Where are all the animals?

Very first picture of a elephant in Kruger

I get to the entrance of the Kruger National Park and get ready to go in I ask how to buy an entrance ticket at the information desk and it turns out I don’t have to get one at the entrance because I am staying inside the park so I can get all the bureaucracy done when I get to my camp for the night. The process of getting access is pretty straightforward the only thing is the guard at the gate just want to have a quick look inside my trunk of the car to make sure I am not smuggling a few hunting rifles into the park. He is not checking very thoroughly so he miss my elephant rifle which I naturally brought so I could supplement my income by shooting a few elephants and take their tusk to sell in the black market.

I drive through the gates and here I am - in Kruger National Park - now I am immediately gonna see animals. I start driving and I drive for a minute - nothing - two minutes - still nothing. What s going on here? Is this park absolutely empty from animals has something happened to all the animals? Have they all been shot or what? How come they are missing? It is fair to say I am not happy with the way this is going - I can live with the fact there is no rhinos right next to the entrance gate - but come on there should be at the very least a group of impalas.

I drive on getting increasingly unhappy with my misfortunate game drive. Then - right there - 30 kilometers inside the park - finally finally finally. Something is happening - and it is not some stupid impalas - right there next to the road are two decent size bull elephants hungrily eating away at the trees at the road side. I am a bit preoccupied with the elephant but I notice a way down the road is something big crossing the road - it looks a lot like a buffalo in the distance.

Hopeless photo of the first zebras.

I drive on stopping here and there taking those super poor quality photos you always end up taking on the first game drive of a trip. I take pictures of impalas - which are out of focus - photos of zebras - which you can hardly see between the branches of the trees - pictures of buffalos in the far distance you can barely distinguish.

There’s a few highlights along the road - after the first two elephants I drive along for another 30ks or there a bouts and then there is another couple of bull elephants next to the road. Shortly after those elephants I see a big buffalo bull hanging around inside the trees I look at this one for a couple of minutes - which turns out to be sort of a waste of time - because as I drive down the road for another minute and a half I meet a huge herd of buffalos crossing the road to get down towards the water.

Imalas next to the road

I continue my drive towards my campsite and I am almost there with minutes to spare before it is 17.30. But the road is running along a dry river and there is sort of a traffic jam on this river - cars are driving out to the side of the road constantly and the road is pretty much blocked. I guess I might as well spend my time looking down to the river - and down in the river is a huge herd of elephants walking along with lots of small baby elephant to complement the big females. I sort of spend a most of my reserve time and I finally have to go to the camp - I am not too nervous about getting late because there are at least ten other cars on the road and I seriously doubt they will shot the gate when they can see all these cars still just outside the camp.

I guess I need to wait for a while before I continue driving ;)

But in the end I decide to go straight for the camp and I get there in plenty of time before the gates are closing - I mean it is only something like 17.29.45. Lots of time to spare I could have taken at the very least five more photos.

I get inside the camp and I am assigned my little hut inside the camp. And then it is about time to think of dinner. I head towards the centre of camp where I head for the best restaurant with 50 miles from here. This process is somewhat helped by the fact there is only one restaurant within 50 miles from where I am and I decide this is probably the place to go eat for the night. Before the dinner arrives somebody tells us there’s a special guest coming by the restaurant tonight - and just outside is a hippo walking around eating the grass during the night. This is a great time to kill the waiting time before you are getting served your meal I think - maybe restaurants in the rest of the world should consider this sort of prediner entertainment?  Well after a while I get enough of watching the hippo and diner is about to arrive - considering the lack of completion in the restaurant business in this area the food is actually pretty good.

Singwedzi river and elephants waling by