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Fun in the Kruger National Park and Sabi Sands - South Africa - Part 3
02-01-2018
Following on from part 1 and 2, we then moved on to a self drive safari through the main public Kruger National Park which is made up of tar mac roads and many other less dirt track roads. You cannot go off road though so if you see something in the distance it stays in the distance. School holiday time can also be problematic as the numbers of vehicles increases and at a major sighting it can be a bit of a bun fight. This time though it was pretty quiet but that does put the pressure on to find animals of your own back.
To drive and look is so tough especially as you can be out from sun up to sun down.
We were pretty fortunate to get some pretty good sightings, but the thing is you can go past a spot one minute and then five minutes later something can be in that spot. Animals also have a great way of blending in and not being visible. One leopard sighting was in thick grass just by the side of the road!! So easily missed.
A zebra decides to collapse after one too many afternoon beverages watched by a disbelieving foal!! Of course it's actually having a dust bath.
We came across a herd of buffalo and many were practicing their sparing skills. All very amicable it seemed. Remarkably some males even engaged in practice mating with each other!!!
This was amazing. In the middle of the road I spotted this Dung Beetle. He finished crossing in front of us and then turned around and pushed his ball all the way back again!! Exhausting work
Towards the end of our week in Kruger we stopped on a bridge to watch a troop of Baboons. After a while they all started to hop across a few rocks to get to dry land and many had babies clinging for dear life. The expression says it all.
This was a lucky spot as the Cheetah was a long way off. This was on around 780 mm and I had to nail this as it was our only decent Cheetah sighting across the two weeks. Trusty 1Dx2 with 200-400 and additional 1.4x converter.
There is a fun but "don't try this at home kids" story to go with this one. It was pretty windy hence the swept back hair. But this lion kept low and slept. Once other cars moved off through lack of activity, the Mrs said why not open and shut the car door (we were a good distance 780mm again). I was not convinced about the strategy but the lion was up and alert like a flash as was my camera button finger. Thank you very much.
Birds were all over the place and this was one of my favourite captures.
Elephants are wonderful. This beautiful specimen just ambled forth not caring about our presence. They often wonder across the road in front of you and you have to just sit and wait. It's what I love about Africa, the slow pace of life.
Well that's all for Blog 3. I have so many wonderful animals to show that I am going to wrap up this set of blogs with a final 4th one. Stay tuned for more from this wonderful experience.
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