The safari time we spent in Kruger NP during our trip to South Africa was certainly the highlight of our trip and forever changed where I rate “nature and wildlife” attractions on my travel bucket list. But the wildlife experience had some major competition when I contemplated what I most loved about our South Africa trip.
Cape Town
I’m sure that Johannesburg has some wonderful things going for it but my research told me that with limited time to go directly to Cape Town and so we only stayed in Joberg for as long as it took us to fly in and out. But what a jewel Cape Town is! Just the physical beauty of the natural layout with the mountains meeting the sea and Table Mountain looming over the city is memorable. Combine that with fine dining, incredible beaches, and a cosmopolitan melting pot atmosphere with friendly people and you have a real winner.
Take the tram up to Table Mountain for the view above. You can climb up if you like or you can climb down which we decided was the better plan. Table Mountain can be finicky with clouds covering the top or winds shutting down the tram so if your stay is short check the weather reports and be ready to go when the conditions are good.
Table Mountain in the background with its cloud cap on.
Sunset at Camps Bay – a beach community 15 miles from Cape Town.
The beach town of Camps Bay with the Twelve Apostles in the background.
Wine Country
And Cape Town wasn’t the only thing that was close to beating out the wildlife viewing on as tops on our list of attractions. The wine country around Stellenbosch, Franschhoek and Paarl is easily the most picturesque wine country we have ever visited. We can’t say that the wine itself was the best we’ve had but the wine tasting experience was top notch with beautiful wineries and friendly and well informed folks pouring the wine. All reports I have seen since our trip say that the quality and consistency of South Africa’s wine industry continues to improve and they are doing some very nice things with Pinotage, Pinotage blends and Chenin Blanc. In addition, the wines represent quite a value particularly with the current strength of the U.S. dollar.
Some of the wineries that we enjoyed included: Kanankop, Glen Carlou, Fairview (Goats do Roam), Ernie Els Wines, Boekenhoutskloof, and Rust En Vrede.
The Garden Route
Also vying for contention were the highlights of driving through the cities of what is affectionately referred to as the Garden Route.
The Stoney Point Penguin Colony at Betty’s Bay was a wonderful side trip on our first day on the Garden Route. Hundreds of penguins including many chicks could be seen busily waddling about their business. The smell? Not so great. But you get used to it and the penguins in their natural habitat makes for a great photo opportunity.
Not too much further up the Garden Route and you get to Hermanus. A quaint town known for its whale watching. Their are wineries in the area and several golf courses and it is a popular retirement spot.
We continued along the Indian Ocean coast line to Mossel Bay where we spent the night before cutting inland to visit the ostrich farms of Oudtshoorn. That is not cattle ranch in the picture above but of many huge ostrich farms in the Oudtshoorn area. This town of 80,000 inhabitants contains the world’s largest concentration of ostriches. You can buy feathers, meat, eggs and pretty much any other ostrich bi-product you can think of.
Just on the outskirts of Oudtshoorn are the Cango Caves. Tours take you down into a cave system with huge theater sized halls with spectacular rock formations and multi-colored grottoes.
We returned to the coast and stopped in at the towns of George, Wilderness, Knysna, Plettenberg Bay and finally to the surfing mecca of Jeffreys Bay pictured above.
From J-bay we drove to the airport at Port Elizabeth and flew to Durban. We spent two nights in Durban and probably could have given it the miss altogether. To be fair, I think we chose poorly by staying in the heart of Durban when we really should have stayed at some of the suburban beach towns instead. From Durban we flew to Nelspruit which is the gateway to Kruger National Park.
Kruger National Park
Kruger National Park can give you the safari experience without paying the $200 dollar a night fees at a safari lodge on a private game reserve. Within a half hour of entering through the park gates we had close encounters with rhinos, zebra, giraffes, baboons and elephants along with a host of antelope type creatures. Elephant traffic jams like those seen above were common occurrences.
We were in the park for a total of 4 nights staying in three different camps as we worked our way through Kruger. We didn’t see lions until the 3rd day and were afraid we were going to miss out but after the first sighting we had 4 more separate lion sightings in the last two days.
It was not crowded when we were there but there were enough other people and tour companies on the roads that you could safely assume that if a couple of vehicles were stopped then there were animals to be seen. We came upon the rhino above within 10 minutes of entering the park. In this case we were the only car to see the rhino and we watched him graze from 25 meters from the safety (relative) of our compact car. He never gave us any mind as he went about munching on grass.
We saw the entire “big five” which for your reference refers to the lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and the cape buffalo. These may not be the ones you most want to see but they were coined the big 5 by big game hunters who felt these were the 5 most dangerous and difficult animals to bring down. We hadn’t been in water buffalo territory early on and then one early morning just after leaving the campground we turned the corner and we were smack in the middle of a entire herd of about 100 water buffalo. We stopped and stared, they stared back and they moved on.
Personally I found the giraffes, hippos, baboons, hyaenas, warthogs, monkeys, Kudu, and the amazing variety of birds to be just as cool as the big five.
Inside the camps which are fenced for your protection are a variety of accommodations from tents, to yurts to lodge rooms for your sleeping comfort. We could hear the hyenas making noise in the night and the occasional cry when one animal became the food of another animal.
The camps had supply and gift stores, restaurants, and in one case a pool.
Through the National Park website you could reserve your accommodations and arrange guided night tours in order to see some of the more nocturnal creatures. One of our lion and our best leopard sighting occurred on one of these guided tours.
There is a lot of information available about the best routes to take to see certain types of animals. By far we saw more and different types of animals early in the morning and in the evening than at any other time.
Four nights and five days seemed about the right amount of time. You do become a tiny bit jaded after you have seen your ten thousandth impala. But each and every day something we witnessed out of the blue totally astonished us. Like having baboons swoop down into our “fenced off” lunch area to grab lunch items from the neighboring table. Or the sight above where we actually left our car and walked through a fenced area to a blind where we were able to witness a pack of elephants frolicking in the water.
The People
Even though some of the people live in townships like those pictured below and face a far rougher life than us, we felt totally welcomed by everyone we met within South Africa. People were helpful to us at every turn and seemed genuinely happy about the state of their nation and the direction it was going in.
Itinerary – Oct. 2007
We actually stopped in London for a couple of nights in route to South Africa and that broke up the trip a little bit and made the going a little easier. On the way back we had a 10 hour layover so we hopped a bus to Windsor and visited the castle and walked about the quaint town.
Day 1: Arrive in Johannesburg at 9:00 am – Fly to Capetown – Arrive 2:00 pm
Day 2: Capetown
Day 3: Capetown
Day 4: Rent Car – Leave Capetown for Stellenbosch & Wine Country
Day 5: Wine Tasting – Paarl & Franshoek
Day 6: Garden Route to Hermanus – Stop at Penguin Colony in Betty’s Bay on the way. Stay the night in Hermanus
Day 7: Hermanus – Whale Watching – Drive to Mossel Bay and spend the night.
Day 8: Mossel Bay to Oudtshorn – Kanga Caves, Ostrich Farm – to Knysna
Day 9: Knysna to Plettenburg Bay to Jeffreys Bay
Day 10: Jeffreys Bay to Port Elizabeth – Fly to Durban
Day 11: Durban
Day 12: Durban – Fly to Nelspruit
Day 13: Rent car – drive to Malelane Gate of Kruger NP. Drive to Skukuza and on to Lower Sabie campground
Day 14: Lower Sabie to Crocodile Bridge – Lower Sabie – Tshokwane – Satara Campground
Day 15: Satara – Tshokwane via Landanda – return to Satara
Day 16: Satara to Oliphants. Oliphants to Letaba Campground
Day 17: Letaba to Englehard Dam. Letaba to Phalaborwa Gate – Exit Kruger NP – drive to Johannesburg – Fly to London and then home.