he was alone in this, he turned back
around, looked at the remaining water to cross and crossed it, but his little
head went almost all the way under the water and all I could see was the trunk
and very top of his head. It was so sadly cute and funny. Neha and I were dying
with laughter at this point. But then the elephant resurfaced and emerged
looking grumpy, discombobulated, and quite upset by the whole experience,
scampered quickly to shore, and never looked back once. Poor lil guy.
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| Hesitant Elephant |
For dinner, we had a brief hour-long game drive to a spot on
the banks of the Olifants River where we were served a gourmet meal/braii by
candlelight. It was super super cool. But definitely more like something you’d
see in a fancy magazine spread than something that you’d experience in real
life. The food was amazing. We had different kinds of barbecued meat, pasta,
pap (boiled corn meal) with a vegetable sauce to go on top, and malva pudding
for dessert. Mmmmmmmmm. So much delicious food. The view was gorgeous but it
soon got dark but that didn’t matter because it felt so cool to be so close to
the wildlife. I also think there was a leopard right behind my end of the
table. The armed guard said there was a leopard that lived there and had been
spotted earlier in the day. And three of us heard rustling, raised our hands
and called for help. The guard then just stood over near us to make sure a
leopard didn’t leap out of the bushes and eat one of us for his dinner.
After dinner, we drove back to
the camp and we hung out for a while on someone’s porch hut, but then we went
to sleep because we had an early morning yet again to head off to our next
destination: Mopani, another camp up in the northern part of the camp.
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