Hoyo Hoyo Tsonga Lodge Kruger National Park

... get a guided escort to the camp or stay in town. We paid the money and after an hour of waiting around in the gateway carpark, being told by the security fellas to be on guard as there was a leopard nearby, we were met by a friendly black dude called Johan that would escort us through the park. It was pitch black and in all fairness would of been pretty intimidating driving without Johan leading us so perhaps we should be grateful of the ...

... br> As she walked on the road, about half a dozen cars started circling around here like tourist vultures (I won't say we were much better as we drove back a little as well) and the old lady decided to just lay down and rest for a while. The harsh reality saddened my heart and made me realise that this too is wildlife in Kruger. All I could do was take some pictures that would respect her in her own way, an old lady walking the last stretch ...

... ll get toasted by the sun, even in winter and spring. It may be dead cold in Cape Town while KNP will be blazing hot.
5. Plan your trip, KNP is freaking big. Do not attempt to cover too great a distance cause KNP is a massive tract of land and you might end up spending too much time traveling. What I did was to calculate the distance from the map and calculate the time required to go there and back.
6. KNP is a malaria ...

... the road

- Giraffes** = a few groups of 6, sometimes 3, sometimes solitary; one of my favorite animals to watch

- Fish Eagles = 2 – got some great photos of them soaring through the air above a water hole

- Zebras = a few groups of 12 or more; sometimes with a group of impalas, sometimes crossing the road; my edited photos of ...

... came around a bend and suddenly found ourselves in a leopard-jam...we became boxed in by six or seven vehicles (including a Kruger safari truck) all stopped and snapping photos of the dot on the horizon that was allegedly a leopard. My "Are you sure that lump is not just the after effects of an Elephant having eaten Mexican last night?" question to the neighbouring safari guide didn't go over very well. Neither did my offer to show him one of Tracy's ...

... I arrived.....lovely. Now I was the one roaring... Grrrrrrrr!! However, the sky was lit up with a million stars and the other guide that I had met previously and I laid on mattresses outside, sipped wonderful South African wine as he showed me some of the stars. The sky was so clear that I saw the Milky Way and the Southern Cross. I love the Milky Way especially because it just looks like a dusting of stars...Stardust if you will. It's so beautiful. Early the ...

... can stake out the watering holes for more luck on spotting animals but its good to just drive, a lot. Some of the roads have tarmac and most are gravel, the animal tracks often cross the roads and this is where you can get a chance to closely, sometimes really closely, watch the animals in their natural habitat. Its interesting as the animals can't distinguish the humans, they just see cars, which they have ...

... period of game driving. We had our fingers crossed that we might run into the same hyena cubs that we had seen earlier that day but about a kilometre before the junction where we saw them, we ran across an even more astonishing scene. Not only did we come across two new younger cubs that were taking cover in another of the drainage pipes running under the road but alongside them was their mother, a striking large hyena but the biggest ...

... breeze arose and the sky became noticeable cloudy. There was a Marsh Sandpiper, a Yellow-billed Stork and lots of African Spoonbills at the first overlook point by the Kanniedood Dam along with lots of common game, crocodiles and hippos. The wind seemed to be keeping most of the game out of sight in shelter, but shortly after dark we came across several nightjars in the road. Two of the settled in the headlights and we were able to quickly ...

... lions, giraffes, elephants, zebras, wildebeest, loads of impala, baboons, monkeys, loads of vultures feeding on a poor unfortunate dead rhino; loads of other birds and a hippo. It was a long day, about 11hours spent driving around, but it didn't seem that long as we were constantly on the lookout for the 'Big 5'. The next day it was the same again, this time we were driving to Pretoriuskop campsite and we struck it lucky really early on, seeing a ...