Marloth Park

Passing back into South Africa we continued on good roads for another 90 minutes until we got to the town of Komatipoort where there is a huge shopping centre and we stocked up on fruit and vegetables to go with our game meat. Then it was just a 10 km drive to our final destination of this trip. Marloth Park.
Marloth Park is a cluster of 4000 homes situated deep in the bush right on the edge of the Kruger National Park. It’s far from being a housing estate as most houses can’t even be seen from the main road of Olephant Street and even though there are small roads leading to houses off of the main tarmac road of Olephant Street the houses still can’t be seen and just driving around is like one giant game drive as animals are everywhere.
Our first stop was the security lodge to collect the keys and in true Pete unorganised fashion we were early, Pete didn’t know the name of the place or what road it was in and his phone was dead as for the past 5 hours in the car he hadn’t even considered charging it.
After plugging it in we waited for 10 minutes until his phone had enough charge to get the email confirmation then he gave me the address and I looked it up while he collected the keys.
From this point on, Ellie and I were really annoyed as for the past 2 weeks Pete has been telling us where we need to stay in Marloth Park to see the best animals. It must be away from the road because of the noise, it’s not particularly busy but the noise starts early with safari vehicles heading for the Kruger. It must have solar because of the load shedding. It must have air conditioning, and be big enough to accommodate a guide and his guests.
The place Pete had first found was £70 a night but he had cancelled that and used that money to pay for the car repairs, and because they were far more than he thought he then last minute booked another place without even looking at it. Who on earth does that?
So our accommodation for the next 5 nights is exactly what Pete said we don’t want in the exact area next to the main road where we don’t want to be. To add insult to injury the place is tiny and only our room has air conditioning and it’s the noisiest air conditioning in the world and on top of that the place has no light switches but just bulbs on extension leads plugged into a plug socket. And it cost £10 extra a night than a much nicer place that Ellie found. We were annoyed, and gutted.
Making the best of the situation Ellie made tea whilst Pete and I had a beer and we sat on the outside area. Within minutes a female Kudu came to visit and Pete was hand feeding it lettuce. Now we had something to compare it’s size to we realised just how tall these things are. The female was easily over 6 foot and the males much taller and there antlers can be as long as 2 meters.
Once the Kudu had gone I filled up the water trough in the garden and left the hose running in a dryed up wallowing hole for 10 minutes. Then we had a visit from 5 warthog that were super pleased with there newly found watering hole and squealed with delight while bathing in the mud. Then they came right up to us and ate lettuce and bread rolls from a couple of foot away. It was incredible.
As the sun went down Pete cooked us an amazing dinner of Impala steaks with cheesy mushrooms and Briee Rolls. The whole meal was incredible but the steaks were amazing with absolutely no fat atall.
Then after setting my camera traps up we finished up our drinks while listening to the hyena howling in the distance before finally heading to bed around 8:30pm.Read more