Gamespotting in Kruger Park
Trip Start
Jul 15, 2007
1
95
195
Trip End
Jul 16, 2008
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Hazyview,
South Africa
Monday, December 31, 2007
As we drove into Kruger Park, the first game we spotted was a herd of impalas. Our kids were very excited, pointing, talking and demanding to be given the good camera to take close-up pictures. Meanwhile the Youngs' kids were wholly indifferent.
Over the next two days we came to understand why. Impalas are the grey squirrels of the African bushveld, ubiquitous and unremarkable. My son Jack says they are like the Energy cards you get in a deck of Pokemon cards, common and valueless but unavoidable. I think about the old Monty Python spam routine, rephrased something like this:
"We've got buffalo, impala, impala, impala, lion and impala
Another impala
. Then we've got impala, impala, baboon, waterbuck and impala. That doesn't have too much impala in it. What do you mean you don't like spam?" We'd trade two hundred impalas for one glimpse of a leopard.
In two days of driving around the bush, we saw three of Africa's Big Five -- lion, rhino and elephant. Leopard and buffalo eluded us. (Amy and I saw both on our safaris at nearby Sabi-Sabi last year.) We also saw kudu, zebra, warthogs, waterbuck, steenbok, baboons, hippos, various birds, a possible caracal, a single mostly-submerged crocodile and a faraway lone giraffe. Amy insists she saw a wildebeest's butt sticking out of a thorn bush.
On our last evening, we sat on the verandah outside the restaurant at Skukuza Camp, dripping with bug repellent, drinking vodka and Schweppes Dry Lemon cocktails. (Dry Lemon is what the Brits call Bitter Lemon, which is lemon juice, tonic water and quinine. Very important to consume often and in quantity for anti-malaria purposes.) We were watching two male hippos fighting below the abandoned railway bridge while a troop of baboons looked down from above, when we heard a rustling in the reeds below. We looked down and saw a hyena run by on the path. Really not a nice-looking animal -- looks a bit like Hillary Clinton after a tough primary loss.
