All entries for Thursday 05 August 2004

August 05, 2004

Kruger Park safari 2004

Writing about web page http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/rbotoole/gallery/botswana_sa_2004/

Now we're back in Gaborone, just around the corner from Mma Ramotswe's house in Zebra Way. The weather is rather strange. It has been as cold as a Kalahari winter should be, but sometimes very hot, and also raining slightly – in the dry season! Climate change? And even more odd, whilst we were in the Kruger Park, 800km to the South East, we experienced a full-on tropical storm complete with constant thunder throughout the night and followed by a day of heavy rain. Seeing drenched zebra's is not what we expected, but was interesting all the same. It also presented the rare sight of big leopard tortoise's crawling along the roads.

The rest of the ten days that we spent in the park were sunny and hot enough. As ever in the Kruger, we saw plenty of bull elephants, large herds of buffaloes, giraffes, zebras, nyala antelopes and many, many impalas. Unusually, we found a big breeding herd of elephants. We also saw a family of hyenas sleeping right next to the road. The birds were excellent as usual, including:

  • Owls: Scops, Pearlspotted (heard), Marsh, Whitefaced (heard)
  • Eagles: Bateleur, Tawny, Martial, Brown Snake Eagle
  • Black-Shouldered Kite
  • Hornbills: Giant Ground, Yellow, Red, Grey
  • Vultures (about 100 at a waterhole): Lappetfaced, Cape
  • Kingfishers: Giant, Malachite, Brown Hooded, Woodland, Pied
  • Whitefronted Bee-eater (in a cliffside colony)
  • Cardinal Woodpecker

All of that in the North of the park, which is still recovering from the floods of 2000 that submerged much of the Limpopo area. As if the piles of ripped-up trees aren't enough to demonstrate the severity of the disaster, the KNP have positioned signs indicating the maximum flood level, in some places 20 feet above the ground.

Other highlights include a family of hyenas, a rather odd nightdrive (more soon), and many braiis (bbqs) and breakfasts.

You can see some pictures from our digital camera in this gallery. I'll be developing the SLR photos when we get home.


Robert O'Toole : 05 Aug 2004 10:18 |  Comments (3) |  Report a problem