A Father's Playground

Kruger National Park is one of the largest parks in South Africa, the size of New Jersey. As we drove into the park we were reading the rules. The number one rule is that you are not allowed to leave your car outside of established camps. Apparently one of the game rangers stopped to relieve himself one day and never got his zipper up before a lion made him a quick lunch.

Before we got to our first camp, Lower Sabie, we had seen elephants, impalas, kudos, giraffes, hippos, wart hogs, and a huge lizard. You have to make it into the enclosed camps before 6:30 or you get locked out. The idea of four of us sleeping in an SUV along with our luggage was not appealing so we made sure we got there in time.

Each camp is surrounded by an electric fence which keeps the animals out. Correct that, most of the animals out, while I am writing this, two big baboons just walked by (about 10 feet away) off our back porch, turning over trash cans and getting a quick snack as they went.

Lower Sabie is along the Sabie River. Most of these camps have a little grocery store, cafeteria and other services, much like you would find in a US national park. Lynne and John are staying in a tent and Lou and I are staying in a bungalow. Both accommodations have a nice bathroom, beds, dressers, and a back porch or deck. The porch has a sink, two burner stove, refrigerator, patio table and a grill. Our bungalow is air conditioned.

During the night you can hear the hippos grunting in the river and each morning you awake to a chorus of birds. Yesterday we saw four cheetahs all standing together. They crossed over the road a couple of times before they disappeared in the bush. From a blind beside one of the rivers there was a pod of hippos, grunting and playing about 20 yards away.

One thing that has really added to this trip is Ashlie's collection music that she downloaded on my I-Pod right before we left. Last night we had an outdoor barbeque under a million stars, with James Taylor for entertainment and a menu of ostrich pate and grilled wildebeast.

We did our first walking safari in Kruger this morning, we were up and gone by 4:30am. On the way to our starting point we saw a leopard just standing on the side of the road. We had two armed rangers with us as we walked for about 2 1/2 hours across the African savannah. Africa is truly amazing!