We visited the Kruger Park on tour with a company called Livingstone Trails. Contrary to popular opinion we saw much more wildlife now in the summer than on our previous trip in the winter. The tour guide was excellent and the other people in the group were nice and interesting to talk with, so on the whole we found the safari to be extremely good value for money.

November 11, Saturday

Our adventure to the Kruger Park started today, so it was necessary to get up early. We were going on a 4 day safari to the park with a company called Livingstone Trails. Jan Arild had booked the trip on the Internet home in Norway. It was very cheap at R1150 and also included a walking safari, something we thought sounded very exciting.

They had called Kia-Ora yesterday to confirm a pick-up time of around 06.45, and we had been ready for a while when their minibus arrived about 40 minutes late. Our guide was called "Yogi" and seemed nice. We had to do several other pick-ups in Pretoria first, and it wasn't until 08.00 that we finally headed towards the park. We then only made a toilet and breakfast stop on the way to Nelspruit where we picked up the last three people for the tour.

We were now 12 people, plus the guide Yogi and a driver called Isaiah. Unfortunately, Isaiah became ill on our way to the park, so he had to lie down in the back seat while Yogi did the driving. We would not see much of Isaiah for the rest of the tour, but Yogi coped admirably with the situation.

On the way out of Gauteng the scenery is mostly flat farmland and not particularly interesting. This, however, changed once we reached the Drakensberg escarpment, where the hills descend down into the socalled "lowveld" where the Kruger Park is located. In this region there is some really beautiful and dramatic scenery. We stopped for lunch in the small town of Graskopmund, where the whole group went to get pancakes and we all got to know each other a little.

Our first stop was at Blyde River Canyon to see Bourke's luck potholes and the wonderful scenery there. Before we were let out on our own, Yogi gave us the history of the place and he certainly knew a lot. It was truly a fascinating place and I took a lot of pictures there. It was also very hot and it was good to get into the car to have some cool air again.

The next stop was in a valley with high mountains and a waterfall. It was obviously a popular tourist stop because there were plenty of woodcarving sellers there, most of them pretty aggressive in their efforts to sell something. I bought myself a wooden hippo, something I had regretted not doing on my previous visit to Africa. I later named him "Konrad" :-)

Usually in Africa, people are quite relaxed when trying to sell you stuff, but this place was an exception. I guess Jan Arild has to take some of the blame for this, though. He got out of the car with the video camera around his neck, and when I paid for Konrad, he took all our money (about 700 Rands) out of his pocket, something which didn't go unnoticed :-) It was good to hear, though, that even middle aged women in South Africa are getting further educated, because all of them talked about needing "money for school" :-)

Apart from these stops, we basically drove all day before finally entering the Kruger Park through the Orpen gate around 18.00. On the short way to the camp we saw several impalas and some zebras.

At 18.20 we arrived at the camp, just in time before the gates closed at 18.30. It was only a small camp with few people in it, containing no cottages only tents. Livingstone Trails had their own permanently erected tents here, and I was quick to choose a tent close to the bathroom building and eating area. I have a theory about more people meaning fewer snakes, and besides I didn't want to walk for miles in the dark to get to the bathroom at night.

We took a short walk around the camp area to check it out. It was in the same style as everything else in the park, looking very nice and natural, and blending well into the scenery. The bathroom/toilet building was also nice and clean with a straw roof. The remaining part of the evening was spent around the campfire, talking with each other and waiting for dinner to get ready. Yogi turned out to be an excellent cook even though dinner wasn't ready before 21.30. While he was preparing the food, he told us about the Kruger Park and the animals there, and again I was really impressed about everything he knew. We sat around the fire until about 23.30 when everyone was tired and wanted to go to bed.

When you are on a tour there is always the chance that you might not like the other people in the group. Being unlucky one might end up in a group of boring people whose only topics of conversation are "how much alcohol they consumed on various occasions", "how drunk they became" and "how much they threw up", all of which are of little interest to me and Jan Arild. Fortunately, this was not the case with the current group, which I liked very much. Many of them had a lot of travel experiences to share. In fact, I think it's the best tour group I've been in.

The only downside today was that late in the evening I discovered that I had forgotten my glasses at Kia-Ora. I was a little irritated by this, because I usually don't forget such things. Jan Arild tried to convince me that the Kia-Ora people would probably store them for me until we came back from the trip. I was glad we were going back to Kia-Ora, or I would have had problems.

This night I slept with my contact lenses on, so that I would be able to see if I had to go to the toilet during the night, something I fortunately didn't need to do. I fell quickly asleep and only woke up once to the sound of thunder and heavy rain on the tent. It was kind of nice and I soon fell asleep again and slept well until the morning.

November 12, Sunday

I was already awake when Yogi came at 05.00 to wake us up. It was necessary get up this early to be ready when the gates opened at 05.30. The animals are at their most active in the morning and the evening when the temperature is reasonable, whereas in the middle of the day they mostly lie in the shade and relax. Unfortunately, due to some slow people in our group, we didn't manage to leave the camp until 06.00.

The weather was cloudy and therefore perfect for game viewing. We saw a group of lions already within the first half hour. Unfortunately, they were lying behind some trees and were partly covered by the branches, but it was still very exciting. After some hours of game viewing, we stopped at Skukuza Camp to make some breakfast. This is a fenced in area with some shops and a restaurant. They also have facilities for preparing your own food in various outdoor kitchens. Yogi, with some help from us, made scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast. I don't really like fried food for breakfast, but still it was very good.

I tried calling Kia-Ora from here to ask if they had found my glasses, but unfortunately the phone was out of order. We recognised Skukuza from the Drifters tour in 1999 when we also had stopped here. Jan Arild and I talked about how cool it would have been if a group from Drifters came along while we were here, but we didn't think it was likely to happen. However, on returning to the parking lot, the first thing we saw was a big Drifters truck parked next to our vehicle! We went over to see if maybe our old guide was driving it, but it wasn't Kurt. Still, we talked for a while with the current guide, who said that he knew Kurt quite well after having trained him for the Botswana tour. However, Kurt had suddenly left Drifters and the guy had no idea what he was doing at the moment. "Strange guy", he said about Kurt, and we had to agree :-)

We continued our game drive until about 13.00, when the animal sightings started to become much rarer. We then stoppped for lunch in a small camp, located on top of a small hill with a nice view to a river below. We had seen lots of animals and were very happy with everything. For lunch we made hamburgers and I took some time to update my diary and talk with some of the others.

After lunch we drove around most of the time, only stopping once to buy drinks. Everywhere was something too see. The last time we were in the Kruger, it had been winter and everything looked dry and yellow, whereas now it was summer and the vegetation was green, lush and beautiful. Contrary to popular opinion, it wasn't really more difficult to spot the animals now, even though the trees had leaves and it was supposed to be easier for them to hide. There's no doubt we saw a lot more animals this time than on our last visit with Drifters.

We were back in the camp 18.25. I had a shower and then I joined the others around the camp fire. We talked and waited for dinner to get ready. Tonight Yogi made spaghetti which wasn't finished until 21.40, but it was definitely worth the wait. While we sat there, suddenly a hyena walked slowly by on the other side of the fence looking hungrily at us. It was amazing! The hyena was so much bigger than I had expected and it was easy to understand why it was an animal worth fearing! Later in the evening it came by again and looked at us.

We could hear a lot of animal sounds, some far away and some very close. During dinner everybody suddenly froze, as there was a very loud roar right outside the camp. Everyone were sure it was a lion, but Yogi said it was an elephant and went to check it out. Soon he came back and told us to be quiet and follow him to the fence. I didn't have my contacts lenses on, and since it was dark I could only make out the contour of an elephant and hear its noises. It was very exciting!

Yogi told us to be quiet because the elephant was not alone, another one was not far away and they were probably frustrated because there were no female elephants around. We watched them for a while until they came too close to the fence and Yogi told us to retreat since we were now inside their "comfort zone". However, we could still hear them during the rest of dinner.

Around 23.00 we went to bed and I fell asleep almost instantly, sleeping well throughout the whole night.

November 13, Monday

I woke up at 04.00 when Yogi was supposed to come and wake us, but it wasn't until 04.20 before he yelled: "Rise and shine!" There was no breakfast this early, which was okay by me.

Today we were going on a gamewalk inside the park. This was also included in the price of the tour. Since we were as many as 12 people, we were divided into two groups of 6. One group would go in the morning and the other in the evening. We decided that Jan Arild should go in the morning and I in the evening, so that we would be sure of covering all possibilities of sightings.

The Kruger park field guides who were in charge of the gamewalks were called Johan and Werner, and they looked very capable! They carried loaded guns and both of them walked in the front while the group followed in a line behind them. Around 05.45 Jan Arild's group set out and my group got in the car and went for a gamedrive. Today it was hot and the sky was clear, meaning conditions for animal spotting were not that good, and as a consequence we didn't see very much. I had problems staying awake so I tried sliding down a little in the seat to stop Yogi from seeing me taking a nap, but apparently he has a sixth sense about these things :-) In my defence, I wasn't the only one though!

We were supposed to meet the others in the Orpen eating area where we made brunch (scrambled eggs, beans and sausage rolls) while waiting for them. They arrived around 10.00. Jan Arild told me what they hadn't seen very much, except for two cheetahs very far away. I was hoping that I would have more luck later. A little over 11.00 we drove back to the camp after having stocked up on refreshments. In the camp all of us just found a place in the shade to relax until lunch at 14.00.

Johan and Werner returned at 15.00, but as we were about to set off, the weather suddenly turned really bad. Not only was it raining heavily, but there was thunder and lightning as well. However, we only had to wait 15 minutes before it got better and then we were ready to go. Amazing how quickly the weather can change here!

Before going, we were given instructions for bush walking and how to behave in the unlikely event of meeting an aggressive animal. They seemed to "fear" the buffalo the most, because these have been known to attack without warning. However, I wasn't really worried about meeting any dangerous animals, but I was slightly more concerned about standing on a big flat field when the thunderstorm was directly over us. I could see the lightning strike several places not far from us.

We didn't see any animals at all, but we saw something that was probably just as interesting - a dung beetle! What an impressive creature! It's a large beetle that rolls an even larger ball of elephant dung in front of itself. We watched it for a long time moving its ball of dung. Even if we didn't see any animals up close it was still pretty exciting to be able to walk around in the Kruger this way. You really get to experience nature, and even if you don't see any animals, it doesn't mean that they are not there.

We were back in the camp at 17.30. The rest of the evening we did nothing other than talk with the others and wait for dinner. Tonight was the last dinner with the group and Yogi made a dinner to remember! It was a braai (of course) with different kinds of meat. Afterwards, Jan Arild and I did the dishes together with Daichi from Japan. All of us went to bed around 22.30 and I fell asleep fast.

November 14, Tuesday

Yogi woke us up at 04.30 a little later than he had promised the day before, but it was certainly early enough. Safari in the Kruger is no holiday, I can tell you! We packed the rest of our stuff and put it in the trailer that was connected to the minivan. Personally I have no problems getting up in the morning, but unfortunately a lot of people have, which meant we had to hang around and wait for them to get ready. But by 05.40 we could finally leave the camp.

We were doing a short game drive today before returning to Pretoria. However, first we had to exchange minivans with another Livingstone Trails group that were coming to the park that morning. We were going to drive their vehicle back to Pretoria to have it serviced. Fortunately the exchange worked in our favour as the new minibus was much nicer than the old one! The other group was not equally happy about!

We drove around on the roads that now were becoming slightly familiar to us, until Yogi said we had to leave the park in order to make it back to Gauteng by early afternoon. However, due to the trailer, Yogi was unable to turn the vehicle around immediately, so we continued into the park looking for a place to turn. This turned out to be really fortunate! Suddenly we saw an animal on the road in front of us, which turned out to be a male lion when we came closer to it! Everyone was ecstatic! We drove right behind the lion for a while, and the lion didn't care and just kept walking in the road as if we didn't exist. In the end we drove next to the lion and I got some really good pictures of it. There was especially one picture that would have been perfect if it hadn't been for some strange colours that for some unfortunate reason appeared on the final photo.

As if this wasn't enough, we also spotted a female lion coming towards us on the road. On meeting, they left the road to lie down in the grass. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to stay around for long to see if "anything" would happen, so Yogi eventually found a place to turn the van and drive us back to Orpen.

We had some cereals before saying(a hopeful) "see you later" to the Kruger Park. The trip back to Pretoria was okay. The highlight was our stop at the "Three Rondavels" to see the wonderful view and the strangely shaped mountains there. I can safely say it was one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen! And being Norwegian, I'm used to wonderful nature and set my standards pretty high!!

We also took a group photo and lots of other pictures there. There was also a big souvenir market, and I guess these people make a lot of money. The only other stop we made was at Wimpy`s for a quick lunch. Yogi dropped us of outside Kia-Ora around 16.00 and the tour was officially over.

It was now time to see if the Kia-Ora guys had found the glasses I had forgotten a few days earlier. I really hoped so! Fortunately, they had and I got them back in perfect condition! We chose a new room, this time on the second floor. It was called "Drolpeer" after a South African tree, and didn't contain a bathroom, which didn't really matter since there was a nice big one down the hall.

After having been to a nearby shop to buy drinks and some snacks, I had a shower before we sat down to make some plans for the rest of our holiday. My wish was to visit Namibia to see the desert, but this was quite difficult to arrange within our time frame, since there were several other things which had already been decided. Jan Arild had a work-related meeting in Cape Town on Friday, so we had to go down there, and we also had to travel to Swaziland to pick up my things..

I was getting hungry and we decided to try the food in the Kia Ora restaurant / bar. This turned out to be a smart choice because the food was really good, cheap and the portions were large.

To help make a decision on what to do we went on the Internet to find information. It was really slow, but we visited the websites of many tour companies and got some prices and details on departure dates. There were lots of tour companies, doing Namibia tours once or twice a week, but unfortunately, departure dates for all the tours were inconvenient to us. Typically they left on Saturdays (which was too early) and Wednesdays (which was too late). However, what emerged as an alternative was the Kalahari desert. Two companies were running tours there (one of them being Livingstone Trails), starting on Mondays and returning to Johannesburg after the trip. We decided to make our final decision next morning.

Before going to bed we called home to tell them everything was fine and to hear how they were doing. Everything was fine in Norway as well, except the weather! It was still raining almost every day! I fell asleep at once when the clock struck 22.00.