It has been a while since we updated this blog so here’s a big one! We thought that we would share our Kruger experience because that is where we went on our second week off together with Helen, one of our course mates. Since someone forgot an important detail when you are camping, the tent (!), back at camp we ended up sleeping directly on the ground for a week. For a while there was a bit irritation about this, but in the end this resulted in less work and a closer-to-nature-experience… trying to see the positive here.
Before you ask - yes, we saw the ‘Big 5’. We even have the pictures to prove it. Elephants and buffalo can be seen almost everywhere in the park and you are pretty much guaranteed to see them up close and personal.
This elephant calf seemed a bit curious and playful, approaching our car with no fear at all. Since the mother was feeding only a couple of meters away this caused the adrenaline to start pumping, but she really couldn’t care less.
Rhino is a bit trickier to find and you are far from guaranteed to see one. In our case, however, we saw nine white rhino during our one week in Kruger; a couple of them were even kind enough to casually stroll along the main road, seemingly posing for the camera.
Lions are also tricky to spot since they are more active after the sun sets. During the day you are unlikely to see lions doing anything more than relaxing (a lion will happily spend 20 hours a day sleeping). Spotting a lion sleeping in the high, dry grass is very difficult since they blend in perfectly with their fur having pretty much the same colour as the grass (or maybe it is the grass that is lion-coloured).
Leopards - now, there’s the real challenge. There’s only about a thousand of them left in Kruger National Park (and the park is the size of Israel) and they are extremely shy animals. You should really consider yourself lucky if you see one because out of the Big 5 leopards are, by far, the rarest to see. We consider ourselves very lucky because we had an excellent sighting of a female leopard in a tree right next to the road and for quite a while we were the only ones at this sighting! A couple of old people came by after a while, praising our spotting abilities since they couldn’t see the leopard ten meters away until we pointed at it.
The best sightings we had this week might have been the hyenas. On three separate occasions we saw hyena cubs, running around chasing each other or just investigating our vehicle. Sometimes we couldn’t even focus the cameras on them since they were too close! We mostly came across them early in the mornings and when we did our day was off to a good start. At one of the camps there are hyenas patrolling the camp fence in hope of finding leftovers from someone’s campfire dinner. This definitely added to the atmosphere as we saw it passing by as a dark shadow many times at night and could hear the calls of other hyenas all through the night. You never sleep as well as when there is wildlife calling… unless the wildlife happens to be francolins of course, annoying and loud birds!
Mammals are what people in general find the most interesting so we thought that we should post pictures of a few of the less common or for that matter, less known mammals we came across during our week in KNP.
We saw many waterbuck, mainly close to the rivers and drainage lines. Because they produce a secretion from special glands in their skin that impregnate their fur so they have a bit of an odour to them. It is said that you can smell them some 500 meters away.
Bushbuck - nice looking animals - they have something of a Bambi touch don’t you think? We took a lot of photos of this specimen since we are used to them being very shy and running away if you even think about a camera.
Since reedbucks don’t occur in Makalali, we were a bit confused when seeing them from a distance and couldn’t decide what they were… They are similar to bushbuck (colouration, horns and habitat differs though) but less common. These relaxed Reedbucks were feeding down in a drainage line, preferring habitats close to water sources.
Kudu - this is the second largest antelope (after Eland) and Anja´s favourite antelope and quite a photogenic species. This is a small female, males are very large (250 kg) with huge, spiralled horns. They taste very good too and we had an excellent kudu steak for dinner at one of the camps!
Female Chackma baboon, and her little baby. They really are freakishly similar to humans when they are small. This is an animal that many people just drive past although they actually are among the most interesting to watch.
/A & J
The hike to the top of the mountain went through a proper jungle like forest with muddy steep slopes.
Emerging from the dense vegetation we were rather surprised to see mixed herds of cows and zebras! But from the looks on their faces, they probably were a bit surprised to see us as well.
In a series of water falls some of the guys discovered a natural water slide and then behaving like children, of course, came natural to most of us, even if it took a bit of persuasion for some of us to go down the slide. 
Another much enjoyed activity this day was catching insects, on photo... and not. This locust looks almost unreal, like a plastic toy or an alien creature.
/A
In the afternoon we went down a loop we really hadn’t planned on taking at first, but we are glad we did. First we saw this young rock monitor that didn’t seem to mind us at all! It was crawling around on the ground next to the car minding its own business, awesome!
Around a bend we came upon six lions at a zebra kill! This is truly one of the coolest sightings so far. They were grawling a bit when they got too close to eachother, but they were probably already quite full since they didn’t seem overly bothered. 
We watched them eat for a while and then they lay down in the shade, panting and digesting their meal. Their bellies were huge and all they wanted to do was sleep, as lions often do. Once in a while one of them took a small bite of the zebra but without any real enthusiasm.
The next morning we had an encounter with some curious dwarf mongooses that were trying to warm up on this rather cool morning. 
A short while later we had our road blocked by this huge elephant bull. We had been driving for about an hour on the same road and didn’t want to turn around so we waited to see what he was going to do. Since he was in musth, we didn’t want to get too close. We switched the engine of and hoped that he would pass us or maybe move into the bush again. After ten minutes of indecicive-ness on his part, a car came from the opposite direction, startling him a bit. He turned around and started walking in their direction and they had to reverse a couple of 100 meters. There we were two cars maybe 400 meters apart with an elephant in between. After about twenty more minutes he moved off into the bush in the direction from which he had come. 
Just before leaving the Kruger on Sunday afternoon we spotted a couple of spotted hyenas next to the road, right on the spot where a leopard had been seen earlier. Since they were eating our guess is that they probably had taken over a kill that had been made by the cat the same morning.
After a well needed brake we were heading back to the Bushwise camp for a week of frogs and dangerous game on the schedule.
We did see some lions, but they were hiding in dense bushes, but we had some really great bird sightings like this lilac breasted roller and (which we see almost every day but they are exceptionally pretty birds, I think) and also a couple of tawny eagles, that didn't mind our company too much.
That night everybody was pretty tired, so after an … hmmm… interesting wildebeest stew and Jonny’s camp fire baked bread (a life saver) we went to bed early. Jonny had trouble relaxing though, since some of the guys had spotted a rhino close by earlier in the evening and he could hear some big animal moving around about 50 meters away. I told him that it’s probably a wildebeest, attracted by the smell of his grandma.. but the next morning we did see rhino tracks, not far away from our camp…
This night we slept in bird hides which meant that we didn’t have to be on guard duty. We woke up at about 5.00 to the sound of hyenas calling. This caused us to pack up quickly and then rush to the car to search for them… without any luck this time though.
The Yellow billed kite is a common summer visitor and you see them a lot throughout South Africa. This is the only raptor here that has an all-yellow bill. This guy landed on the guardrail of a bridge, right next to our car.
This is a Tawny eagle, a rather common "true eagle". A true eagle has feathers on its legs, all the way down to its feet. Snake eagles for example don’t have feathers on their legs but have scales instead, to protect them from snakebites.
So, here’s the Brown snake eagle, notice the bare legs and the big orange/yellow eye.
This is a Gabar goshawk. It’s one of the smaller raptors but still, a beautiful bird.
The Southern ground hornbill is not a raptor but still, a formidable animal. They are ground birds (as implied by their name) and stand almost a meter high. This is a grown female (you can tell by the black patch on the throat) and she had company with her male partner one of her grown up offspring and their latest chick. Ground hornbills usually lay two eggs, the chick that hatch first will kill its younger sibling by stealing its food and trample it. This is known as siblicide (or Cainism) – otherwise mostly practiced by birds of prey. It may sound hard but it is just nature’s way of making sure that only the strong survive.
Finally, another ground bird. This is a Helmeted guinea fowl and my personal all-time favorite bird (even though they have a face only a mother can love). They are slanderously labeled as the most stupid bird in Africa. They quite commonly run in front of your car, trying to outrun you, not thinking about the option to turn off the road and head into the bush or to fly away. Granted, they may not be the smartest birds around (that would probably be the Fork-tailed drongo) but they are way more interesting and advance than people give them credit for. An interesting fact is that whenever we encounter a group of guinea fowl in the beginning of a game drive, we will have a really good drive with lots of nice sightings. Doesn’t sound very scientific, I know, but let me tell you, the guinea fowl magic hasn’t even failed once!
