Photogenic leopard, kudu and theiving baboons

  Kruger, South Africa
Saturday, May 27, 2006

Click here for all Kruger photos

Just expecting a nice quiet drive back down to Malelane Gate today, but it turned out to be another corker.



Highlights included a tree full of sleeping baboons followed at 11ish by a leopard at very close range. He wanted to cross the road and didn't know what to make of our car that was blocking his way. I thought he was going to jump through the open car window at one stage! We were able to observe him for 3 or 4 minutes as he paces up and down besides the car and stared at us.



This was definitely one of the highlights of my trip to Kruger, these nocturnal animals are pretty elusive and we'd been lucky enough to spot 4!



We saw a male kudu eating from a tree later, this was a real bonus as I'd been wanting to get a decent photo of one of these beasts for my entire 7 days here. These animals really are magnificent.




Other things of note were a male lion that someone directed us towards that was lying under a bush to stay cool in the midday sun. A male bush buck with a broken horn, a flock of guinea fowl roosting up a tree, a purple crested laurie, a red billed hornbill, a southern white shrike and some close ups of pied kingfishers, Egyptian goose and gray heron.




For Erica one of the highlights was probably when we stopped for breakfast. A huge baboon came charging through the picnic site at Nkuhlu and challenged me for 4 rolls of bread. His head came right up to my stomach even as he crouched and as he showed his teeth I quickly dropped the rolls. All the South Africans in the area expressed real concern for my safety and I have to admit my heart was really pumping - more so than when I did my shark cage dive!



For anyone going to Kruger I'd recommend not trying to go too far in one day and keeping your speed below 30kph, you'll see a lot more this way. Also take some field guides and check lists, it makes things much more interesting.



If you're there in the winter time you can drive all day and still see stuff. Some of our best sightings were in-between 10 and 3, normally a bad time for viewing. The animals don't seek the shade so much in the day at this time of year.




Personally what I loved about Kruger compared to the other parks is been your own boss and been able to go where you want when you want. When you see the animals you can maneuver the car to where ever you want and stay as long as takes your fancy.

Back to Nelspruit airport via all the oranges and sugar cane plantations and onto Durban.



We picked up our very basic VW Chico that seemed very much like a very basic Golf to me. It even had a manual choke, something I hadn't seen since my old 1970s Mini I owned 15 years ago.



The backpackers we stayed at was Tekweni, it was decent but at 12:30am some drunks returned from the pub and played their stereo at full blast until about 2am and nobody was there to stop them!