December 2015

Wouter and Tanya’s Excellent Adventure, Part 1

(I’m back-dating these posts. This will probably confuse both my readers, but it will make sense in the archives. I hope).

So it was decided that we would take a trip to the Kruger National Park. At first we thought the kids would come with, but they got a better offer :-) and it ended up being just the two of us. Hey, the fewer the merrier.

Two people can fit everything and a tent in a car, but I’d already decided to take the teardrop, which still needed some more work. But all’s well that ends well, so on Wednesday the 9th of December we headed north.

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The mission: Tanya wanted to see leopards and cheetahs. Preferably leopard and cheetah cubs. Playing with one another. In a tree. Oh and maybe some lions too. And I’d never seen wild dogs so that was on my list.

Tall order, I know :-/

So being, well, me, I joined the sanparks forum and started doing research. Turns out that the Lower Sabie / Skukuza / Pretoriuskop area is the place for cats, with Satara being good for lions. Or so they say. So I went online to book (the online booking is excellent. Possibly the best I’ve encountered anywhere). This was at the beginning of July, and places were already starting to fill up. I would have liked three nights at Lower Sabie, could only get two. At this stage we didn’t know whether the kids were coming with, so I booked the campsites for two people — you can change this when you arrive in camp, pay the difference.

The itinerary:

  • 2015-12-09: Wednesday: Drive to Bloemfontein
  • 2015-12-10: Thursday: Drive to Nelspruit
  • 2015-12-11: Friday: Get up early, get into the park as early as possible, camp at Lower Sabie
  • 2015-12-12: Saturday: Lower Sabie
  • 2015-12-13: Sunday: Drive up to Satara
  • 2015-12-14: Monday: Satara
  • 2015-12-15: Tuesday: Drive to Skukuza
  • 2015-12-16: Wednesday: Drive to Pretoriuskop
  • 2015-12-17: Thursday: Pretoriuskop
  • 2015-12-18: Friday: Spend as much time in the park as possible, leave in the afternoon, overnight at Witbank
  • 2015-12-19: Saturday: Pick up toys first thing in the morning, head south, see how far we get
  • 2015-12-20: Sunday: Get home
  • 2015-12-21: Wouter back at work for a couple of days.

I didn’t really have much of a plan about where to stop over — The Formula 1 (now SUN1) chain is always good, but we have the teardrop so camping it is. Somewhere along the way I googled it and came up with Reyneke Park. Phoned them, they had lots of space, so that’s where we went.

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Didn’t even bother to unhitch the teardrop.