Wouter and Tanya’s Excellent Adventure, Part 7 (Kruger Day 5)

For our early drive I chose the H-7, S-36, S-126 route in the hope that the cheetah had ended up somewhere around there. This road circles a hunk of land about 200 square kilometers in size, so your chances are slim, maar nou ja. Did spot a tiny zebra though. And one of the lionesses from the waterbuck kill, in the riverbed under the road just south of Satara.

IMG_7094r

IMG_7096r

Zebra crossing (yea, I know).

P1110741r

Hooked the teardrop, headed south to Skukuza. Ran into the normal traffic jam, asked someone who told us there’s a male lion under a bush. Not too exciting for us, we’d seen plenty lions from much closer.

P1110744r

Squirrels at Tshokwane.

IMG_7136r

Ran into another traffic jam. Turns out there were two cheetah under a tree, 130 / 150-ish metres into the bush. This is as much as one often gets to see, we were extremely fortunate with our earlier sighting (there are not many more than 200 cheetah in the whole Kruger, although they are behind with the census taking, since they’re using the resources to fight poaching).

IMG_7143r

IMG_7170r

Three rhino, mommy daddy and baby, crossed the road and walked off. Couldn’t get all three of them in the same frame though.

IMG_7178r

And here we are, parked off at Skukuza.

P1110807r

P1110810r

P1110821r

On the night drive we saw a pack of wild dogs. Fifteen or so of them. This is a first for me.

One lion, three rhino, two cheetah and one pack of wild dogs.