Going on Safari

We had booked a 3 day, 2 night Safari for the next part of our trip, and rather than take a 4-6 hour drive to Kruger National Park, we had booked a flight on the local airline.  We climbed onto the tiny little jet in Johannesburg and flew to the airport just to the South of the park.  It was a comically short flight; within a few minutes of reaching cruising altitude we had begun our descent.

Our tour guide was supposed to be "Jo-Jo."  Then it was supposed to be "Edwin."  The guy who held the sign with our properly spelled names was Selby, and after he assured us that he was, in fact, gonna be our guide, we settled in to the high open seats of the observation vehicle he had brought for us.  Essentially you're sitting on a comfortable bench seat on the back of a pickup with a canvas awning over and around you, but open on the sides so you can see everything on the sides of the vehicle.

Our drive from the airport took us through a lot of cinder block villages, with pretty obvious poverty, with plenty of signs for Carling Black Label.  Turns out it is the beer of the South African working man (perhaps because of its 4.5 alcohol content).  Few apparently know it is a Canadian beer licensed here back in the 60s. 

We reached the park gate, had our paperwork processed, and entered at midday.  Checking out big game is like fishing.  Not much happening in the middle of the day, when the animals take it easy.  We drove on these long paved stretches without any signs of mankind other than the road itself, and not a lot of wildlife moving around.

Very little in the way of tall vegetation, and what was there was was pretty scruffy.  Turns out these wild animals, left without any limitations, are pretty relentless in eating all the leaves and branches and can pretty much denude a plant with one sitting.  As Selby told us, if there were no elephants in the park it would be a forest.

We saw impalas, which are pretty and pretty much everywhere. 

The males in a group of impalas will fight for dominance, and one male will win overall.  Then that male gets to impregnate all of the females, leaving the other males with nothing.  He will be seen with all the females and all their babies.  Those other males end up hanging out together and are referred to as the loser's group.  Sort of like Ernest Borgnine's friends in Marty.

After driving around and not seeing too much, we ended up at the Skukuza camp, which is kind of like a little town in the middle of the park, for a late lunch.  

We ate at the Cattle Baron restaurant on the banks of the Sable River--kinda fancy for the middle of a wildlife refuge:

We had quite a view from our table, looking across the river while we ate our sandwiches.  We saw a hippo,

a crocodile,

and a little elephant family.

Selby said we had to get going to get to the park gate by sundown--that there were significant penalties if we didn't get out by then.  We drove west towards the sunset itself, and enjoyed the very best part of the day.

We saw giraffes, 

elephants,

wildebeests (one of the Ugly 5),

and zebras.

Not infrequently, the animals would get in our way on the road (they really were unconcerned with our presence):

This fellow decided he wanted to eat a tree on the side of the road.  

While you can kinda chase zebras off the road, you don't go around an elephant.  You wait for the elephant to move on:

And then you somehow manage to get to the gate just before it closes, at sunset:

Selby then took us to the Risssington Inn in nearby Hazyview, where the computer was down and they had no record of our reservation, but nonetheless put us up in a really charming room that could have been in Out of Africa.  The Inn had a magnificent and well deserved reputation for dinner, which we enjoyed, and we tried to go to bed early, because we were getting picked up by Selby at 5AM THE NEXT MORNING!