African Tour:Kruger National Park part 3

After entering Kruger through the Phabeni Gate twice already, there was little point in going to the same area a third time. Realistically, there was a point. We cold have easily spent every day near Phabeni and still only scratched the surface. But since we all agreed that we wanted to cover as much ground as possible, it made more sense to enter and exit different gates. On our last day at the park, we took the Phalaborwa Gate, which is more than a two hour drive from Hazyview. That meant leaving our warm rooms by 03:00 and braving the cold, dark morning drive.

Not that it was cold. Even winters in Kaohsiung get colder than spring mornings in South Africa. The dark was different since we did most of our driving outside of Hazyview during daylight hours, but the drive to Phalaborwa was mostly one road and there was absolutely no traffic. Leaving extra early in the morning meant there were only three of us instead of four. One of the night owls could barely go to sleep by 03:00, let alone wake up. I could sympathize, but when you make an extra effort to go someplace that requires an early start, and the tiny town in the middle of nowhere has no night life to speak of, you might as well go to bed and wake up early.

Our first two days were mostly ambling around. The Phabeni and Crocodile Bridge gates are relatively close to each other. If you simply wanted to go in one and straight out the other, for some reason, you could probably do it in under three hours. Phabeni to Phalaborwa is a little farther, but that is the most narrow section of the park and you mostly drive north and south. The rest camps north of Skukuza are less interesting, so there is less reason to spend more time in one spot. The two gates on our last day were more than 200km apart. While it might sound easy to drive 200km in 13 hours, it can be challenging when you stop a lot to smell the roses, not to mention masticate and micturate.

I paid more attention to closing hours on the way to Punda Maria. We left the park by 18:30, as we did every day. We wanted to hit those gates right before they closed, while being careful not to stay too late. The fines to get out after they close the gates are steep, and they reserve the option to ban you from reentering the park. Since we had been driving north all day, we were as far from Hazyview as we were going to get. The drive home was about five hours, mostly during and just after sunset. It got dark pretty quickly on the country road with no street lights, but half the drive was the same way we took from Hazyview to Phalaborwa, so it was not completely unfamiliar. This was one of those times we were really glad there were gas stations inside the park.

After three days at Kruger, we had spotted all of the Big Five, except leopards, as well as several small families of cheetah, a few packs of dogs, maybe a hundred hippos bunched together in a river, who knows how many crocodiles mostly under the water, dozens of hyena and jackal, some warthogs, a few foxes, dozens of baboons and smaller monkeys, at least a hundred giraffes, even more wildebeest, and countless zebras. The most abundant animal we saw, by far, were the antelopes. There are more than a few species of antelope in Kruger. I could not even begin to guess which was which, but since there are more than 100,000 impala in the park, I can assume we saw a few of those.

Kruger also has hundreds of species of birds. I can tell the difference between an eagle, hawk, and stork, but I am not about to try and identify each species. Except the marabou stork. That one is pretty easy because it is so ugly. Ostriches were also easy, but we saw plenty of them in Cape Town.

I stayed in Hazyview for a few days, but know pretty much nothing about the town. Since we always left for Kruger early in the morning and came back after sunset, we saw nothing in town. All we did in Hazyview was sleep and go to the grocery store once.

Staying at a hotel outside the park seemed like a good idea at the time. With strict gate times, there is far more freedom of movement if you sleep outside. Since we arrived late on our first night, an outside hotel was the only option. In hindsight, staying at one of the lodges inside the park would have been more efficient, even though that also would have meant driving directly to the park and not seeing anything on the Panorama Route since the park gates close so early. The Blue Jay Lodge in Hazyview was quite nice. Phil and Margi are friendly hosts. I can easily recommend it. But if I ever go back, I will definitely stay inside Kruger.