Kruger National Park


Kudu at Kruger 

Kruger National Park is THE must-see in South Africa.  It’s one of the largest wild game reserves in the African continent - 7523 square miles (more than 25% of the size of Oregon).  While visiting isn’t cheap, it’s well worth it.  This time we stayed outside the park, which meant we couldn’t enter until dawn and had to exit the gate by sundown.  Last time we stayed at a lodge inside the park, which was wonderful, but when we inquired this year the price had almost  doubled - too much of a splurge.

This time we did hire a guide for the day.


Elvis picked us up at our B&B (only about a mile from one of the entrance gates) at 6 am, did the paperwork for our entry into the park, and off we went in search of close encounters with wild critters.

The morning began slowly - at first all we saw were small antelope - like this herd of steenbok -



Antelope are prolific - which is lucky, because they’re the favorite “fast food” of leopards, lions, and various other hungry predators.

Speaking of which, 



These mama lions got very close - just a few feet away from our open Jeep - and they appeared to be pretty skittish about our presence.  Soon they started down the road, apparently leading us-



away from their cubs, most likely.

And then there were the wildlife traffic jams - first it was a rhinoceros taking his sweet time crossing the road -



And then an entire herd of Cape buffalo decided to disrupt traffic -



We also saw several big critters -



Tall critters -



And small critters -




All in all, an amazing day!

By the way - John took most of the photos on this post - there’s something to be said about using a good camera (as opposed to my iPad) on a day like this!

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