So many beds...camping beds, river beds, road beds...to show you before we leave Kruger. When visiting Kruger National Park, visitors must reserve a place to spend the night. Many choices exist: self-catering camping areas, huts, bungalows.... Where you stay depends upon your budget and availability. It is important to avoid school holidays. We camped the first two nights.
Skukuza Camp is the largest and busiest camp on the Sabie River. Camps opened at 6:00 am, and their gates closed at 6:00 pm in April. Restaurants, a gift/grocery shop, and a swimming pool are available at most camps.
Satara Camp is surrounded by wide, open plains where a hyena prowled past us on the other side of a huge fence.
Diners in the restaurants at Satara Camp have great views out onto the lawn and the plains beyond the fence.
We stayed in a bungalow at Oliphants Camp with a patio overlooking the Oliphants River. Our building had three single beds, a kitchenette with refrigerator, and a shower bath that offered personal amenities.
Looking upriver:
Using our binoculars and looking downriver from the main restaurant, we saw a mama hippo and her baby munching grass at dusk.
Steve and I went on a night drive along the regular road beds. Everyone takes a turn holding and moving a strong spotlight to catch reflecting eyes in hopes of seeing animals. If you see anything, you yell, "STOP" to the driver guide. We saw several owls sitting in the middle of the road and on bridges, a Large-spotted Genet (a small cat), a hippopotamus, and a mother and younger hyena that were devouring an impala one of them had killed earlier.
River beds are good for spotting animals needing a drink if you are out early in the morning or just before dusk. Rarely we saw anything as we had arrived in Kruger just after the rains stopped for the season. Consequently, many waterholes were available away from the rivers.
Off this road bed, we saw several elephants.
At Shingwedzi Camp in northern Kruger, we stayed in a duplex hut. It was crammed with three single beds, a refrigerator, and a sink. The ablutions block (sinks, toilets, showers) was a few doors down. The main restaurant overlooked the Shingwedzi River.
Along the Shingwedzi River we saw baboons and ostriches in the morning and a sunset in the evening.
Driving out of Kruger, we were treated to our first baobab trees along the road bed.
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