Day 2, my one and only full day in the park, was going to be a long one. By rule, visitors are not allowed to leave the campsite until sunrise, and the gates remained closed overnight – for obvious reasons. But the Kruger rangers lead morning tours that get you out into the park about an hour before anyone else. So before the sun had even risen, I was up and ready to go.
We checked out a pond and spotted a Nile crocodile. From a very safe distance.
The park ranger knew the location of a hyena den, and the stop did not disappoint. The little ones were every curious, and came over to chew on the vehicle. Although the photos look bright, it was still pretty dark and the majority of my photos are blurry, despite my shooting at 6400 ISO.
We were then fortunate enough to run into some lions out for a morning stroll (you can see in the video below how dark it was still). They didn’t seem to care about us, and in fact walked right past the jeep as if we didn’t exist. Which was good, because we were in an uncovered vehicle, and if they wanted they could have had us all for breakfast pretty easily.
After the successful lion encounter, a helicopter buzzed in the distance, and out of nowhere a truck with armed soldiers rolled past us. After an initial “holy !#@$ we’re about to be murdered!” my fear subsided as it became clear the soldiers had no interest in us. Apparently some poachers had been spotted, which could only mean one thing: there were rhinos near by. It took quite a while to find them (there were 2), as they were very far away. This is the best I could do:
And then we ran across a buffalo – 3 of the ‘big five‘ in one morning. Not bad! Then it was back to camp, a quick bite to eat, and I was off…
