The Kruger Day 2

We were up at 4:45am. The night had been unbearably hot at 35°c until the early hours of the morning when the wind got up, even though we had 2 USB fans from our Motorhome running.
I hardly got any sleep and was really grumpy when I went out to the camper in the dark and couldn’t find the stove or kettle without banging all of our doors and waking the rest of camp up.
Eventually I worked it out and after 2 warm coffees we left for our first game drive of the day at 5:30am watching the sunrise as we left the camp.
We turned right out of the gate and then right again onto a tar road that ran past a huge watering hole. Here we saw lots of hippo.
Then we turned right again onto a dirt track running up to a smaller watering hole that was full of crocodiles.
We sat here for 30 minutes watching as a Wilderbeast entered the water for a drink and almost head butted a waiting crocodile. The crocodile had obviously eaten because the Wilderbeast was right ontop of it and the crocodile never moved. We thought we had a front row seat to national geographic live but it didn’t happen. Not that we wanted to see the Wilderbeast get eaten but I do want to see the croc fly out of the water.
From this watering hole we headed back on ourselves stopping when we saw some Southern Ground Hornbill which are on the endangered species list with only 1500 left in the wild.
Almost back at camp we turned right and then left onto a dirt loop. This route would take us along 2 rivers and leopard had been sighted here the day before. We didn’t see any cats except for an African wildcat but we did see hundreds of giraffe, Waterbok, kudu, Giraffe, and even Baboons.
This loop should have take 2hrs 45 mins according to the guide book but it took us hours and we finally arrived back at camp at 12:30pm ready for lunch.
It was much cooler today with more cloud cover and we ate outside at the cattle ranch restaurant, then we headed back to our camp for a shower and chill out until we went again for an afternoon drive.
At 3:30pm we headed back out. We decided rather than just drive around looking for the animals we’d wait by a watering hole and just see what turned up and we weren’t disappointed.
When we first got to the watering hole there was just one baboon nearby and it was cool to see him go to the water and bend down to drink. He knew there were crocodiles in there and he went to the shallowest part and when he was done he would look across the water to see if he could have any drink.
After the baboon a herd of elephants came down with lots of babies. Once they had,had their fill they just wandered off into the bush and disappeared. Then 3 Zebra came down but they knew about the crocodile and just walked on by. At the same time the baboon had climbed a nearby tree and decided to pick a fight with an Ayer’s Eagle. There was a huge commotion and the eagle ended up in the next tree right at the top and the baboon kept growling at him.
On the way back we stopped at a second watering hole where there were loads of hippos. The Juveniles were scrapping it out seeing who had the biggest mouth and the ones who lost had to move. There was also a mum and baby and the baby kept on jumping on the mum. It was crazy to see how playful he was compared to how hippos normally are.
We got back to the gate at 5:50pm and then I decided to use the pool to cool off and we met a lovely South African family in there and spent the whole 45 minutes just talking until it got dark and the Jackals came. We then decided to head back to camp as we had forgotten our torches, it was a proper sketchy walk home.
Back at our tent we cooked a very light dinner of Chilli and Garlic Braai rolls with cheese and then we decided we were done for the day. There was no sound of hyena tonight so at 8:30pm we headed for bed ready for an early start.Okumaya devam et