It was another early start and another long day in the car. In fact, I’ve probably clocked up more hours behind the steering wheel in a single day today than ever before. I may only have covered 400 kms, but most of those I drove at slow speed inside the Kruger Park. I left the motel at
4.30am, got back at 4pm and spent much of the intervening 11.5 hours driving. It took me an hour to reach the park gate. It should only have taken 45 mins, but in the dark I took a wrong turning. As it was, I got there just after dawn, and just a few minutes after opening time.
It took me all of two minutes to see a lion. Honestly. It was the first thing I saw. I’d barely got the car into 3rd gear inside the gates when I saw some congestion in the road ahead. I’ve become a reader of the signs in the last few days. The ideal situation is a clutch of about 4 cars: that means something of real interest is in sight. More than that becomes a scrum and means lines of sight get difficult. This was perfect: two safari vehicles (that’s the other hot tip: follow that safari driver – he knows what he’s doing!) and one other car. I drove up, followed the line of craning heads and camera lenses and kept on peering into the grass until I saw it: the head and shoulders of a stationary lion. For all I know there was a whole pack of them. The disadvantage of DIY safari, which is what I’ve been trying, is that an ordinary car sits low to the road. Purpose-built safari trucks have raised seating. All those who’d paid extra will at that moment have had their money’s worth: if there were 6 lions there, they’ll have seen them. I had to make do with that one head and shoulder view.
As you can imagine, at that moment I thought I’d be sighting lions all day. I hadn’t even seen a zebra at that point. I could be forgiven for thinking lions would be here there and everywhere. But as it happens, it was the only one I saw all day. I’ll put ‘see a pack of lions’ on the list of reasons to come back one day.
A few kms down the road, however, another treat: a great herd of buffalo (the other beast I had not seen in Pilanersberg) crossing the road. This, I think, is what you get if you arrive
at dawn: the animals are on the move. I was a good hour and a half earlier in Kruger Park than I had been at Pilanersberg and I think it made a difference. The buffalo were soon followed by elephants and black rhino (the ones in Pilanersberg had been white). The herd of elephants took about 10 minutes to cross the road: adults and young, they just kept on and 
on and on coming. So within an hour of my arrival I’d seen 4 of the Big Five. A leopard didn’t show itself until 10.30, and I’d begun to content myself that ‘4 out of 5 isn’t bad’. As with the lion, I’d doubtless have missed it if it wasn’t for the traffic jam. But there it was, sleeping on the branch of a tree by the roadside. I know it was a leopard (and not a cheetah) because one of the other drivers helpfully told me so. He was a South African, so it came out ‘Leepid’. Besides, when I got to one of the rest-stops, it was marked on the ‘Today’s Sightings’ board. A good deal later I think I saw another one. That’s to say, I certainly saw another big cat. This one I couldn’t miss seeing: it was just sauntering along the verge of the road. But I couldn’t swear it was a leopard not a cheetah, because there was no-one to advise me. Kruger Park, you see, is – even by South African standards – huge. If Pilanersberg is the size of an English county, Kruger (at 20000 sq kms) is the size of a small country (Israel, for example). So you can drive for miles without seeing another car. At one point, in just such a situation, I found myself driving towards a rhino, standing head on to me about 100m up the road. That’s when you wish there were more cars around. It was fine, of course. I slowed, but kept approaching, and it soon moved off into the bush.
There were fewer giraffe and zebra than I’d seen on Monday, but lots of different kinds of de
er (or bok, I suppose). The bird life was also spectacular. I saw at least a couple of kinds of eagle, a colourful stork, some turkey-like creatures and no end of brightly coloured smaller birds. Beautiful. But after 12noon things went quiet. I pottered about along a stretch of river for a while, sighting any number of hippo and a single croc, but eventually (when my bottled water wasn't just warm, but distinctly hot) had had enough of the unremitting heat and headed out.
It’s the herds I shall remember most, I think – more even than the pleasure of seeing those elusive cats. And I’d recommend it to anyone. For me, seeing these creatures in what really is to all intents and purposes ‘the wild’ (that's to say, seeing them behave as they would behave if you weren't there to watch them) ranks alongside snorkelling in tropical sea, whale-watching and swimming with dolphins. I realise I’m a bit of a glutton for these intensely sensory experiences of the natural world, but it truly does wow the soul. My heart will be uplifted with thanksgiving for days, I can tell. (Well, till my plane is delayed on Friday, I expect…). The Lord be praised.
That’s ‘game over’ for the time being. I shall do a different kind of sight-seeing tomorrow. There’s a fabulous canyon not far away and some waterfalls too, I believe. And they’ll take me at least a bit closer to Jo’burg, from where my plane flies back to the UK on Friday.
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