South Africa: Jafari Safari in Kruger National Park

We arrived in South Africa from Lisbon traveling through London to Johannesburg and finally to Skukuza, which took a total of 20 hours of flying time. We landed in northeastern South Africa at the capital city of Kruger National Park — only about a five minute drive from our campsite. Skukuza Rest Camp is the largest campsite by far with decent sized bungalows and great food. We spent half of our eight-night South African adventure there.

Kruger National Park is one of Africa’s largest game reserves at nearly 20,000 square kilometers (7,500 square miles). With countless roads cutting across the park, visitors opt into guided tours organized by campsites while spending the rest of their time driving around the park in rental cars. Donning our safari hats (which finally gained acceptance in their intended locale after relentless ridicule on the mean European streets), we hit the road in the large open-air safari trucks. These excursions last for 3 hours straight and usually encounter most of the top animals seen on safaris.

As we prepared for our first taste of the African bush, we were eager to see the Big 5: lions, leopards, elephants, buffalo, and rhinoceroses. These are the biggest, baddest game in Africa, which every tourist aims to see. I’m sorry to say we missed our mark by one with the reclusive leopards evading us despite our best efforts to track them down. However, we more than made up for this omission instead seeing a bunch of the other Big 4 and so much more wildlife!

First, we saw a family of elephants soaking up the remaining hours of sunlight as they dined in the tall grass beneath our passing bridge. Watching these magnificent creatures slowly munch on blades of grass was not only adorable (see baby elephant below), but picture-perfect in the African sunlight.

In fact, we saw so many elephants we lost track of them all. One of our favorite encounters was with Dumbo and Family as they paraded across the road single-file.

In our rental car, we studied up on each animal by listening to the “Whispers of the Wild” app. The first interesting fact about elephants is that they can actually “hear” through their feet. They use vibrational ground patterns to assess their environment and communicate with each other through their foot stomping — like some sort of earth sonar phone! Beyond this superpower, they are just magnificent creatures and, as it turns out, sentient beings! When an elephant dies, the remaining family members pass by to pay their respects and say their goodbyes to the dearly departed. And, if that isn’t fascinating enough, just look at them!

Their stature is so majestic that I felt like bowing every time I saw them (like in the live-action Jungle Book movie). Elephants are also herbivores that are not hunted by any other animal in the wild — other than humans who turn a profit on their ivory tusks. As such stunning pillars of peace, I moved them up to the highest rung on my animal pedestal. Elephants are #1!

I’m also generally a big cheerleader of prey in general with the most abundant ones in Kruger consisting of impala and kudu, or the African equivalent of deer. These ruminants were so numerous we often found them freezing in the bush as we passed by hunting for bigger game.

On the other hand, Ash’s favorite animal is the king of the Big 5. We had no trouble finding lions lying out by the side of the road during our first sunset drive. As we crept up on Snaggletooth and Sunny*, they were both falling asleep.

*All names have been created for your reading pleasure.

At first we couldn’t tell that the sharp white dagger dangling from the right corner of Snaggletooth’s mouth was his fallen tooth. But upon closer inspection of his gaping jaws during yawns, we confirmed our suspicions and hoped the poor guy doesn’t get an infection! He needed a dentist stat! Maybe we could send in the Minnesota dentist who killed Cecil the Lion? Just drop the dentist off in the middle of the African savannah to help Snaggletooth and only equip him with dental guards. That would be a fitting fate for him!

Anyway, as Snaggletooth rose he got a bit frisky with Sunny. Now, even in stable mating pairs, no male should ever approach a female that’s fast asleep — not without wearing a helmet at least! That was the case here, too. As Snaggletooth approached her with lust in his eyes, Sunny’s reaction was priceless — and completely justified! Take note males of all species: This is what happens when a lioness’ beauty sleep gets interrupted!

The lovers quarrel looked at lot more fierce in photos than it was in actuality though.

After the spat, Sunny went back to sleep and Snaggletooth retired for awhile until following her into dreamland where — according to our guide — they dream about impala. We were hoping to wait around long enough to see them get up and hunt but, unfortunately, lions sleep about 20 hours a day and usually don’t hunt until midnight.

Our hopes for catching predator-prey interactions weren’t totally nixed yet though, as we spotted sky scavengers circling overhead.

When predators catch prey, the vultures come out to play. They circle above the kill signaling others of a potential meal, then they sit in the trees a respectable distance away so as not to alert competition. Buzzie, Flaps, Ziggy, Dizzy, and friends were waiting for their turn on the carcass when we drove past them. These scavengers are an opportunistic bunch reaping the spoils of another’s hard work without breaking a sweat of their own.

Luckily they weren’t the only birds we found in the trees. There are hundreds of species of birds buzzing around the park. We found this pretty blue-green bird around our campsite. (Still not sure of the species.).

We passed by Yogi the Stork who was perfectly balanced on a tall tree branch.

I also spotted this huge black mass moving out in the thicket. Only zooming in with the camera was I able to get a clear picture of Oscar the Ostrich.

Another one of Ash’s favorite predators touched down just in time for his eagle eyes to catch him at sunset.

As dark fell during our sunset drive, our guide equipped two tourists with searchlights to scour for night creatures on either side of the truck. And, just our luck there were a lot of them moving around under the cover of the night! Only through their movements and reflections of their retinas could we see anything in the pitch-black nighttime.

Goodnight, hippo! Sorry about the light in your eyes, but glad we found you.

We saw another hippo as we headed over a bridge to another camp called Oliphant a few days later. I saw something stealthily staring at us from the water — which I thought was an elusive crocodile. But, zooming in we uncovered a clandestine hippo peaking out from the river while keeping cool during the heat of the day. Can you spot him?

Throughout our Kruger trip, we took three more safari rides at different times of day. There are many pros and cons of the group safari drives organized by campsites. On the positive side, you get to sit back and enjoy the ride, you have many eyes scouting for animals making your job easier, and you go directly to areas where animals have been recently spotted by other trucks. The cons are that you must go at the pace of the driver and you’re more exposed to the elements, including sun, wind, and predators(!!!). On the other hand, the pros of our solo drives throughout the park were going at our own pace and creating our own journey. Granted we probably missed out on leopards because of it, but patience and luck have more to do with seeing game than anything else.

The sunrise drive was pretty cool because we started out in the dark before dawn with the searchlights, and ended up seeing a lot of animals active at that hour. A few spotted hyenas scurrying along the dried riverbank were retiring after an unsuccessful morning hunt. These animals are the most active at night, so we saw a lot of them in the cover of the darkness earlier that morning.

We got some more good fortune when we spotted Big 5 #3: a lone white rhino headed for a watering hole. Our lone male actually wasn’t so alone after all as the birds perched on him. Got to love positive symbiotic relationships; mutualism in action here, people!

We think our lone white rhino may have gotten separated from wifey and baby rhinos because we spotted them far away along with a sizable rhino clan.

The birds also helped out another big beast and #4 on our list. Move out of the way, everyone: cape buffalo coming through! Crossing the river they gave off stampede vibes. On another sunset drive we also passed so close to a herd of male buffalos that we could have reached out and touched them. We dared not though, lest they get angry and attack us!

That happened quite a lot though with animals coming out of the woodwork! They also blended in so subtlety into the colors of the terrain that we missed a lot until our eyes adjusted to the savannah camouflage. The South African bush contains miles upon miles of tall, tan grass and reddish-brown bushes that look like lion bodies and manes (respectively), brown corkscrew tree branches that beget kudu antlers, and dark-colored tree branches with light-colored spaces between them mimicking zebra stripes.

Speaking of which, Zebra are quite the skittish creatures. They riled just as easily as the other smaller prey, but were smart enough to travel in heterogeneous groups with giraffes and impala — each with their own unique superpower adaptations helping them to avoid predators.

Giraffes use their camouflage to blend in amongst the trees and consequently alert the others when they see a predator. Sticking their neck out for their companions they serve as sky-high lookouts. Even the babies are tall enough to see over some trees!

Meanwhile in the trees at our campsite, we made some furry friends at lunch. Vervet monkeys hopping around and looking to steal food were fun distractions.

Not to be outdone by their young monkey counterparts, baboons are Old World monkeys with complex social systems. The low-ranking baboons will pick bugs and debris out of the fur of higher ranking ones to curry favor with them. When they’re not grooming each other, they’re hanging around and moving from tree to tree.

With a stern look on his face, Rafiki was on the lookout for his clan as they walked from one tree to another. Since they don’t have prehensile tails like vervet monkeys, they don’t jump from tree to tree. Instead, they saunter down the street while showing you their pale pink behinds as you follow behind.

The baboons also made a home in an outdoor bathroom area of our next intended resting site: Tamboti Tent Camp. They have keen noses and don’t mind breaking an entry into the tarped tents there to satiate their stomachs. However, we realized that this new campsite was not up to our safety code. First, Ash was starting to get a bit of a cold and the weather had shifted from warm to cool and overcast. But, our biggest concern was that the tent was located further into the wild with a perpetually open gate during the day. Even though the electric gate surrounding the compound shut at sundown, any number of wild animals could have wandered in and stealthily hid out during the day only to make their moves on unsuspecting sleepers at night. That was not going to fly since our main goal was to not get eaten!

We resolved to stay at the proper Orpen Rest Camp neighboring Tamboti for the next few nights instead. But, we ended up getting a scare there too! Kaa the Snake forced us to keep one eye while sleeping when we found him lying out on our balcony. Normally we wouldn’t have paid much attention since he moved on after awhile, but when we had a couple of geckos enter (and exit) into our bungalow from a hole, we thought it best to take ample precautions so Kaa couldn’t get inside. Alerting the front desk didn’t help because they laughed it off, and when we showed him to the cleaning lady she freaked out. Adding to our anxiety, we initially identified him as a boomslang — a very poisonous snake in the South African Bush. So needless to say we weren’t feeling very reassured that we would be safe at night while this snake was around. But, once we arrived at the next campsite we found out that Kaa was in fact a spotted bush snake — a harmless snake after all.

Another close call we had was when we had two warthogs ran out into the road right in front of our car. Luckily they made it to the other side unscathed and we found a lot more of them throughout our journeys. We discovered that Pumba grew up, got married, and had a kid.

Unfortunately, there was no sign of Timon anywhere. Such a shame because those two were inseparable. But, I guess everyone has to grow up eventually…hakuna matata!

No signs of Simba, but we did find Scar and Mufasa sleeping paw-to-paw. These two brothers no doubt got ousted from their pride when they hit puberty at 3 years old or so. In this arrangement they usually only stay together to facilitate hunting until one of them finds another unrelated pride and starts procreating with them. But, right now these bros are tag-teaming the nap.

Scar was on lookout first. This boy’s definitely seen a lot of action in his time — check out the dark lightning bolt under his left eye!

When Scar was ready to turn in, Mufasa perked up. He looked so content after getting up then walking around and doing a satisfying stretch. Isn’t he just the cutest kitty in this pose?! Albeit one that could tear you to shreds if you tried to cuddle with him — but lovable nonetheless!

These two kings were snoozing all damn day. We found them at nine in the morning then saw them again at six in the evening barely moving from their initial spot throughout the entire day. I guess that’s what you do when you’re the baddest cats around. Long live the kings!