Elandela Lodge Kruger National Park

... feeding and before they started to cool out for the day. We saw loads of animals; hippos, bufallo, crocs, giraffes and heaps of various deer like creatures called impala and kudu. At about 7am we set off back towards the camp before someone shouted 'elephants!!' (it wasnt me as i was ***** at spotting anything). As we neared we noticed that one of the elephants had a baby with her that couldn't of been much older than a few days. After a ...

... of the things Laura told us.

First, the Impala, probably the most common antelope in South Africa, with more than 100.000 of them occurring in Kruger Park alone. It's approach to camouflage is a passive one. Having a brown coloured upper body and a white abdomen, makes it very hard for a predator (such as Lion and Leopard) that relies on movement to spot its prey to determine whether it is one animal when an Impala is standing still.
The ...

... including gray reedbuck, gray duiker, and steenbok. In addition, we see a number of birds we have not yet recorded including the crested francolin, brown snake eagle, yellow-billed kite, pied kingfisher, and the magpie shrike. We come across a large herd of elephants (about 40 in the herd) and buffalo (about 300-400 at a water hole all at once), about 20 hippos in a pool and many Nile crocodiles (one was fending off other crocodiles while he was trying to eat ...

... our rooftop tent at the crack of dawn 05:30(or if you ask me, in the middle of the night) has been totally in vain. A zebra, a hornbill and some impala....today the movie seems to be one of the boring kind they shown on Saturday between 10am and 11am. We decide it is time for an ad (advertisement) break and take out the coffee mugs, park the car at the side of the road and begin dipping rusks into the warm liquid. A relatively animated discussion between Marvin and myself is just ...

... slowed down somewhat, however, when someone ran towards the fire, and said, "Wow, look at that. Isn't it fantastic!" Apparently, just outside the park boundary there are fields of sugarcane. Just before harvesting, all the superfluous leaves are burned off, to make the harvesting of the sugarcane easier...if I had only known, I could have avoided having to wash my underwear; So that's it for Kruger, a simply amazing place. We might have gone a ...

... Cape Town. We had another charter flight at 2pm. When we arrived back in Cape Town we got on our buses and were back at the boat by 4:30. However we all had to wait in an extremely long line while the guards go through our bags and make sure we didn't have any illegal items in them. I felt sorry for another safari that returned right after us because they had to wait even longer! After a much need shower I met up with Heather, Ashley, Stef, and Ji to ...

... they moved and how their coloration blended into the trees and brush. On we go and someone let a dog loose and it was lying alongside the road. No not a dog, a spotted hyena. Actually there were 5 of them. One was right alongside the road and was not giving up that spot for anything. We actually had to look almost straight down to shoot the picture. Shortly we were stopped by a very large male baboon. He literally sat in the road and we were expecting ...

... after our truck left, the other one spotted a leopard on the prowl - quite a rare sight, apparently. I was very disappointed, as the leopard was the one animal I most wanted to see. Despite that setback, our truck later caught sight of two lions beginning their hunt. After sundown, we drove around the area with spotlights, looking for eyeballs looking back at us. The technique worked surprisingly well, but again, we merely found of predator food: impala ...

... there is debris underfoot. In all probability there will be a guide at the entrance ready to take you through for a small fee whilst his colleague minds your car. For birders, the walk is likely to be worth the effort because there is a small colony of Southern Bald Ibises to the left of the falls, as seen from the view point. They're easy to find once you've located the obvious white-streaked rocks below their favourite ledges. There ...

... away from the vehicles were revived first, giving the team chance to run through the still sleeping buffalo and make their escape. I was one of the closest to the bakkies, and thus we waited and waited as the buffalo around us got up. Crikey! Just wait, just wait. And there it was, our signal. The drug went in, the blindfold was removed and I ran and ran as fast as I could, not stopping until I was up on top of the bakkie. I turned to watch as the sleeping beasts awoke ...