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Usually we visit South Africa in september when it is still “cold” and not green yet. But I always wanted to see Kruger when there is water in the natural waterholes and the migratory birds are still around. Thus, when we stumbled upon a special offer by SAA, we decided to go in march this year.

I was a little bit worried going to a very hot, wet and green park. Reading other trip reports, I was afraid we were not going to have any sightings at all.

In regard to this we thought that it does not matter, if we do not see any lions, having had many sightings before. I would be very happy if we see wild dogs, maybe animals we have never seen before and many lifers. Of course, leopard, being my favourite animal, was on the wish list as well.

28.02.2013 – 01-03-2013

We left Germany on a sunny but cold winter day and arrived in Johannesburg on march 1st. It took us over an hour to get through immigration, which is quite unusual. Finally we could pick up our car, which went smooth. I was surprised that it was quite chilly in South Africa. At about 11 am we left the airport and arrived in Nelspruit at about 2 pm. Actually, this was the first time ever we did not take a wrong turn at the airport.

We had decided to stay at a guest house the first night to give us enough time to do our shopping. We had made a reservation by e-mail four days before and were surprised that we did not receive a confirmation – maybe it arrived after we had left. Nevertheless we went straight to the guest house. We nearly did not get in as we ran out of airtime while we tried to call them to open the gate.

We were greeted by a very nice guy who knew nothing about a reservation. He called reservations and we were informed that the computer system lost all e-mails since it was struck by lightning. Unfortunately, they gave our room to someone else and were fully booked. The lady at reservations told us that this is not a problem. She will book us into another guest house. We waited on the verandah and were offered some coffee and cookies.

After a while the nice guy returned and told us that the other guest houses were fully booked as well and he was going to move out of his room to make place for us. How kind of him. They started the cleaning right away and we could move in a short while later. What a relief.

It started drizzling when we left the guest house at 4 pm to do our shopping. Our first stop was at the MTN store to buy some airtime for our phone and a dongle. No problem with the airtime since we had a SIM card already. But we did not have our passports with us. Thus – no dongle. Well, we will have to return tomorrow.

Then we went to shop for groceries. As it was close to 7 pm by now and we were tired after the long trip, we only grabbed some slices of pizza at the Spar which we ate at the guest house and went to bed early.

I am (very much) looking forward to reading this trip report, Gatita !

Agree with matty sounds like this can be a trip FULLLLL of memories i want to read ....btw what is a drongo?

I love green Kruger, Gatita and much prefer the hot wet months months to the cooler dry ones especially with the migrant birds and the new green grass instead of extensive burnt areas.
I'm really looking forward to your report!

Gatita, what an eventful start. I do hope things started running smoothly.... but I am wondering.

Gatita,

Some slight setbacks to the start. ..Though sure there will be many memorable moments to share.

On board to see what Kruger delivered.

SL read again - it is a dongle

...................and just in case you don't know what a dongle is either, it's the thing you plug in to your computer to give you internet when you don't have wifi!!

Nice start to your TR gatita.

thank you Matthys. I hope you will enjoy it.

we will see, SL

btw a drongo is a birdhttp://www.sanparks.org/forums/post ... p=1898562#

thank you, granjan.

what will we prefer?

thanks for replying MM.

We will see.

Hi TT,

we sorted it out.

We will see.

posting.php?style=2&mode=quote&f=27&p=1898688#

I am on this bus too Gatita. Looking forwards to your sightings and with you on your trips