Doorstep to Kruger

Today the 7 of us left the city behind and drove northeast to a town called Hazyview, our stepping off point for Kruger National Park. The drive took about 6 hours and descended off the plateau that Johannesburg sits on. We didn't go that much closer to the equator, but the descent definitely helped with the temperature.
On the way we planned to stop for a meal at a cafe called Milly's, which Penny recommended as a convenient place to break the drive. Unfortunately, someone had decided Milly's was also a convenient place to light a bonfire, because it was barely more than a pile of ashes when we arrived. It must have been quite recent, since there were some equally stunned workers sitting around after inadvertently showing up for work on a Monday morning.
In Hazyview, we'd booked into a 3-bedroom bungalow at The Kruger Park Lodge. It was pretty flash, and not typical of the places that I'd be frequenting on this trip. This was fortunate, because I had saved up to do the entire year of travel on savings, and at this rate I'd be broke and heading home next month. With a bit of time before sunset I decided to go and explore the posh surroundings.
KPL is actually a golf resort, so most of the scenery was associated with the manicured fairways. There were some monkeys and antelope (obviously), which seemed to be South African golf course equivalent to Kangaroos back in Australia. It was a bit anticlimactic, so I wandered on to the "Hippo Hide" lookout. This was also a bit underwhelming, with the hippos clearly not trained to perform whenever some Aussie shows up waving a camera. With the sun now below the horizon I turned back towards our bungalow, and nearly tripped over a crocodile.. Yikes...that could have been another premature end to the trip! We rounded out the evening by cooking a bbq/braai on the deck, and then hit the hay. We'd be up before the sun tomorrow to go to Kruger.

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