Got up hellishly early for holidays, and headed to "God's Window" to try and catch the early light. The chain was up, but this didn't stop me the last time I was here (2002), but the security guard did. He was adamant that I couldn't get in until 7am when the place opened. It seems they are now charging for access when it used to be free. I thought about asking what the entry price was and offering it to the guard, but decided against this. Instead we drove 500m down the road and walked out to the edge of the escarpment and got the same view for FREE.

Back to the Summit Lodge for breakfast and then hit the road for Hazyview, where we grabbed a few eats in case we needed them in the park.

We entered Kruger National Park through the Kruger Gate and our intention was to scoot over to Skukuza, the main camp in the park, and see if there was any available accommodation there, and if so, switch one of our nights from Shingwedzi. There wasn't, nor was there any available in Satara. So we had a long drive from the south to the central north Shingwedzi camp.

For those who've never visited Kruger, this is a self-drive park with a number of camps in which you can over-night. The speed limit is restricted to 50kph but the best speed is around 20 or 30kph. This time of year the place is a very lush green which makes spotting game rather challenging, plus there is an abundance of water so the game don't need to rely on the man-made watering holes. All-in-all, not the best time of year to visit the park for game viewing. But, the South Africans seem to love spending Christmas here.

Today, we saw lots of Giraffe, Elephant, Zebra, Maraboo storks, Hippos etc etc. I'll make a list once we leave the park with what we saw.

Arrived at Shingwedzi within 15mins of the gate closing, the place hasn't changed much from when I was last here. They've added a pool.

A couple of beers, dinner and time to recharge the cameras for tomorrow.

Tags: travel