Kruger Park

This past weekend, Laura and I visited one of Africa's treasures: Kruger National Park in South Africa. At 20,000 square kilometres, the enormous wildlife preserve is nearly three times larger than Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario.

Driving around the park is an experience that is stereotypically African. Kruger is famous for its animals. People come to observe animals commonly restricted to zoos living in their natural habitat. We spotted elephants, giraffe, lions, zebra, buffalo, hippopotamus and rhinocerus. Impala -- small deer-like animals -- are plentiful. Vervet monkeys and baboons are commonly seen playing on the side of the road.

Tourists come to Kruger Park to shoot (with a camera, of course) the Big Five game animals: lion, elephant, cape buffalo, rhinoceros and leopard. In previous centuries, these were the most sought-after by hunters because they were the most dangerous to hunt. We managed to spot four of the Big Five, but the fifth -- the leopard -- proved elusive.

Unlike Algonquin Park, which is great because campers are able to trade their car for a canoe and really experience the wilderness, tourists in Kruger are allowed out of their cars only at very specific and well-controlled points.

Even the most docile animals can be dangerous. We've heard on numerous occasions that the lazy hippopotamus kills more humans than any other animal.

Kruger National Park shares a border with Mozambique. Unfortunately, since Mozambique's civil war, these wonderful African animals have become extremely rare here -- in fact, we've yet to see any animals in the wild.

Some people have told us that they were killed by hungry soldiers. Some people have theorized that they were scared out of the country by the gunfire. They are gone, whatever the cause.

It's spring in the southern hemisphere, which means a couple of things: Kruger Park, like most of the continent, is very dry right now. The rainy season, along with the heat of summer, will start in a couple of months. It also means that we saw many animals with their young, like this young zebra feeding from its mother.

We couldn't cram all of the photos we wanted to onto a single web page, so we created a short video featuring some of the animals that we watched while driving around the park.

Our accommodation while in Kruger was a small chalet within a gated camp. For our protection, we were required to be within the gates by sundown (6:00pm).

Immediately out our front door (and past the electric fence) flowed the Sabie River, in which we saw elephant and hippopotamus at play, and a multitude of colourful birds. The rest camp also had a beautiful main lodge with a store, a cafeteria and a restaurant. We ate our meals sitting on a large veranda overlooking the Sabie River, with the warm Africans spring breeze blowing and birds serenading us from above.

(We heard that it snowed in Ontario this weekend.)

Kruger Park, less than a two-hour drive from our door in Maputo, is a great spot for relaxation after the intensity and stress of living in a foreign land. We can't wait to go back.