Have you been to the Kruger park?

sunrise at the campsite
me and an elephant, aint no thing.

We went to Kruger National Park a week ago. Now you may be picturing me bouncing around in a land rover through fields of zebra and lions, but sadly this is not the case. It’s in fact more like when your family drives around town to look at the Christmas lights. There were 5 of us packed into an Opel. We just drove around through Africa style woods and plains and saw lots of birds. We also saw lots of elephants and zebras and plenty of cool things, but it hardly even felt like we were in the bush.

Except that the first night, when we arrived at our camp site, which btw had been arranged by a tri-city group of Rotarians we were joining, it was dark, and hyenas were already on the prowl around the fence. They just circle all the fenced camping areas waiting for stupid people to throw raw meat and scraps to them. Awesome. After our traditional Braai (ie BBQ) and lots of Afrikaaners shooting the shit, we heard some awful noises coming from the bush and of course ran towards them. A man shown a floodlight on the ruckus just in time to see two hyenas finish ripping an impala apart and begin to devour it. For those who don’t know, hyenas have powerful jaws used to crushing bones, which they then just eat (and thusly pooping bright white). So we watched and listened to the sound of their meal; bones breaking in their mouths. It was amazing.

We heard and saw some really wonderful things that weekend. A civet, really far away sleeping lions, elephants charging the car, baby rhinos (who by the way are once again dwindling due to poaching problems, crocs, hippos discussing who’s river it was, and so on and so forth. You should try it some time (although Ngorogoro in TZ is way better).