Johannesburg into Kruger

We have safely made it to the bush in South Africa and are just finishing our second night in established public campgrounds at the south end of Kruger National Park.

After a 14 hour flight from Newark to Johannesburg we arrived at OR Tambo airport at about 6:30pm on Sunday. Again we stayed at the Protea hotel near the airport, with shuttle provided, making for an easy first evening. The seven of us discussed logistics for the next few days, including how we would manage the vehicle pickup and provisioning. We had a tough day ahead of us with a requirement to get to Skukuza Camp before they close reception at 6pm.

Inspecting vehicles at Bushlore

The challenge was getting through vehicle pickup (and our inspection) at Bushlore, about 45 minutes from the airport, then making the 6 hour drive to camp. We expected some surprises and were all concerned about the timing.

Our two Land Cruisers with double ten toppers were new models than two years ago: low-ish mileage, automatic transmission, and (for now) reliable Apple Carplay. We learned from our last trip that you don’t take shortcuts on acceptance: testing the tents, or winch, on one vehicles doesn’t satisfy the same test on the other. So we were thorough and everything took time.

At the moment we arrived at Bushlore we had a driver take three of the group to a nearby shopping complex for provisioning, thinking that we could parallelize some of this earlier time. Very thankful that we did as we had to work through a few issues:

• An air compressor that had to be replaced (for airing up tires after airing down)
• Extension for one of the rooftop tent ladders (the front tents sit higher on the Land Cruiser than the back tent and Hilux tents)
• There weren’t extra fuel jerry cans as we requested
• The biggest problem: the house battery for the fridge and galley lights was showing low charge and ultimately had to be replaced

Even with all this checking, we were still missing a key item from both vehicles: a lighter for the propane stoves. That was easy to fix later. The parallel shopping paid off significantly - if we had waited to shop until after vehicles were ready to go, we would have missed our timeline.

The drive was a grind but beautiful as we transitioned from the high veld to low veld; Johannesburg is close to Denver or Albuquerque elevation and we were headed downhill most of the time. We stopped once for bathrooms and snacks about 2.5 hours into the drive but that was all we had time for.

We drove through an agriculture belt that was spectacular: banana, citrus, macadamia, and blueberry orchards, vast valleys with rivers, and lots and lots of lorries to slow us down.

After passing through the Paul Kruger Gate at about 5:10pm, we made it to reception around 5:35pm. The campground was crazy full and finding a spot where we could park both vehicles near each other was a challenge. It isn’t trivial to “setup camp” then drive away (we ate at the Cattle Baron restaurant - highly recommended).

Julie holes a putt on 9 at Skukuza (photo by Tenya)

Another very early morning because we had to break camp for… golf. Ken scheduled 9 holes for us at the wildest golf course on earth. I agree: hippos, monkeys, plus the usual assortment of third tier Africa animals.

The golf was just fun. Rental clubs, rambling around a challenging course, carrying my telephoto lens for bird shots.

Lilac-breasted Roller

Working our way to the start of a 4x4 tour we would start on Wednesday, we hit the road from the golf course to drive to Berg-En-Dal camp. This was a great first game drive for our newbies, with plenty of antelope, beautiful African birds, and Karen spotting a leopard stalking a herd of impala.

Leopard on drive from Skukuza to Berg-en-Dal

I can’t stress enough how hard this is to do. These creatures are designed to hide from everything that might notice them. It is one thing to detect a leopard in a tree eating their prey, quite another to catch it stalking through tall grass where across the road is a small herd of impala. A great first-day treat for our Africa first-timers.

White-fronted bee-eater

Our drive continued until about 4pm when we arrived at Berg-en-Dal, reserving our space then heading back out to squeeze in some more viewing before the gate closed. Dinner out again, delaying cooking dinner because of the restaurant in camp. Tomorrow we start the Lebombo 4x4 trail from the southeast end of Kruger up to Pafuri at the northeast end.