June 13 – Kruger National Park

We woke up bright and early to drive through Kruger National Park! We entered through the Crocodile Gate and exited through a gate by Hazyview where we were staying that night. Kruger was awesome, so much beautiful open land teeming with game. I saw water buffalo, hippos, crocodile and rhinos for the first time! Seeing rhinos was really lucky.

 Thus I completed seeing the Big 5: lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant and rhino! (I had seen lion and leopard in the Kalahari). We also saw lots of giraffes, zebra, elephant, baboons, monkeys, kudu, impala, warthog, wildebeest, ostrich, a bushbok, eagles, and all sorts of other gorgeous birds.

Driving along the Sabie River was really cool because we got to see a bunch of hippos and elephant. At our lunch picnic stop, the monkeys were not shy at all and were experts at stealing people’s food. They swiped two apples from us, and when Kat tried to scare one away, it almost jumped on her. Unfortunately, we did not see any big cats today.

That night we stayed at an awesome hostel in Hazyview called the Gecko Backpackers with a really nice host and a fun vibe. We all got game meat for dinner. I got an ostrich burger, Chandler a Kudu steak, and Katerina got springbok. After dinner we enjoyed sitting at the backpackers bar watching the rugby game of the Stormers versus the Sharks and talking to the host about rugby.