Kruger National Park

Warning: Some of the photographs in this post show violence and blood between wild animals.

 

Kruger National Park is located in the northeast of South Africa. We stayed at Kings Camp, which was on a private subsection of the park called Timbavati. Although Timbavati is privately owned, there are no fences separating it from the larger national park, and the wild animals can roam freely. On the drive from the airport to the camp, we got a definite sense that we were not in Kansas…

Our room at Kings Camp made us feel like old-timey British hunters:

There was never a dull moment at Kings Camp. We would get 5:30AM wakeup calls, followed by coffee and a 3 hours morning game drive. We’d return to the camp to rest, eat lunch, and fight off monkeys who wanted to eat your lunch.

This was followed by an afternoon game drive, which included beautiful sunsets that lasted for hours, and led to late dinner back at camp.

The first morning, we were enjoying our 5:45AM coffee and someone called out “there are wild dogs on the property”. Sure enough, two wild dogs had cornered a kudu (a type of antelope) at the watering hole. We watched the dogs circling and our guide told us that they have an 80% kill rate on their hunts, highest of any predator in Kruger.

Moments later, the kudu made a run for it and the dogs were ready for him. We jumped in our jeep, since walking into wild breakfast would have been a dangerous plan, and went in for a closer look. In the 30 seconds it took us to drive around a bush, a hyena had showed up to steal some meat.

Hyenas have magnificent hearing and smell, and within another minute, a second hyena showed up:

Another minute passed, and a third hyena arrived, announcing to the two wild dogs that it was time for them to leave.

Within 10 minutes, the entire kudu was gone. A larger pack of hyenas showed up and demonstrated their internal hierarchy by letting a pregnant mother eat while the pack chased off the initial trio. Nature doesn’t let anything go to waste, as the hyenas eat everything except the teeth and anything they miss will be picked up by vultures and other scavengers. Watching the kill was hard but seeing the hyenas let the pregnant mother feed and knowing that wild dogs are endangered helped us understand the circle of life. Plus, wild dogs are adorable.

Our game drives were a magical experience filled with unbelievable close encounters with wild animals of all shapes and sizes, including tiny tree squirrels,

Kudu (with tiny oxpecker bird on her back),

white rhino,

 And a herd of about 50 elephants that came right up to our jeep:

Lastly, our blog is not called “Elephants all over the world”, so we spent the better part of two days tracking this beautiful lady who finally let us hunt with her on the third morning:

– Phil & Jessie

 

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