Safari Day 1

South Africa Day 2:

This morning was a very long morning. For starters we had to meet at 5:30am in the dining hall for my trip to Kruger National Park. We all loaded a bus and headed to the airport in Cape Town. Here in South Africa instead of boarding directly onto the plane through a hallway, you have to take a shuttle to the area where your plane is parked and then walk right up the stairs onto the plane. Our flights ran pretty smooth (besides small delays and rushing).  Once we arrived at Kruger airport we all headed out to a bus waiting for us and got on our way towards our resort. This afternoon we had our first game drive!  We were very anxious to get into the Safari portion of our trip.  The safari vehicles are mostly converted pickup trucks. They have a whole portion of the vehicle that sits in the box of the truck and has 9 seats, a top and removable side walls and roll down canvas sides.  When we were driving on the highway to get inside the Kruger gate the canvas sides had to be down in order to avoid any rock chips or anything getting into the car. As soon as we passed the entrance point of Kruger National Park though our tour guide would roll up the sides to make open sided vehicles.  My safari vehicle consisted of only 6 people plus our guide. That was really nice, some of the other vehicles were more filled so they did not all have window seats. We were lucky to all have window seats. Our tour guide, John, was very good. He was born and raised inside the Kruger National Park. Both his parents had worked in the park when he was growing up, so he was incredibly knowledgeable about the park. Inside the National Park there are a few secured gated areas that animals usually cannot get into. He was born and raised in one of those parks.

I guess this is a good time to tell you a little bit about Kruger National Park.  First of all, the park is huge! We spent three days in the park and probably did not even cover a fraction of the park! The park is the same size (or close to) the size of Israel or Wales!!!! Imagine the size of a whole country just in the National Park. Recently the border of the park has been extended into neighboring countries as well. Zimbabwe and Mozambique recently merged the borders of neighboring parks with Kruger to create the Greater Limpopo National Park. Of course, it is the largest game reserve in South Africa. It is 7,331 square miles!  The park from the bottom to the top is 217 miles and the park is 37 miles wide.  From the 2009 attempt to determine the numbers of animals inside Kruger National Park, the estimates are listed below.
27,000 African Buffalo
350 African Hunting Dogs
350 Black Rhinoceros
4,509 White Rhinoceros
17,797 Burchell's Zebras
500 Bushbucks
200 Cheetahs
300 Common Eland
5,114 Giraffes
5,798 Greater Kudus
3,000 Hippopotamus
1,500 Lions
1,000 Leopards
2,000 Spotted Hyenas
11,672 Elephants
5,000 Waterbuck
9,612 Blue Wildebeest
90,000 Impalas
The Kruger National Park also has more different species of animals than any other game reserve with 147 mammals represented. They also have 114 different reptile species represented with 3,000 crocodiles.


My time in Kruger was AMAZING. I am so glad that I chose Kruger to do my Safari. Kruger Park was developed in order to conserve and protect the animals with the smallest impact on the land and on the animals as possible. For example, if a wildfire started in the park the rangers would do nothing but monitor the course of the fire for research purposes and if necessary only fight the fire if it reaches a border of the park nearing a city of village outside of the park.  If an animal is severely injured the rangers will do nothing because in order to maintain the true wilderness they do not feel that any interference on their part will benefit the animals. 

I have heard that some of the other Safari’s wanted to ensure that all people would see the “big 5” so they would stock the animals that tourists wanted to see as well as have the leopards in an enclosure to ensure the tourists could see them.  This is very different than Kruger. There are no fences around Kruger keeping the animals inside the park. The animals are free to come and go, and Kruger is instead just a safe haven for any of the animals that chose to live there. Many of the animals are born in the park and never leave (due to the great expanse of the park).  In order to preserve the minimal impact of humans on the park we were not allowed to leave our vehicles at any time.  Our ranger would try as best as possible to get us an awesome view from the vehicle but we were never allowed out of the vehicle until we had arrived in a rest camp.  Oops, I forgot to explain what the ‘Big 5’ is.  The ‘Big 5’ was a term from the days of big game hunting in Africa. It refers to the 5 most difficult animals to hunt on foot and includes Lion, Elephant, Buffalo, Leopard, and Black Rhinoceros.

This afternoon’s game drive was a great start in our quest for the ‘Big 5’. Shortly into our game drive we came across 6 elephants! There was even one young elephant! I could not believe how close we were to the elephants; they crossed the road about 25 feet from our vehicle! It was so cool. Shortly after we saw Impala’s.  At first we were very excited to see the Impala’s, but we learned very quickly that there are A TON of impala’s in the park and by the second day we did not even stop to see the impalas. Next on our Safari we came across Baboons! There were baby baboons in the group which were so much fun to watch. We could tell they were just learning about jumping from branch to branch because they were not very graceful, and stayed on branches very near to the ground because occasionally they did not make it all the way to the branch and would instead land on the ground. It was really fun to watch! I had learned from our other experience with the baboons though, that they are not as innocent as they look! We continued on our drive and saw more elephants and impalas, and then our guide spotted a lion a ways in the distance. Since lions are not as common as some of the other animals, we were very excited to see one the first day. It was not a great view though, and the female lion was just napping on a rock, she was not very active.  Then, we saw a rhinoceros!  It was very close to our vehicle. He was walking parallel right along the road we were driving on!  Our first day of the Safari was awesome! We had to leave the park before 6 pm, because that is when the park closes to day safaris. We returned to our resort and had a great dinner. We had a cookout for dinner and it was so good. It was nothing quite like I had ever had before. It included vegetables, potatoes, rice, sauces, and meats cooked over the open grill. It was such a treat to eat out under the stars of the southern hemisphere, and it was a full moon too! 

After dinner I was so lucky to be able to use the Internet in the resort and use Skype to call home. My parents were both home, so it was great to get to chat with them for quite a while.
*The estimates for animals in the park were taken from Wikipedia, so not be perfectly accurate, but wikipedia is the only website we have access to for free on the ship*