Overlanding Through Africa

We slept pretty well and were awake before our 5.30am alarm went off – time for a lovely hot shower before our 6.30am breakfast and 7am departure! Breakfast was the usual cereal, fresh fruit, toast, and jam. Fine for me, but Mark will need to buy some cheese or something – otherwise, he’ll just be having dry toast every morning!

The choice for today was to go on an all-day 4WD game drive with a Kruger Park ranger at a cost of 1100 rand (about £50) each, or go game-spotting on the truck, which was included in the price of the tour. The six younger passengers chose to pay for the 4WD. Mark and I, and Byrand and Ruth from Australia, decided to go on the truck. With so many safaris on this trip, we didn’t see the point of paying for another one, even though René did tell us that the 4WD would probably see more wildlife than we would as they could go off-road, whereas we would have to stick to the main tarmacked routes. As it turned out, I think both groups had equally successful days. Those in the 4WD saw lions. We didn’t. We saw buffalos. The other group didn’t. We were out all day, not getting back to camp until about 4.30pm.

We had such a good day’s safari! We stopped for lunch at a game lodge (very good burger and chips!), but, other than that, we kept moving all day. We saw:

• Impala
• Plover
• Bushbuck
• Elephants
• Waterbuck (Identified by a white ring on its buttocks. If you see one, you know water is close by.)
• Zebra
• Baboons
• Ostrich
• Wildebeest
• Lilac Breasted Rollers (vivid turquoise birds with purple breasts – I think we saw these in Ethiopia, too)
• Hippos
• A large herd of buffalo
• Crocodiles
• Giraffe
• A cheetah chasing a group of wildebeest (this is such a rare and special thing to see. René had never seen this before)
• Vultures around the bare bones of a very old kill
• Southern Booboo (a brown bird)
• Bataleer eagle
• Egyptian Goose (with distinctive red circles around its eyes)
• A charging elephant! (A big bull elephant on must (on heat) which really didn’t want to let us go past – quite a sight!)
• A heron sitting on a hippo!
• Warthog
• Hyena
• Wild dogs (these are super-endangered and are on the red list, so we were very lucky to see them)
• Baboons with a baby
• Impala
• Old giraffe (probably not long for this world!)
• A leopard walking along the road!
• Family of warthogs

We tried to photograph or video everything we saw, but it wasn’t always easy. Some of the animals were at a great distance from us. The binoculars we bought when we went to the Motorhome and Campervan Show in Harrogate just before we came away proved invaluable.

Back on site, I took the photos off the big camera and did some basic editing before dinner. Between us, we got some great shots, both of the animals and the scenery.Læs mere