Kruger
Door: Elke
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Elke
30 April 2012 | Zuid-Afrika, Pretoria
After a quick after-breakfast jump with Heather on the trampolines in Tshipise, our trip continued to the Kruger Park.
Our first day in Kruger was a National Holiday in South Africa, meaning that everybody was off from school or work, resulting in a number of locals visiting the park as well. In the game parks, stopped cars are usually a good indication that there is something to be seen and since Kruger had quite a bit more visitors than the other parks, this offered opportunities. However, stopped cars still don’t guarantee that there is something GOOD to be seen or, as we found out one time, that there is even anything to be seen at all. When we pulled up next to another car and asked what they were looking at (because we could not see anything) it turned out there was nothing to be seen indeed and that they had just pulled over under the high voltage cables above to listen to the sound they make (I’m not joking).
When we left the park that day there was a big group of locals outside the gate, all dressed up in fancy clothes (meaning mostly polyester, which could not have been that comfortable in those temperatures). There were also many children in the group. When I came back from the bathrooms, half of the people from our group were taking pictures of these people, and since I felt like it, I decided to the people in the pictures. Then everybody started talking to everybody and taking pictures of anybody. The people of our group that had been to Africa before, had taken some presents for local children, which included balloons, but also pens. I did not think that pens were an impressive gift, but the kids seemed to be very happy with it and even some of the adults came to ask for some.
Unfortunately all the accommodations in the Kruger park were booked, so we stayed in a lodge outside the park. Since malaria is known to occur in Kruger, our beds were equipped with mosquito nets, much to the amusement of Willem. He meticulously draped the net around our beds and then spend some moments enjoying our little nest. For me the net mainly meant that I had more to struggle with during the night. For reasons unknown to me, I always manage to wake up either tangled up in my sheets or with my sheets in a disorganized mess on or near my bed. Indeed after turning twice I already got stuck into the mosquito net (so that was even BEFORE falling asleep). And all that while quite frankly I was not really convinced of any malaria threat at the time that we were there (I’ve hardly seen any mosquito’s to begin with). And had there been a real threat, the net would not have done me that much good either, since my feet were not covered by it (I happen to be slightly taller than the length of most of the beds in South Africa).
The next day, we were supposed to drive from the north of the Kruger park to the middle of the park (for reference, the Kruger park is about as big as Belgium). Due to road construction works we had to unfortunately take a detour of about 4 hours. This meant that despite getting up early we started our second game drive in Kruger a bit late. We had already seen many animals, but we had not seen any big cats up to that point, so lions, leopards and cheetah’s were first on our priority list. On the message boards in the park we saw where cats had been spotted, but we were unable to find them. When leaving the park at the end of the day we were therefore a bit disappointed. This disappointment changed into surprise and disbelieve when we ran into what we thought was a traffic jam in front of the entrance gate. I mean seriously, what has the world come to if there are even traffic jams in nature reserves? But not to worry, the world has not come to this, the traffic jam was not a jam, but stopped cars looking at something GOOD, as there was a leopard calmly walking down the middle of the road not bothered by any of the cars and trucks as if to say “Thank you for visiting us, hope see you again soon”. This changed the mood into a combination of surprise and happiness (the latter being the keyword of this trip) as the 4th of the big 5 could be crossed off our list.
Since I had only taken a limited amount of luggage on this trip (because we were told to do so on the djoser website, and no I don’t necessarily do exactly as I am told to do, BUT… when I agree with the reasoning behind what I am told to do, I do do as I am told to do), it was about time to do some laundry. Our lodge did not have machines to do your own laundry, but did offer a laundry service. Even though it was not ridiculously expensive, it was still the most expensive laundry that I have ever done. In addition to washing, the service also included nicely folding of my tank tops, pants and even underwear. I don’t think my textiles really knew what hit them, so after receiving everything back, I quickly crammed everything into the backpack to make the universe return to normalcy.
After this we spend another day game driving in Kruger. We took or time looking around and on our way we crossed a bridge which is one of the few places in the park where it is allowed to leave your vehicles. The bridge was badly damaged by some floods about 6 weeks earlier (in fact we later passed a bridge that was completely destroyed by it), but by the time we were there water levels had dropped considerably again. We had lunch on the top of a hill with a beautiful view of the river below, where we saw a big herd of elephants cross. At the restaurant here again I was personally tested for the virtue of patience again. Lunch with a group of 13 would generally take some time and it would take some more time if you made the mistake of ordering 2 things in 1 sentence or ordering the second thing while the waiter was still writing down the first thing. I know that Holland is one of the few places where efficiency is very highly valued, and I feel like I SHOULD be able to let go of this need for efficiency during a vacation abroad, but it just does not come easily. After lunch we had to hurry back to the gate, to be able to exit the park before sun down.
The next day, before leaving for Swasiland we had a game walk in the park adjacent to our lodge. Except for a huge spider and an innocuous snake we did not see any scary animals. We did see a burrow of warthogs, as it was after 7.00 am it was apparently safe to stand in front of it as the warthogs are out by that time, but when the warthogs are present it would not be wise to stand there, as the warthogs would charge. Funny thing was though that apparently it is safe to stand one step to the side of the entrance as they only charge straight ahead. I just started to like these animals even more. The ranger also explained a lot about the trees and plants. I gather that the people in SA suffer a lot from headaches and upset stomachs as many plants were useful for either of these two ailments. The aloe vera that we have in our beauty creams, is used in its pure form in the bush to heal wounds, as it stops bleeding quickly. Additionally it can alleviate rashes etc. We got some of the pure stuff on our skin as well. The ranger then told us that it was also used by woman to wean their children off breast feeding. A little bit of the stuff on the right place would make the milk not taste that good anymore. Of course I wanted to find out for myself what the stuff tastes like and I can now confirm that it indeed does not taste that good. In addition to that we spend some of our time looking at poop. I bet most of you don’t know that the droppings of giraffes are relatively small compared to the size of the animal. The ranger picked up some of the droppings and dared me to play a game and since I am not a party pooper I figured I would join. The guy then took one of the droppings, put it in his mouth and spit it as far as he could. While I was pondering a strategy to spit far as I could (I don’t have any experience with this kind of games) the ranger already assumed that I wouldn’t do it and threw the other droppings back on the floor again – don’t you just hate it when people don’t allow you to live up to your full potential?
Our first day in Kruger was a National Holiday in South Africa, meaning that everybody was off from school or work, resulting in a number of locals visiting the park as well. In the game parks, stopped cars are usually a good indication that there is something to be seen and since Kruger had quite a bit more visitors than the other parks, this offered opportunities. However, stopped cars still don’t guarantee that there is something GOOD to be seen or, as we found out one time, that there is even anything to be seen at all. When we pulled up next to another car and asked what they were looking at (because we could not see anything) it turned out there was nothing to be seen indeed and that they had just pulled over under the high voltage cables above to listen to the sound they make (I’m not joking).
When we left the park that day there was a big group of locals outside the gate, all dressed up in fancy clothes (meaning mostly polyester, which could not have been that comfortable in those temperatures). There were also many children in the group. When I came back from the bathrooms, half of the people from our group were taking pictures of these people, and since I felt like it, I decided to the people in the pictures. Then everybody started talking to everybody and taking pictures of anybody. The people of our group that had been to Africa before, had taken some presents for local children, which included balloons, but also pens. I did not think that pens were an impressive gift, but the kids seemed to be very happy with it and even some of the adults came to ask for some.
Unfortunately all the accommodations in the Kruger park were booked, so we stayed in a lodge outside the park. Since malaria is known to occur in Kruger, our beds were equipped with mosquito nets, much to the amusement of Willem. He meticulously draped the net around our beds and then spend some moments enjoying our little nest. For me the net mainly meant that I had more to struggle with during the night. For reasons unknown to me, I always manage to wake up either tangled up in my sheets or with my sheets in a disorganized mess on or near my bed. Indeed after turning twice I already got stuck into the mosquito net (so that was even BEFORE falling asleep). And all that while quite frankly I was not really convinced of any malaria threat at the time that we were there (I’ve hardly seen any mosquito’s to begin with). And had there been a real threat, the net would not have done me that much good either, since my feet were not covered by it (I happen to be slightly taller than the length of most of the beds in South Africa).
The next day, we were supposed to drive from the north of the Kruger park to the middle of the park (for reference, the Kruger park is about as big as Belgium). Due to road construction works we had to unfortunately take a detour of about 4 hours. This meant that despite getting up early we started our second game drive in Kruger a bit late. We had already seen many animals, but we had not seen any big cats up to that point, so lions, leopards and cheetah’s were first on our priority list. On the message boards in the park we saw where cats had been spotted, but we were unable to find them. When leaving the park at the end of the day we were therefore a bit disappointed. This disappointment changed into surprise and disbelieve when we ran into what we thought was a traffic jam in front of the entrance gate. I mean seriously, what has the world come to if there are even traffic jams in nature reserves? But not to worry, the world has not come to this, the traffic jam was not a jam, but stopped cars looking at something GOOD, as there was a leopard calmly walking down the middle of the road not bothered by any of the cars and trucks as if to say “Thank you for visiting us, hope see you again soon”. This changed the mood into a combination of surprise and happiness (the latter being the keyword of this trip) as the 4th of the big 5 could be crossed off our list.
Since I had only taken a limited amount of luggage on this trip (because we were told to do so on the djoser website, and no I don’t necessarily do exactly as I am told to do, BUT… when I agree with the reasoning behind what I am told to do, I do do as I am told to do), it was about time to do some laundry. Our lodge did not have machines to do your own laundry, but did offer a laundry service. Even though it was not ridiculously expensive, it was still the most expensive laundry that I have ever done. In addition to washing, the service also included nicely folding of my tank tops, pants and even underwear. I don’t think my textiles really knew what hit them, so after receiving everything back, I quickly crammed everything into the backpack to make the universe return to normalcy.
After this we spend another day game driving in Kruger. We took or time looking around and on our way we crossed a bridge which is one of the few places in the park where it is allowed to leave your vehicles. The bridge was badly damaged by some floods about 6 weeks earlier (in fact we later passed a bridge that was completely destroyed by it), but by the time we were there water levels had dropped considerably again. We had lunch on the top of a hill with a beautiful view of the river below, where we saw a big herd of elephants cross. At the restaurant here again I was personally tested for the virtue of patience again. Lunch with a group of 13 would generally take some time and it would take some more time if you made the mistake of ordering 2 things in 1 sentence or ordering the second thing while the waiter was still writing down the first thing. I know that Holland is one of the few places where efficiency is very highly valued, and I feel like I SHOULD be able to let go of this need for efficiency during a vacation abroad, but it just does not come easily. After lunch we had to hurry back to the gate, to be able to exit the park before sun down.
The next day, before leaving for Swasiland we had a game walk in the park adjacent to our lodge. Except for a huge spider and an innocuous snake we did not see any scary animals. We did see a burrow of warthogs, as it was after 7.00 am it was apparently safe to stand in front of it as the warthogs are out by that time, but when the warthogs are present it would not be wise to stand there, as the warthogs would charge. Funny thing was though that apparently it is safe to stand one step to the side of the entrance as they only charge straight ahead. I just started to like these animals even more. The ranger also explained a lot about the trees and plants. I gather that the people in SA suffer a lot from headaches and upset stomachs as many plants were useful for either of these two ailments. The aloe vera that we have in our beauty creams, is used in its pure form in the bush to heal wounds, as it stops bleeding quickly. Additionally it can alleviate rashes etc. We got some of the pure stuff on our skin as well. The ranger then told us that it was also used by woman to wean their children off breast feeding. A little bit of the stuff on the right place would make the milk not taste that good anymore. Of course I wanted to find out for myself what the stuff tastes like and I can now confirm that it indeed does not taste that good. In addition to that we spend some of our time looking at poop. I bet most of you don’t know that the droppings of giraffes are relatively small compared to the size of the animal. The ranger picked up some of the droppings and dared me to play a game and since I am not a party pooper I figured I would join. The guy then took one of the droppings, put it in his mouth and spit it as far as he could. While I was pondering a strategy to spit far as I could (I don’t have any experience with this kind of games) the ranger already assumed that I wouldn’t do it and threw the other droppings back on the floor again – don’t you just hate it when people don’t allow you to live up to your full potential?
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