Heidi tells us about our weekend off in Mpumalanga...
On Saturday we woke up at 4am to get ready to leave by 5am. We all got on the minibus and had an hour drive to Kruger National Park, once we got there we went straight in to try to see all the animals. We started out in the park at 6am and straight away we saw a large herd of zebras
and also a herd of impalas too, within a 10 minute drive we saw many more zebras and impalas and even wildebeests. As we were driving we saw many eagles and different species of birds, later in that hour we saw a small group of about 5 vervet monkeys swinging on the trees right next to the minibus. As we continued to drive we later crossed paths with an elephant the later a family of 4 elephants and many more as we carried on driving.
We were driving for about another hour and we saw many more elephants, zebras, wildebeests, monkeys and impalas. The minibus suddenly came to a halt as we saw a very small tortoise slowly walking across the road, after it had crossed our path we carried on driving. We saw in the distance a giraffe eating of the trees, but we couldn’t see it very clearly as it was behind many other trees and bushes.
We had a lunch break where we all got to stretch our legs, have something to eat and look around the gift shop, after the hour long break we got back into the minibus and carried on our safari. We were about 8 hours through our visit and we passed another car saying that had seen a glimpse of a lion, so we followed their car for a bit but unfortunately didn’t see one. We carried on and then saw a large group of impalas running and a wild dog chasing after them, about 5 minutes later we saw a wild dog lying on the side of the road having a rest. As we continued to drive we saw 4 hyenas lying down in the middle of an open grassy area, but then after a few more minutes later we saw a very small baby hyena standing in an opening by itself, but we carried on watching it for a couple of minutes, then it steadily walked into its den which was right next to it. We decided to drive down to the watering hole but on the way down to there we saw in the distance a large group of baboons playing near the water, bouncing around the trees and in and out of the shallow water. We drove all the way to the top of a hill and from there we were able to see the most of the park from where we were standing, as we got to the watering hole we saw a group of hippopotamus’s half submerged in the water, then on the other side we saw a crocodile floating on the top of the water in the distance. At this time we were about 10 hour through the safari and decided to start heading back, but we were stopped in our tracks as a giraffe stood right in front of our minibus and slowly walked past into the grassland on the opposite side of us.
But after we saw this we headed back to Hands at Work.
Today we luckily had a lie in as we were very tired from yesterday and woke up at 8am and left at 9. We had a 2 and a half hour drive to our first stop off point at the Blyde River Canyon (the three rondavels) where we saw amazing views despite the fog and rain, there were mini stalls we could go and see to spend some of our money on little gifts for our friends and family.
We continued on with our journey to our second stop (Bourke’s luck potholes) where we saw many potholes and an amazing waterfall. We were able to see the views from all angles as there were many different levels we could walk up to and bridges we could cross.
After the sightseeing we had our dinner at Harrie’s pancakes where we had, as you probably already guessed, pancakes!
Right after we ate we went into the small gift shops next to the diner and got some more gifts, then after this we started our journey back.
Heidi.