After going to bed at 10pm Tuesday night we awoke at 1.30am wed morning. We left for the Kruger National park at2am. We drove back towards Nelspruit (Where we had gone to see Susan on the weekend).
After being on the road about 3 minutes, I discovered we had left my cellphone behind. Ok I left it behind…Oh well, we won't need it will we…

It was good to drive with very little traffic.

As we started to get an hour away from Nelspruit around 5 we encountered a lot of trucks on the road. One must have been carrying bags of cement, and as I was doing around 130kph, in the darkness a bag of cement lay on the road. I only saw it at the last minute, and we hit it and the bag exploded causing a white cloud of dust through we couldn’t see and we just kept going straight through. It was just like in the movies!

After passing through Nelspruit, and having had no breakfast, we were still too early for anything to be open. We got to the Malelane gate of Kruger around 8am. Just before we got to the gate we saw a Buffalo (outside the park). You have to love Kruger, such a good area to view game.

We were staying at Berg en Dal rest camp about 15km from Malelane gate. We got there but it was too early to pick up our bungalow key. We booked a morning drive for the next day at Berg en Dal, and then the next night we were staying at another camp, Olifants so we booked a sunset drive for there. And paid for it I might add…So we went out and drove around. First we went towards Pretoriuskop rest camp. There we had lunch and bought a real Springbok! Hopefully they let it into Australia…

Then we had tried to travel to Skukuza, the biggest camp in Kruger based around the magnificent Sabie river (has a 9 hole golf course too!), where the big five are plentiful. We only got 2/3 of the way there, and had to head back to Berg en Dal to make it by 5.30pm. (When you are driving in Kruger there is a max speed limit of 50 on tarred roads and 40 on dirt roads. It takes a lot longer to drive distances than you think – due to animals, terrain etc)
Around 4.00pm it started to get cooler and a lot more animals were visible. (A lot of the more predatory animals are active at night due to the temperature being more suitable for being strenuous. Although that’s not the reason I run during the night!)

We were trying to get back and unfortunately seeing so many cool animals. Spotted Hyena, right on the side of the road. Rhino (which we need to check on video, because we think they may be the rare 200 only black Rhino, which nobody ever sees). And then about 5km from Berg en Dal, after 5pm there is a big group gathered around. We stop and ask what had been spotted. A leopard! Damn we don’t have time to stay and watch. Oh nevermind there are Lions just up the road, right close to the road. Ok…we hoon over there (at about 40kph), but we don’t have time (5.15pm) to find them as we can’t see them. Oh the frustration!!!

So we check in, and then have dinner. A magnificent 3 course buffet. We roll out of the restaurant and to our Bungalow. Rustic African accommodation that almost feels like you are outside, whilst you are inside.