Kruger Park Capers

Would you believe I fought tooth and nail not to go to the game park?

"Nah - I don't wanna go.

Don't wanna take malaria pills and anyway, I've seen plenty of wild animals on TV - why would I want to go look at more?

Seen one, seen 'em all."

I don't know if it has come up before on this blog, but one of my staples is eating my own words.

You'd think I wooda learned by now, but sweeping statements still tend to flow freely from this mouth.

So -

the truth?

I LOVED it!

The 6 bungalows at Tinga all face the river and are completely private so you feel kinda Adam and Evish: only African animal and bird noises break the almost tangible silence.

God seems nearer there. . . .

Maybe its the enforced stillness: the lack of the technology that can always woo us away from our centre: or slowing down and just being. . .

It doesn't matter - its enough that it happens.

Anyway, the bungalows were incredibly luxurious: check the bathroom -

Actually, it was the view from the double, DEEP bath that got me.

We spent ages lying up to our necks in hot water, just gazing out of the window: a sunny (we had great weather) tree-strewn stretch down to the Sabi River, where game strolled around right under our noses.

We also had fantastic back massages on the deck of our cabin (my first!)

Mary arrived with a super-comfortable bed, opened it up, swathed it and us in soft towels, and got to work. The last word in luxury as far as I am concerned.

But speaking of luxury - the FOOD!!!!!!!!!

The most fabulous food was laid on 4 times a day on the deck of the main building.

Of course, I am built even more for comfort now than before - but SO worth it.

Then twice a day - at 6.30am and 4.30pm, we went on 3 hour game drives with our ranger (William) and tracker (Chris), who were phenominal at finding animals.

We saw so much game, at such close quarters - sometimes scarily close quarters!

We had an encounter with an enormous male elephant - the biggest our ranger had ever seen, he said (in "must" or "musk" or something - anyway, he was wanting to be a papa again in the worst way!) within 2 yards of us.

William and Chris told us that they are extremely aggressive and dangerous when they are in that state.

No kidding!

Good to know when you're sitting helplessly a couple of feet from it!

They told us all not to move, speak or breathe.

Then William shouted at it (apparently thats an ok thing to do if you know what you're doing and can sound authoritarian enough).

The ele seemed to take forever to decide whether he was going to charge us, tip us over and trample us to a pulp - or just go away

I thought my heart was going to race right out of my chest - MM confessed to some serious prayer. He was the closest to it - probably could have reached out and touched it.

This pic is obviously not of that incident - This is another bout with ele's - SO many babies around.

But the cherry on the top was a pair of lions in Spring time mood, right next to the road. This is not taken with a telephoto lens - they were this close.

You can see the road in the bottom right hand corner of the lower pic. . .

An unbelievablely rare thing to witness - I wish I could show you the video of the male lion's behaviour aferwards: how he protected her from the other lionesses in the area, standing guard between her and them.

Of course,it had its scary moments: it's "freeze: don't move or speak - no cameras" moments too - when both lions glared straight at the people in the vehicle.

Everyone else in the vehicle (I dunno what else to call our transport. . .) was either American or Italian (all honeymooners!)

Boy! Do they have stories to tell back home!

As do we!