We got up early this morning and did a loop around the camp before breakfast. Normally this is the perfect time of day to be game spotting, but because of the abundance of water, the game had mostly gone off to the more remote areas of the park. There was Waterbuck in the river along with crocs and Maraboo storks, and further along lots of hippos were wallowing in the deeper water. Lots of Impala as usual and I'm getting rather tired of seeing them.

As well as the morning in the park, we also need to get back to Maunatlala in Botswana today so we checked out after breakfast at 8am. We headed south from Shingwedzi toward the Phalaborwa gate where we left the park. No lions this time, or Leopard. It's always dissapointing not seeing cats of some type, but trying to find them is more than half the fun. And after looking through the photos of what I did see, I'm more than happy with this short trip to Kruger.

Here is a list of animals we did see in the park. P = photographed, N = saw at night.

Elephant (P)
Waterbuck (P)
Nyala (P)
Impala (P)
Wildebeest (P)
Buffelo (P)
Kudu (P)
African Eagle (P)
Fish Eagle (P)
Marabou Stork (P)
White Stork (P)
Lilac breasted Roller
Baboons (P)
Vervet Monkeys (P)
Steenbok
Giraffe (P)
Zebra (P)
Hippos (P)
Crocodiles (P)
Leopard Tortoise (P)
Warthogs (P)
Kingfishers (P)
Hiyena (N)
Duiker (N)

We left the park at midday, it's always sad to leave it. After a bite of carrot cake and a coffee at the Phalaborwa gate we headed through Phalaborwa and the home of Amarula toward Polokwane the capital of Limpopo province. This area has some very interesting weathered granite formations, in the shape of large piles of marbles.

Once again we were driving through some very scenic country before getting close to Polokwane, where it started looking very much like Botswana.. flat and featureless for the most part.
Driving through Polokwane was like driving in Malaysia, but perhaps not quite that bad. Maps are all but useless and blind luck got us to the other side. Around Savanna was the first time I've seen white south africans walking around doing their shopping with side-arms.

After passing through the Martin's Drift boarder crossing we finally arived at Maunatlala around 8:30pm, to find a huge dinner waiting for us thanks to the landlady of the house we were staying in. She also bought a bottle of wine for my arrival, but it was just a bit too late so we arranged to have it tomorrow night.

Tags: travel