Thursday, 7 August 2008

Kruger Days




























































































A week in Kruger is on the agenda. The sparks are already starting to fly. I think the expression cabin fever just about sums up the situation. A lot of different views on things and how they should be done is leading to a lot of tension in the group. I asked Robyn the lady I rented the 2 cars from for a shovel when I was collecting the car. She didn’t know why I needed a shovel and I told her that by the end of the week we’ll probably be so fed up with someone that we’d probably have to bury them out in the park. I didn’t realize how prophetic that statement was going to be.

Enough whingeing, the adventure has begun and we headed up North to a place called Mopani. It is 230 km up North from Orpen gate which is the nearest entry point from the SAWC. We had a few hairy moments with people adjusting to driving the car but that soon passed. The area up North is renowned for its Leopards but as they are the most elusive of the “Big 5,” we didn’t see any early on. We did see plenty of the McDonalds of the bush though. What’s that you ask? Well it’s the Impala. They are considered to be so common that they are a Drive Thru type animal!

We have a competition going not too dissimilar to the one with had on our road trip in Australia. It’s called “dickhead of the day.” We give the award to the person who makes the biggest eijit of themselves on the days travel. I can recall that either Tiernan or Murph got most of the awards in Australia and we have a similar type person on our tour. I have nicknamed him the “Special One,” and he reminds me of “Chernobyl,” the guy myself, Karl and Avril lived with in Sydney. Unfortunately he is also my room mate! I have omitted his comments as they are so frequent I haven’t got the space on this page for them. Some great comments also came from the Yank and the Belgian. These were in no particular order, “Do you think we should drive through the Elephant Sh*t so that it can germinate!” and “ Zer zeem zu be no Dicks around ere!” The last one was in reference to an antelope that is common in the area and is called a Dik Dik. The first I won’t even comment on.

We stopped off for lunch in one of the camping area’s and we were lucky to find a lovely big bull Elephant having a mud bath down by the river. He was really enjoying himself wallowing in the mud and getting himself out of the sun. We got some nice pictures of him and then headed further down south. We were feeling a little bit dejected however because we hadn’t seen much big game. We did stop at a few nice waterholes though and I for one wasn’t too unhappy. The Yank however was not impressed as she still hadn’t seen any big cat’s since she got here. I think she was probably the last person on campus not to have seen any but we had a good feeling for the evening. As we were driving back at dusk the action started to really hot up. We came upon a Hyaena and her 3 cubs literally within a yard of the road. We have some great shots of her and I couldn’t believe how chilled out she was. The cars viewing her didn’t faze her in the slightest. The cubs were obviously not bothered by us either and were following the example set by their mother.

We left her and her cubs in peace to continue with their evening snooze and headed on. We were all buzzing at this stage as that was a great sight and we forgot about our days lack of interesting sightings. As these things tend to do, like Dublin Buses they tend to come in 3’s. No sooner had we left the sighting than we saw a huge grey object up the road in front of us. It could only be an Elephant and we were heading straight towards it. We got up quite close and the Elephant was on one side of the road. We pulled up beside an elderly couple in what had to be the smallest car in Kruger that day. It was a little Micra or something similar. Then the Big Boy decided he wanted to cross the road. He took exception to the little blue car in his way though and walked right up to the couple’s car. It was hilarious. We kind of boxed them in and the guy driving was basically staring down the barrel of a 7 tonne Elephant. All this time the wife was video taping the whole thing! As Reidser would say “Dats Brilliant!” We have a great video of the incident and it’s hilarious. I’m sure the couple’s Grand Kids will love the video! Youtube might be getting a copy! There will be a few bad words on the tape though so those with sensitive hearing might need to turn the sound off!

I couldn’t get over the size of the animal. It was massive. That for me was the best sight so far this trip. We were in stitches in the car after that incident. Partly nervous laughter coupled with some nervous tension. We kept going and then the Yank got her sighting. A big pride of Lions crossing the road. There were at least 12 Lionesses and a couple of Lions. What a sight! You wouldn’t want to be hitching on the roads around here! Everyone had had their appetite sated for the day! It’s not over till the fat lady sings and all that and we were delighted with our pictures stroke video’s of the day. I’m sure we’ll have many more of these kind of things happening in the weeks and months to come and I hope the buzz doesn’t wear off! We ended up being late to the gate in the end. We should have been fined but the ladies used their charm and got us off! Things like “ooh we’re really really sorry but we took a wrong turn,” etc etc etc with a bit of pouting and fluttering of eyelashes. It seems to work over here too!

We got away without having to pay a fine so it was time to have a few beers to celebrate our great day. We stopped into a lodge on the way back to our college by chance and asked do they serve food. The guy came back to us a couple of minutes later saying that we were welcome to come in and join them. We had a lovely dinner and a few beers to wind down the day. Funnily enough I got chatting to a chap at the bar and it turns out he’s from Swords in Dublin and that the owner of the lodge is also Irish. Small World! This guy called Kevin runs his own tours so I might hook up with him for my next week off in September.

We’ll be camping for the next few days which should be fun and I’m looking forward to sleeping under the stars for a few nights………………..

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