26th January 2016 South Africa - Safari

Tuesday 26th January 2016 South Africa
Tip: Tips for the tour guides are expected. We usually gave our driver 100 Rand at the end of the day. This was what everyone on the tour gave. If you have a bus driver and tour guide it is often expected that you give both a tip.

Early rise. Wake up call at 5.0 am - no breakfast, just a cup of coffee and off in a jeep to Kruger National Safari Park. Don't worry you don't feel hungry you are in Africa! You don't have time to feel hungry.

What was to be a 30 minute drive turned out to be 90 minutes. Somehow the clocks tick differently in Africa. We entered the park around 7.0 am and again were the same group of 7 as on the previous day. Our sightings were slow. We sighted some antelopes and zebras but then things moved slowly. At 9.30 am our driver pulled into a picnic area and we stopped for breakfast. Our tour continued and as our sightings were slow, we were satisfied with birds for a while hoping for an elephant sooner or later. We spotted such birds as the Black -bellied Starling or cape glossy starling. At one stage I wished David Copperfield was on board to put some wildlife into the bare scene in front of us. Sightings were not good until after lunch when our luck changed. Elephants, Hippos, and finally a Leopard. The Leopard was the most difficult to sight. Our guide picked up a tip where one had been sighted and found it quite fast, however, it rook him at least 10 minutes to show each one of us where it was. It was under a tree with leaves covering its face about 150. meters away from us. The guide tried to take a photo with my camera for me but could not handle my equipment so I climbed over seats and railings to get to the front of the vehicle and after following his finger pointing for about three minutes finally sighed number 5 of "THE BIG FIVE". I was the only one to be able to take a photo with my 400 mm lens and consequently offered to share this photo with all the other passengers. We were all happy campers now!
By the time we left the park we had now on our first two safaris seen all of the African BIG FIVE!