Dances with Elephants

As I mentioned about a month/4 posts ago, my parents came to visit me in South Africa to see the country, but more importantly, me! I decided to take them to the Northeastern part of SA, mostly ‘cause I hadn’t been there and wanted to see it. We decided that, in order to see more of the country, we would take the train to Jo’berg. A decision that all of my friends felt was sketchy, but only took the time to inform me of this once I had returned safely home. Thanks a lot, guys…not that I would’ve listened. Anyway, we took the Shosholoza Meyl train from Cape Town to Jo’berg and weren’t murdered or robbed, so I’d call it a success. The train, however, was a bit (read 2 hours) late because, get this, they couldn’t find the engine. I mean last I checked train engines are, you know, quite large. It would take an impressive amount of magic (we’re talking Harry AND his friends) to just make one disappear. This unorthodox delay resulted in us getting into the Jo’berg station (that’s right in the CBD) just after dark and just after the car rental place had closed. Meaning that someone from the car rental agency had to drive from the airport, outside of town, to pick us up at the train station and drive us back to the airport to pick up our car.

After sleeping near the airport that night we left in the morning to go to Polokwane our next stop before Kruger National Park and a stop I remember very little about, probably because everything we planned to do around there was closed (except for the hot springs, but it was about 30 degrees that day, so really!?!).

Now the original plan was to stay in Shingwedzi camp the first night, which is about two hours into the park from the Punda Maria entrance. Unfortunately we arrived at the Punda Maria entrance at 5:50pm and the gates to all the camps close promptly at 6. IT being a little difficult to make a 2 hours drive in 10 min, they found us a spot in the Punda Maria camp, just 10min away from the entrance. Convenient. These 10min were probably the most eventful 10min in the history of Kruger. Ok, except for that youtube video where all the animals get in a massive gang war, but it was a close second. We saw lots of buck, giraffe, huge elephants about a meter from the car, and, as we pulled up to the gate, the guard told us to go down a Do Not Enter road for 2 min and we’ll see a pride of lions eating. It was amazing! They were so close to the car and you could hear them ripping the flesh of whatever poor buck is now known as dinner. This is when it started to feel like a vacation. Although I was a little concerned that after that, 3 days of seeing buck would get old pretty quick...