South Africa | Farming | Kruger

South Africa:

Day 1:

Woke up at 4:30am. Peacocks up also.


The Giraffes are real and hilarious when they run.

"Thinks are looking good" indicates Paulette.

Or Not. But many blue suits means successful pass is imminent.

Or Not. The truck does not make it and Dane is left to ponder.

After a lack of hard work a break is enjoyed, a common theme.

Or just time for posing on the farm.

Part 2:

Home at 5:30-6ish and rested the sunburn. Had a early night in bed around 9, a developing theme. Really annoyed that the tripod was forgotten. But this feeling departed when it was realised that what really was forgotten was a better/bigger camera. [A genius solution awaits...]

Looking out for something.

Oh look! Black Wilderbeast.

Eland, cow-like. fatties. EDIT: Actually Redheartbeast. We ate all the eland, delicious delicious eland.

A triple of failed pictures at the highest point of the farm leaves us with one which we are comfortable at letting you see.

A big rock! Exploring follows.


We find a cave. Paulette and her Auntie Betsie.

The exploring is cut short due to rain and our cowardliness. The pictures of running away from the big rock as we were about to see if we could climb it got wet.

Day2: We are in South Africa

SA: Day 2

A particularly warm day, people were excited that we brought the good weather with us as it had been raining for the previous two weeks. Hence getting stuck on the farm with ease. So to recover from the jetlag and stay cool we headed to Badplaas.

Thingys. Round Thingys. On entering badplaas we were told "swimming costumes are important". We followed this rule reluctantly.

A series of self shot photos but Paulette thinks this is the best. Danielle managed to take about 117 photos in 5minutes without speed burst turning into a bonafide Japanese tourist.

Danielle too keen for something and drags Dane along as Paulette has no self confidence in upper body strength exercises. Jacques, one of many of Uys' cousins looks on.

Coming in to Land

Graceful landing to the disappointment of the crowd and photographer Paulette ready to capture failures.

A slide, A slide. Childhood memories reborn. Dane Wins (in style).

Another picture for Laura, notice the natural state actually being on your backside.

Day 3: Farming

Day 3 was another warm day - Mucked about on the farm before starting a fire.


Redheartbeast looking intently at us in the morning. He was a bit of a loner.

Fire.

The giraffes came out to look at the fire at one stage. Thankfully the fire was kept under control. Apparently summer is the best time for burning because it is wet season dry Winter is bad. Nonetheless we still experienced Danie and Betsie's pyromaniac tendencies.

Very pretty part of the farm. Seat and plaque where Grandpa's ashes are held.

Skull. Ask danie what it is, he will know as he found it alive.

Aww, somebody was tired. Paulette poses as she decides to let her sleep instead of waking to eat dinner.

Day 4: Kruger Crusing

Day 4:

Drive from farm to Kruger National Park flying through Nelspruit early in the morning. A bit of poor planning leads us to driving to Crocodile entrance gate about a km from the Mozambique border.

Very warm day passing 100 Fahrenheit. Deadly quiet from 12pm-3pm but some good viewings early and late.

The lack of camera and tripod combo is again a sore point, also is the continual 'slow down' of the passengers to the driver.

Paulette investigating an Elephant Skull. Our plan was to see an alive one but just in case we take a picture. Driving past a tourist guide he told us, "it's quiet it's quiet.. they are all dead". Filled with confidence we continued with keen eyes.

Following three other cars Paulette yells to stop. As we were going too quickly we had to reverse 50m, every metre Paulette less sure of what she saw only for us to find a female koedoe less than a metre from the road. And all the other cars missed it. Paulette won the spotto.

Elephant! Real Elephants! However the camera is at 3x zoom so all it is is a speck in the distance. 3 sets of binoculars in the car so we can see them better than we can take photos. Genius Solution. Binoculars + camera as seen in this picture. 10x zoom + 3x zoom and now we have a wider range of vision.

Turns out a better solution just might be to wait for them to cross the road. Cars scramble to get away from a herd of elephants about to cross the road regardless if we are there or not. We choose life. These were some of the last cars we saw for the day.

Blue Wilderbeast with binocular vision. I doubt we would've have seen him behind the tree without it.

Can't leave without seeing Zebra. Enough of them, but more of Impala. So plentiful were the Impala that we don't really want to see another so we haven't put any up for you to see.

What is this? A warthog in a drain pipe? Apparently, who knows why but we found him digging himself out.

Walking away is a mini warthog and two parents.

Also a mini monkey who was endless entertainment.

Well aren't you lucky those that viewed this far. We did put some Impala in for you to see, Probability is on your side as the Kruger has about 150,000 of them. They are pretty stupid which seemed to give Danie reason enough to try and run them down. He insisted he was just having a race but....