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Feb 21-24, 2005 We left Dullstroom fairly early today. I tried to take some pictures as we came over the passes, but the clouds were quite low. |
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Long Tom Pass... Doesn't look like much when the weather socks in. | |
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Here Lynne and I are at the Paul Kruger gate - one of the main entrances to the park. |
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Big statue of the Paul dude. He has kind of an interesting history. I won't go into. During our first trip, this thing was surrounded by Impala. |
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Just like on my last trip to South Africa, the first animal I saw in Kruger was a Warthog... Must be some kind of Disney conspiracy. | ||
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In Kruger, the Baboons often sit on the bridge over the Sabie River about 12k east of Skukuza Camp. Yes, this shot was taken through the glass. This one was about 4 feet away. Keep your windows rolled up. | ||
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This Vervet monkey was in a tree along the same bridge. I got quite a start when I got a viewfinder full of monkey as he jumped onto the railing as I was zoomed in. | ||
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This was the first elephant we ran into... Almost literally. I'm using almost no zoom on this shot - he's only about 20 feet away. And he's happily munching away on Marula berries. All the same, I kept the bus in gear in case he got ornery. |
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Remember what I said about keeping the windows rolled up? |
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And a wide-angle shot.
A little further down this road I'd miss a shot of a large female as she's charging the bus. Remember what I said about keeping it in gear? I guess she was camera shy. |
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We saw this nasty fellow a bit down the road. It was the first time my in-laws remember seeing a snake in all their visits to Kruger. We figure this was a Black Mamba (they're rarely black)... The 2nd one we saw about another kilometer down the road moved to fast to photograph. Too weird. |
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A little ways down the road we almost ran into this bunch of ladies out for a stroll. Instead of running away, they started running towards us. |
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Then we saw this guy while on a low water crossing over the Sabie.... His head was over 2 foot long. If I could read minds, I'm pretty sure I would have heard, "Come on in. The water's great!" Yeah... Right... |
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Of course the youngest are always the most curious. This one probably would have stared at us for hours had I sat still. |
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But the reality is that these Hippo's hanging upstream of the Croc are a whole lot more dangerous. In fact, the Hippo is responsible for more deaths than the Crocodile. Seeing one of these yawn will make a believer out of anyone. |
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I'm not sure what this look was about. Kind of reminds me of the look I get from my wife sometimes. | ||
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Since the average person isn't allowed out of the rest camps at night on their own, we did a night time game viewing ride. This is the truck we were in. Yeah, it's a big truck. Elephants are bigger. And notice the lack of windows or even hard sides. Did I mention that cats hunt at night? Makes for an exciting evening. | ||
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Camping in S.A. is a bit different from the USA. The campgrounds have tents already set up. | ||
| One of the last places we stopped was a roadside stand "stand" with hand-dyed fabrics. They were everywhere. Not sure why we chose this one. | |||