Kruger Park & Southern Zimbabwe

From Windhoek, Namibia we hopped on a 1850 kilometre bus ride to Johannesburg; the highlights included a border crossing at 1:30 a.m. and a 5:00 a.m. bus transfer. Arriving in Johannesburg, a strange thing happened; it rained (our first rain since June).

We house-sat for a week in Joburg and did "normal" things like watch videos (Bonzo, the dog was only interested in the animal parts) and sleep in a bed.

From Joburg, we set out for Kruger National Park in oulr rented "mini-magnum", a brand-new Mazda 323. Whereas in Etosha National Park in Namibia, the animals practically walk over each other at the waterholes in the dry season, in Kruger you have to look for the game, but there is an impressive variety of animals, plenty of big cats and good photographic opportunities. It took us 13 days to work our way from south to north (Crocodile Bridge to Pufari) in Kruger. We braved the 6:00 a.m. rush hour queue awaiting the camp gate opening at the larger camps. Lion kills along main roads attracted huge quantities of vehicles, but the park has a mixture of tar roads and quieter dirt roads (2,000 km in all). We had a baboon ride on top of our car, we had 4 monkeys in our tent and 2 dwarf mongoose inside a dirty 1 litre pot. Up at Shingwedzi, the mid-day temperatures soared so we stayed there 3 nights and drank gin and tonics by the pool during the middle of the day; there is nothing like going on safari in your bathing suit!

In 1999 it was surprisingly affordable: a 5 USD one-time entry fee and a nightly camping fee of about 5 USD/person. Our car cost us 16 USD/day, so with fuel, food and booze it cost us about 20 USD/person/day.

Best Campsite: Balule has no electricity (lighting by hurricane lamps). It has great hot showers and we had 7 hyaenas next to our tent (on the other side of the fence) and a herd of elephant pass within meters of our tent another night. The campsite was developed for the Asians during the apartheid years. The 5:15 a.m. wake-up call is a chorus of lion roars, hyaena hooping, hippo laughing and francolin squawking.

Keep Kruger Clean: Staff regularly clean-up elephant dung off the paved roads (elephant drop 120 kg of "fertilizer" each day).

Which animal would you rather be? Giraffe sleep 20 minutes a day. Lion sleep 20 hours a day. Elephants eat 16-18 hours a day.

We then crossed over the chaotic Beitbridge border in Zimbabwe. Bicycles, plastic washbasins and huge bags of cheese puffs seemed to be the thing to bring into Zimbabwe and a full tank of gas and woodcarvings were the things to bring back into South Africa. We saw over a thousand up-side down trees (Baobab) on our journey to the Chimanimani Mountains.

With assurance from a local guide that land mines are no longer an issue, we set off on foot with our hand-drawn map through the rugged Chimanimani National Park over Skeleton Pass (an ancient slave traders route) into Mozambique (illegally, of course). We eventually found Martin's Falls (about 150 metres high) and plenty of caves used by poachers (snaring Klipspringers), while romping around the surprisingly wild area.

On returning to the Zimbabwe side of the Chimanimani, we slept in 'Digbys' Cave" overlooking Digbys' Falls only to discover it was infested with fleas (bed bugs or something that leaves blood on your sheets) which happily munched our bodies for a number of days, despite our best interest to rid ourselves of them. We are still scratching. Sheila's interest in bugs seems to exclude the types that bite her.

We then visited the Great Zimbabwe ruins which were shrouded in mist, adding to their mystery and surprising size. Zimbabwe has lovely people, a good road system but a sad, deteriorating economy.

We decided to return to Joburg vie Kruger, this time scratching our way from north to south in 4 days. On our last afternoon, we were caught sleeping at the switch. Waiting out a 15 minute shower, we pulled over on a dirt road and began to read. When we looked up there was a massive rhino crossing the road about 15 metres in front of us, disappearing back into the tall grass. We figured we had missed out on him doing a jig for us.

So ends our luxury Southern Africa tour. Fat and happy, we now leave our motor vehicles, cooler, brai grill, chairs, pillows, propane stove, coffee maker and 5 litre box wines behind. We get back on the saddle…off to Madagascar for 2 months!