Kruger Days 7 & 8

I thought I'd end off our holiday photos in one big bang shoot. I'm sure, by now, that you guys are totally sick of seeing photos of animals on my blog! I promise that we won't be going on holiday again for a while and next time I'll do my best to update as I go.

Our last day in the park was a fairly quiet day. We'd gotten up early again to make the most of our day, but spent a lot of time driving around and not seeing all that much. On our early morning drive, we did spot these elephants having a bit of a tiff...

And this gorgeous Martial Eagle. Jake just loves birds of prey at the moment... He didn't hang around for long though... I love these guys. I don't know why, they're so darned ugly, but they're so funny. When they run away, they put their tails straight up in the air like an antenna. And what's up with those funny horns on the sides of their heads?? A Vervet monkey... Complete and utter laziness. In my next life I think I'm going to come back as a hippo... Yaaaawwn... In each of the camp sites, they have a board up for guests to mark off what they've seen and where. This photo was taken at Lower Sabie, which is one of the campsites Rose and Gareth will be staying at on their honeymoon in a few weeks time. The area is well known for lion sightings (red dots). The black dots are leopards, white dots cheetah, blue elephants, green buffalo, orange rhino and yellow wild dogs. It gives you a fair idea of where to start searching if there's something specific you want to see in the area, but animals tend to move around quite a bit... We headed down from Lower Sabie, in search of the cheetahs at Duke's dam (in the picture above, the dam is where there are two orange dots above two white dots). We were not disappointed and found 5 beautiful cheetah resting at the water hole just before sunset. We spent more then an hour watching them, it was fabulous! And remember, there are only 200 odd cheetah in the Kruger, so we were very lucky to have seen 9 during our trip...

This is a yellow billed horn bill. He was sitting near to our car while we were watching the cheetah and seemed to be having a bit of a problem with a grasshopper he was trying to swallow...

Eventually, as the day wore on, the cheetah began to get restless. The two on the right are youngsters...

They went for a drink, which is typical before they head off for a hunt...The head of the pack headed off to go look for some food, while the others hung around for a bit... They watched her through the trees until we couldn't see her any more and then headed off to go join in on the fun...The sun had already set by the time we began our rush back to camp, the fine for being late is substantial and we didn't want to test the system. I couldn't help snapping up a couple of last photos though...The time to leave arrived and we had a last breakfast, packed the cars and began the long journey to Johannesburg International (OR Thambo). This photo was taken at the boundary fence outside our bungalow. At night, a hungry hyena prowled the fence looking for scraps, this morning we had to settle for a warthog... Jake getting cuddles...Some shots of Jake & I on the park behind our bungalow. We had intended to have a picnic under the trees here, but realised that there were too many Vervet monkeys in the trees and didn't want to tempt them with our delicious snacks, so we ate at our hut instead...

So, that's it. The holiday photos are done and I'm taking them off to be printed today. I can't wait to hold them in my hands and page through them over and over and over again. Jake is dying to take them to school too. After 8 days in the park, we were so sad to leave. I had thought 8 days would be far too long a time for all of us, but it wasn't and I think we could have stayed for at least 3 weeks. I've asked Jake where he'd like to go on our next trip (I actually gave him a world map and asked him to pick a spot) and he only wants to go back to Kruger, so, till next time...

Sue xxx