November 9 Kruger Park last day and home

Sadly this was our last day in the park and with a long drive ahead of us we felt we should be leaving the park in the morning, but with our day beginning pre dawn that would still give us 4 hours. From the camp we followed one of the dirt tracks over the hills. Coming to the top of one hill we spotted what I first thought was a dead rhinoceros in the middle of the road. Getting closer we could see the carcass was a water buffalo and in the grass and trees to the side of the road there were lions. The jaw of the buffalo had been eaten and its stomach opened and the contents spilled out. The lions had also eaten into the hind quarters so they had been on this animal for a few hours. First we saw the adult lions, about six or seven females and males and then we saw there were three cubs in the group.

 

 

From the size of the cubs they might have been a couple of months old. A female cub came out of the grass to the carcass. She was followed by her brother and while she ate he sat and watched us, perhaps guarding his sibling?

We stayed for about and hour, just us and one other car, but word had passed to the other professional guides and as we drove down the hill there was safari jeep after safari jeep passing on the way up. Today the early risers definitely enjoyed the best game viewing.

We left the lions and drove the short distance to the park gates. It has been a magical, wonderful visit to the Kruger Park. The diversity and number of animals and birds we saw exceeded our expectations and we loved the freedom of driving ourselves. Staying inside the park at the rest camps was part of the whole experience, we choose to eat in the restaurants when they were available and the food was good, on our one morning drive we saw more animals, on our evening drive we had the more knowledgeable, more enthusiastic guide. Staying within the park enabled us to start our viewing day at 4.30am in the pre dawn gloaming. By driving slowly with the windows down, taking the dirt track loop roads, stopping often and arriving at our evening rest camp at 5.30pm meant we got the most out of our short visit. In five days we took over a 1,000 photographs, many deleted in the final edit.

For us the Kruger National Park was magical, fantastic. We absolutely loved our time here.