Globetrotting

In November, we had three weeks of holiday and quite an extensive itinerary – Kruger Park with my brother, wedding of some INSEAD classmates in Austin, some days in San Francisco, and then a week on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico.

Our first part of the vacation took us to Kruger Park – since we hadn’t been and my brother was visiting, it was the perfect opportunity. We rented a Land Rover a Defender with a tent on its roof – finally, I had been waiting to drive one of these ever since we got to South Africa, there is just nothing that embodies the Safari spirit like this sturdy vehicle (even though it gave us quite a bit of trouble on the way – a broken windshield wiper, an erratically working A/C, and once it wouldn’t start but instead gave out a loud alarm for five minutes every time we tried to turn the key – after we had finally managed to call the rental agency from the only hill in the camp where there was phone reception, we managed to fix the problem by tightening one of the power connections on the battery).

On the way to the park, we stopped for one night at the Blyde River Canyon, which is a very scenic stretch of land where the highveld gives way to the lowveld – dramatic gorges, steep slopes, and lots of waterfalls. Especially given the long drive from Johannesburg, this stop on the way was quite worth it.

The next day, we made our way into the park. The three days and nights we spent there consisted mainly of driving around during the day on the lookout for animals, and staying in a different camp (Satara, Balule, and Skukuza) each night. One morning we also did a guided sunrise game drive, for which we got up at 3:30 to leave at 4:00 before the first light – quite the experience!

On the animal side of things, we saw lots – unfortunately didn’t manage to complete the big five though as the leopards remained elusive. We saw plenty of all the others though – so many elephants that in the end we didn’t even stop anymore for them, lots of lions, including one that was eating a fresh zebra (the lion unfortunately was quite hidden behind a bush so we didn’t manage to take a good picture), both black and white rhinos, lots of buffaloes, including two that were taking a mud bath right next to the road, and then of course giraffes, kudu, lots and lots of impala, hyenas, yawning hippos, …

All in all, a wonderful trip – some pictures below.