When we arrived at the park they gave us a pamphlet indicating all the birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians in the park. It was a way to keep track of what we had seen.  At  the end of day 4 our total sightings were 31 bird species, 19 mammals species, 1 reptile and 1 amphibian.

 

Never saw the birds that inhabit these but it was like little community,  not something you often see when it comes to birds nests.

 

So majestic.

 

This fellow was working so hard cracking seeds.

Pretty interesting pose.

 

 

 

Too many cars in front of us and darn they won’t let you out of you car so this was as close as I could get. The one time I poked my head out of the car to get a better shot a warden was there and in a very nice way impressed upon me my transgression.

 

 

Day 3: The one time we left the paved road today,  we followed a group of safari vehicles a long way and fortunately were rewarded with seeing a herd of elephants running. Pretty neat! 

Can you see the snake it is eating?

Interesting spider webs.

 

So cute!

They are eating bark off a tree.

Baobab tree.

Our only leopard sighting.

 

A lioness from a distance.  We managed to see four of the “big five”.  Missing only rhinos,  which, due to poaching, are more difficult to find.

On Day 2 we saw giraffes, a baboon family, turtles and impala. We drove further North on dirt roads with not as many sightings today. As we were trying to get out of the gate for 6:00 before shutdown 2 elephants locked tusks on the road right in front of us. That caused us enough stress that I never even get a photo. We thought they were going to start fighting;  however it never happened. One just untangled himself and moved on. Whew! We later thought they were teenagers just playing around but definately not at the time. 

These fellows are so immense; it was awe inspiring when they emerged from the bush and not just a little breathtaking as were more than twice the size of our little rental car.

 

 

Perfect end to a great viewing day.

 

March 22, 2019

On the way to Kruger Park,  we spent one night in Swaziland.  The tiny country is surrounded by South Africa and seemed quite peaceful and certainly very beautiful.  Its official name is now Eswatini.

We spent 4 full days at Kruger Park. Each day the gates close once a certain limit of vehicles has entered. We arrived on a long weekend plus school vacation so we were not able to get accommodation in the park. Hence we were up every morning at 3:30 and at the park gate by 5:00. Traveling as far as we had to see the park we did not want to miss  possibly not entering one day. It did mean seeing some lovely sunrises.

On day 1 we were blessed to see many giraffes and impalas as well as a baboon barking in a tree. Birds and warthogs were also on our day 1 list of sightings.

The impalas were so beautiful and everywhere.

Here you can see an oxpecker on his back.

 

The variety of birds was incredibe.

This baboon in the tree was a real surprise as we were parked near the tree and could not figure out where this intermintant sound was coming from.

Flowers were not in abundance but those we saw were exsquisite.

Kruger had five entrances. At each entrance was a sighting board so it gave you an idea in which direction to drive that day depending on what animals you wanted to see. The only sighting people were asked not to mark was that of the Rhino because poachers are a big problem and any information could be used by them to find one.  We were even asked not to use our mobile phones to tell others about the location of a rhino if one was spotted.