kruger

Photo: Sleeping Hippo?

January 2, 2012 By Danny

Hippos are among the most fearsome creatures in all of Africa, seriously. The only animals more deadly than hippos in Africa are the human and the mosquito, hippos are responsible for more deaths annually than crocodiles. Part of the reason for this is that they are nocturnal and when they emerge from the water at the end of the day…they’re hungry and will chomp on anything that comes across their path.

This guy here is actually asleep. The skin of the hippo lacks any kind of natural sun protection and so they spend the day sleeping underwater. Somehow they manage to float up to the surface every few minutes to take a breath before submerging again. This guy was sleeping with this face pointed at a bridge and I simple parked the car and took a few pictures every time he came up for air.

IF YOU GO: You can literally see wildlife/game all through Africa. South Africa has a host of game parks and safaris you can go on just like Tanzania and Kenya. The nice thing about South Africa is that you can drive your own safari through the parks, no guide necessary.

To see more of our favorite photos from around the world check out our travel photo page. Let us know your favorites and we’ll include them in our photo of the day series.

Photo: Biking at Work

May 17, 2011 By Jillian

Well biking to work isn’t all fun and games. Just check out this daily ride for some wildlife rangers at South Africa’s Kruger National Park. Everyday they take tourists on a cycling trip in the bush. Notice those shotguns. Our guide had only had to use his once, and in that case it was just a warning shot at a rather aggressive elephant. Thankfully we didn’t run head on to any scary wildlife while on bike. We got pretty darn close to some hippos, who thankfully stayed in the water, but otherwise the elephants stayed a good distance from us as did any cats!

Look closely at the left hand dirt track in the picture. The prints you see are of the white rhino (if we remember correctly). We saw several prints on our path, elephant and rhino. Our guides could point out each track, tell us about when the animal had moved through, and all sorts of other neat things. Sure, it could have been a story, but it was a good one!

To see more of our favorite photos from around the world check out our travel photo page. Let us know your favorites and we’ll include them in our photo of the day series.

If you’ve followed this blog for a little while you know we loved traveling through South Africa (check out our guide to South Africa!). We spent nearly two months in southern Africa, from ocean to ocean and all the way down to Cape Point. We spent most of our time in South Africa’s National Parks (our tip: get the SAN Parks Wild Card!) We can’t wait to go back, hopefully we’ll find some late deals!

Review: SANParks South African Wild Card

April 18, 2010 By Danny

The decision to purchase the South African wild card park pass was an easy one. We were coming to Africa and we were told that within South Africa we could do our own game drives and safaris and not pay for an expensive tour or guide. With a little more research we realized that this would save us loads of money as compared to paying for these services in South Africa or elsewhere in Africa. With the SANParks Wild Card pass we were able to save even more money.

Before you decide to purchase the card be sure to do a little research on the park fees you’re due to pay without the card. For us, over 5 days in Kruger National Park, we were going to come close to the cost of the Wild Card. We figured, correctly, that if we used it even one more time it would break even and anything beyond that was effectively free. Ultimately it paid for itself more than two times over 6 weeks.

The card was easy to purchase and we did so when we first arrived at the campsite within Kruger National Park. Because we were foreigners the price was about three times as much as the locals paid, but it still made sense to purchase. At that time, the cost in South African Rand was about $250 for our “couple” pass and, considering thats what the fees at the Ngorongoro Crater worked out to be I think we made the right decision. Upon arrival at each park, we showed our card, they scanned it, and we moved on.

The pass was good at every single park in the SANParks system. This wasn’t only game parks but also historical and heritage sites such as Cape Point near Cape Town. The pass was also good at a few parks in Swaziland.

Additionally, the pass does give you 5% back every time you pay for lodging at the park. This is a nice feature but as we only had 6 weeks inside the country we didn’t realize we’d need to register the card in order to use it. Our last day in South Africa we went to use the R50 we’d earned (about $7) but couldn’t because the card hadn’t been registered.

When Animals Attack…

January 20, 2010 By Jillian

After our elephant experience in Kruger safety around animals has been on my mind, so when I saw an article in a nature magazine entitled “animal safety” I flipped to the article. The advice was basically this: hippo, rhino, elephant, lion- stay away and if you can’t stay away get away quickly and quietly before it notices you. Well that’s helpful. With no specific advice to follow, I crawled in our tent each night planning what I would do if say a hippo disturbed us in the night. Hippos it seems kill the most number of people every year in Africa, so when I heard the hippos calling to each other at night in Mlilwane Nature Reserve in Swaziland I was a little anxious. The campground was surrounded by a fence, but when your mind wanders, well it can really get going and the first night I dreampt we were trampled by hippos in the night. Awaking in a cold sweat I was thankful to see only monkeys in the morning light. Until my thoughts turned to other recent warnings about monkeys taking off with stuff… like our sandals which lay not more than 6 inches from me outside the tent. Quietly I pulled them into the tent and fell asleep.

Five days hiking in Malolotja Nature Reserve, climbing execution rock in Mlilwane, and surviving four nights camping in the Swazi bush without an animal attack, that’s our time in Swaziland in a nutshell. Packing up our car at dusk I rummaged through the trunk looking for passports when I heard a rustling noise beside me. Searching quickly for the source, I was confronted by a male ostrich not more than 10 feet away. Having seen him by the swimming pool earlier that day, I figured I could shoo him away without a problem. Waving my arms and screaming shoo shoo, I looked like a lunatic, and the ostrich treated me as one. Looking at me with his head cocked to the side, the ostrich wasn’t even bashful about stepping closer. With visions of being cut open head to toe by an ostrich nail (have you seen the size of their feet) and warnings of their nasty temperament ringing in my head, I dropped everything and ran into the car, locking the doors. With the hatchback still open I continued my shooing from inside the car, a bit braver this time. Without so much as a glance in my direction, the ostrich began pecking at things I had left scattered on the ground. Unable to see him, only hearing him peck at our wordly possessions in the back, I resolved to get him away before he destroyed something. Truly, my thoughts ran to the clif bars, which I knew were left on the ground. Not knowing what else to do I honked the horn, which made absolutely no positive impact on the ostrich. Instead he began to rustle things in the back. So I turned on the vehicle and reved the engine. Again, he poked his head from the trunk and looked at me, practically daring me to continue my nonsensical actions. Finally I leaned out of the passengers seat of the car, waved my hands and screamed as loud as I could at the monsterous beast. From the lodge area a game warden, finally noticing my situation came running waving his arms and shooing the ostrich out the fence. Safe at last I climbed out of the car, thanked the warden profusely who was laughing with (or more likely at) me and headed back into the lodge.

Barely looking up from his book Danny asked me where I had been… needless to say that night as I crawled into the tent I wasn’t so worried about the hippo attack… I was dreaming of the ostrich sausage we grilled in Kruger…hmmm….karmic payback.

Enough Driving Already

January 18, 2010 By Danny

Our camp on the third night was supposed to offer us with plenty of cheetah sightings but somehow we missed out on that and the nearby leopard. Pulling into our fourth and final camp we were simply exhausted of sitting in the car and were quite pleased to find out that this camp not only had a resident lion pride but also offered bike tours through the bush…so we signed up.

The bike ride was easy enough, just making our way through the bush and through fields. We took in a bit of education, learning that the buffalo would eat the grass in front of us even though it tasted bad because they were so big they had to eat anything they could find and no one else ate that grass. We learned that the bike ranger with us had used his gun once, Dec ’06, to give a bull elephant a few warning shots. We also talked a lot of lions and how they are opportunistic hunters who will basically take what can get. (this is foreshadowing)

In the end, other than rhino tracks we only found live hippo to look at but it was quite nice sitting on the riverbank watching them as they woke up (nocturnal) and began setting out to begin their night of foraging for food. Apparently they can travel as far as 15k in a single night, before returning where they started from, in search of food. As a result, they make nice easy trails for bikes to follow and we followed one of those back to the truck…hoping (well, I and the rest were hoping, Jill wasn’t) to get up close and personal with an elephant but we didn’t. Back at camp nothing was stirring but a couple of hyena looking to collect food scraps.

The next day as we were leaving camp we very nearly ran into hyena as they were running around doing something, probably with a carcass but we couldn’t see. Another car there told us that if we turned around and went the other way we’d find a pride of lions, and we did….a bunch of them including not just lioness but also a big lion who couldn’t seem to decide if he wanted to sleep, or mate.

Continuing on with the day we saw more elephant, zebra, giraffe, ostrich, and buffalo as well…all before we stopped for our first break…probably our best morning yet. Driving out of the park though we were being very careful to stop at the stream beds that were rumored to house leopard and the fields rumored to house cheetah but still no no avail. Then suddenly Jill screamed “stop, lion.” Yes, we know the video is awful, but we thought you might get a kick out of it!

After having seen our fill of lion earlier in the day, this wouldn’t have been quite so exciting except that this lioness was hunting, completely frozen and staring down a couple of warthog a mere 10 meters away. Usually the cats don’t bother hunting in the day so this was quite a sighting and we were, well, excited at the chance of seeing an actual kill. (The bike ranger the night before had only seen 2 kills in the 4 years he’d been working at the park.) In the end, the warthog got away (the lioness missed the pounce and probably didn’t want to chase it down in middle of the day when it was hot out…warthog isn’t so big anyhow) but you can see from the video, we were clearly excited…and missed most of the action but oh well. It seems that lioness was part of a group of about 5 that had been likely sitting minding their own business when the warthog strolled nearby and this lioness couldn’t resist the opporuntity, despite the sun, since they were so close. In that little group there, not far from where we saw (likely) this very pride hunting two nights prior, we saw several lioness, another lion, and even a cub. Not a bad way to end 4 days in Kruger, not bad at all.

Photo: Sleeping Hippo?

Photo: Biking at Work

Review: SANParks South African Wild Card

When Animals Attack…

Enough Driving Already

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