Hammerkop

 Red Korhaan

 Zebra

 Cape Vulture

 Lappet Faced Vulture

 

Black Backed Jackal

 

 Waterbok

 

Yellow Hornbill

     At the end of July, it was time to say goodbye to four of our Undergrad technicians (sad), but it was also time to start our trip to Kruger National Park (happy)! On our way down from Bloemhof we stopped off to the Carnivore; an all you can eat restaurant that serves a bunch of different type of game. Every few minutes, the server stopped by the table with a large chunk of meat impaled on a sword. If you wanted the type of meat he was offering, he would slice a chunk on to your plate. We ate Kudu meatballs, Impala, Eland, Ostrich, Warthog, Crocodile, and even some chicken, beef and lamb on the side. Why not start a safari trip off by eating several of the animals you might see? After Lunch/Dinner we dropped our friends off to be shuttled to the airport, and spent the night in Pretoria.

Kruger Day 1

     It was a fairly scenic six hour to drive from Pretoria to the Phalaborwa gate of Kruger. East of Polokwane the road twisted through some very hilly tea and banana plantations. After spending the last 3 months in incredibly flat grasslands, any sort of topography was a nice change.

In any park with large game and predators, there are fairly strict guidelines for entering/exiting through park gates. In order to keep lions, buffalo, hippos etc. out of camping areas, all camps are enclosed in a gate that opens at 6am and closes at 5:30pm. We approached the Phalaborwa gate after 4pm, and by the time we checked in we had just over an hour to reach our campsite 50km away. Although 50k doesn’t seem like far to travel in an hour, consider two things: 1.) The speed limit  on tar roads in Kruger is 50kph and 2) for the rest of the trip we would stop to look at something approximately every 100 meters, bringing our average speed to 6kph. About 500 meters into the park, we stopped to watch a herd of impala (probably the most common mammal we would see, but we weren’t thinking too much about our time constraints at this point. A few kilometers later we found my first lilac breasted roller, which is probably one of the most colorful birds on the planet. Of course I had to take a few photos:

     At this point we had about 45 minutes to travel 50 km to our camp gate, so we booked it the rest of the way.  We could barely stop for the black sparrow hawk that was by the road, or the elephants that were browsing in plain sight. We didn’t even stop very long to look at the bat hawk we found, which is a bird that Jane (my MSc supervisor) has been looking to see for the last 25 years. It was an eventful first hour in Kruger, but I cringe to think of all the things that we missed along that stretch. We made it to the gate at 5:35, and they let us in without any sort of hassle. We set up our tent in an extremely crowded campsite, made some dinner, and immediately crashed for the night. 

Day 2

The next morning we got up at 5:30, to try and be out the gate for 6.

 Grey Hornbill

 

Southern Ground Hornbill

Red Hornbill

 Tree Squirrel

 Vervet Monkey

 

 Crested Guinea Fowl

 Giraffe