Finally, some pics...

 The Narina Trogon, spotted and photographed by Jake outside Sudwala Caves.

 Yes, yes, I know that I am long overdue in sharing our holiday photos.  There are just SO many to work through, that it's taking a lot longer than I had expected.  I'll start right at the very beginning and work my way from there...  Scroll on by if you're not interested in seeing what we got up to - it was SUCH an adventure.

Our trip started early on the morning of 4 July.  We were picked up by our taxi from my parents house at 6am and headed off to the airport, for our flight just before 8.  We landed in Lanseria and collected our rental.  The trip from Lanseria to Kruger is long, but we were all excited and made a few stops along the way.  The main stop for us was the Sudwala Caves.  Jake's never been in a cave before and had studied these ones, very briefly, at school this term.  He was super excited to get going and the caves didn't disappoint.  Unfortunately, I don't have fantastic shots from inside the caves, so just one or two...

 The Screaming Monster aka Donkey Kong...

 Wet cave formations...

 It was pretty humid inside the caves...

 Heading through one of the narrower tunnels...

 This is called the amphitheater and they have put up a stage for concerts.  We had a group of kids visiting the caves with us and they hopped onto the stage and sung a song.  It was very sweet...

 Jake's decided that it's not very cool to smile in photos, he did have fun, I promise!!

 Thrilled to have been on his cave adventure...

We spent our first two nights at a place called Marloth Park, which is just south of Kruger, bordering on the park, which meant that we could get into the park bright and early on the 6th.  Marloth is pretty big and the roads are not fantastically marked and, quite frankly, I think I'm still amazed that we found the spot.  But we did and it was lovely!!  It's very much "living in the bush" and the animals wonder in and out of the garden all day.  The birds are magnificent and it's really so peaceful...

 A helmeted shrike...

 A grey headed shrike (aka Spookvoel, because he's so seldom seen)...

 We went down to the Crocodile River, which forms the boundary between Kruger and Marloth to see what was lolling around in the water.  We spotted some water buck, with their dart board bums...

 Some Impala drinking very cautiously and always on their guard.  A saddle billed stork was fishing for his lunch nearby...

 It's funny how "on guard" buck always are.  They look like they're ready to run at any second...

 A heavy hippo making his way back to the river...

 We stopped at a hide a little further up the river...

 Jake and my dad...

 We spotted this family of giraffe inside Marloth, which made me a little worried about which other big animals were hiding in the bushes.  We did hear a lion roaring in the early hours of the morning - he sounded really close...

 This little guy was super cute, even sticking his tongue out for Jake...

 Because there are no fences, Jake decided to try get a little closer - he was very wary of the mommy and daddy, but they seemed to have wandered off a bit and so it looked safe enough...

 The baby checked Jake out...

 And Jake checked the baby out...

 He actually managed to get pretty close, before this little guy trotted off to his mommy...

 A Kudu cow - I love their ears and their milkshake moustaches...

 This was our bungalow.  It was lovely by day, but there was no electricity and the gas lamps were very dim.  I didn't look for spiders, I'm sure there were plenty of big ones...

 From the stoep to the braai...

 At night, the bush babies came down to eat the fruit we put out for them.  This one loved the avo he found...

 There were 5 of them in total and they are very nervous little things.  I've seen the big bush baby before, but never the lesser one - they're just too precious...

 

We were spoiled with visits to our hut from a warthog, some impala, an ostrich, baboons, mongooses, the bush babies and so many beautiful birds.  It was a lovely stop over point and gave us all time to recharge before going into the Kruger.

I'm trying my best to wade through the thousands of photos I have from our trip and I'll share them with you as I can.  I'm trying to narrow it down to 20 of the best for each day.

Sending love,

Sue XXX