Well who knew that I took so many photos with my phone during our holiday in the bush. Mostly to share instantly with our family back home, but it's such fun to look back on. I downloaded these pics shortly after our trip, but have never looked through them since. I think it gives a slightly more personal view on our holiday. Please also note that they are in no order whatsoever and they are completely unedited.
Above is Jake at Mooiplaas picnic site, enjoying boiled eggs, left over braai and a freshly made toastie.
Evening life in the bush feels incomplete without a glass of wine - in this case on my balcony at Olifants. There is nowhere to beat a Kruger sunset then at Olifants...
The view from our room at Skukuza...
A selfie at Mooiplaas. I love it when I find these selfies on my phone that Jake takes of himself...
The aforemetioned toastie. These are standard Kruger lunch fare for us. And most probably the main reason for my putting on weight during our holiday...
Our bungalow and view at Olifants...
Jake looking for ant lions at Olifants. He found them too...
Playing travel games...
And cooking our dinner (we shifted bungalows in Olifants, hence the different view)...
Up really early for our morning walk...
Somewhere along the road on an evening drive...
A dinner feast. We like to keep our food simple in the park, especially when it's just the 2 of us. This went down a treat...
Oooh - there's the yellow bellied something sandsnake, which nearly landed in our skottle braai in the picnic site at Letaba. In this pic, the lizard is still alive and biting the snake back...
Jaeke making breakfast for us at Letaba picnic site. The snake landed in those leaves just behind the skottle braai...
FEAST...
Another Olifants sunset...
And more selfies. Oh gosh, wrinkles are fast appearing now...
Watching movies and eating chocolate in bed at Satara. The beauty of life in the bush is that you get up early and go to bed even earlier...
Jake snuggled up on the balcony at Olifants to watch the sunrise...
I lost my camera along the way too. Watch this space, I will need to upgrade my camera before our next holiday, so that Jake can take his own pics...
An excited boy...
Our bungalow at Skukuza and Jake braai'ing...
Oh gosh - this was arriving in Nelspruit. Look how cute the airport is. I wish that it wasn't such an expensive airport to fly to...
Jake watching the mongooses raiding our stoep for whatever they could find...
This was at the airport before we left. Either Jhb or CT - who knows...
This was leaving CT - the pilot saw us taking this snap and invited Jake into the cockpit...
Nelspruit airport again (I did warn you that these weren't in order)...
Jake snapping away - can you see the lion...
Jake with the 3 male lions - they were one of our best sightings and we had undisturbed views of them for hours...
This picture shows you well how close they were to our car... Roaring and playing - it was incredible!
Roooooaaaar....
I must be honest, lions look cuddly. I do want to hug them every time I see them...
The view from our bungalow at Mopani - this campsite is well worth a visit if you haven't been there before. It's fairly far north, so the game isn't as plentiful as further south in the park, but look at the view! It's also slightly cheaper than some of the other campsites. And there's a 45 minute walking trail that you can do around the campsite. Birds are gorgeous too...
Another morning, another sunrise...
Pretty impala lillies...
Jake making friends with a young bush buck at a bird hide...
The worst part - packing up to go home...
A dead dung beetle...
Our last morning in the park - a breakfast stop at the Skukuza day visitors site for one last toastie...
A mommy hyena with her two tiny babies...
Sad times - dropping our hut's keys into the key box. Goodbye Kruger...
Lake panic - this is one of our favourite bird hides. There's apparently a resident leopard there, but we seem to miss him... 
Our favourite picnic site - Tshokwane. Our friend who helped Jake get involved with a rhino rescue and elephant darting lives just across from this picnic site and it was our meeting point for our adventures last year. Sadly, they were busy this year with family commitments, so we didn't get to see them this time...
Jake discovered that if you hold a phone or tablet up to the camera view finder, you can take cool pics, like this lioness yawning...
I will never tire of the sunsets...
A massive herd of buffalo...
Buffalo grazing just outside our bungalow at Skukuza...
Jake strolling along the walkway at Skukuza...
We had a grey, drizzly day, which was actually really great. It gets quite hot in the park in June/July during the day, so it was nice to have a change...
More pics of the buffalo at Skukuza. That electric fence marks the edge of the campsite...
Jake in the wild - out the car at a view point...
Skukuza again...
A warthog family grazing inside Skukuza...
The birds in Kruger are amazing - this is one of the glossy startlings...
A walk along the fence at Lower Sabie...
This walk looked like a good idea, until we got fuzzy, sticky, thorny things in our socks, shoes, hands...
Another breakfast somewhere...
Soaking up the views at Lower Sabie...
We stayed in Safari tents at Lower Sabie - you can see some just to the right of the frame below - they were fantastic...
A giant kingfisher...
We had to wait for this massive herd of buffalo to cross the road and nearly missed gate closing time...
Gerry Giraffe...
One of the many traffic jams that you usually get stuck in when there is something extra exciting on the go. In this case, lions at a kill not too far from the roadside...
Lions causing above traffic jam - 18 of them to be exact...
They were enjoying a buffalo and we just missed them taking it down. There were 6 cubs too, which was very exciting...
A baobab tree...
View from our bungalow at Satara...
Our bungalow in Satara...
Pork chops and sausage braai'ed by Jake - salad and fries courtesy of cattle baron...
Another view point where we were allowed out the car and another dry river bed...
Dusk in the bush...
Double trouble - our favourite animal has to be the rhino - they're so gentle and vulnerable and yet so powerful...
I love the wildlife traffic jams that you get stuck in...
A hungry warty trying to find something to graze on - look how dry everything is...
The thing about Kruger is to never stop enjoying the small things. And I don't mean size-wise. I mean you have to slow down, even after 19 days and enjoy watching giraffes forage. Watch the impala play (there are a trillion of them in the park, I'm sure). People rush from one point to the next and in their haste to try see the cats and forget how lucky they are to be able to see everything else... Jake doesn't let me do that. He loves everything about the bush and even makes me stop so that he can check (by hand) whether a pile of dung belongs to a black or white rhino. Yep, he's my turd nerd...
I mean, seriously - look how close these massive animals get to your car...
This is a terrible photo, but it's the only one I have of this silly yellow billed hornbill and he proved to be one of the highlights of our holiday - he kept on flying into our bungalow windows at Satara. Over and over and over again. I wish I'd taken time to go sit outside and get this on "film" properly - he made us laugh a lot...
The entrance to Nelspruit (Kruger Mpumalanga Airport). We were excited as soon as we saw the giraffes...
One of the banded mongooses that raided our bin at Satara...
Another view of the bush - beyond that fence is wild...
Looking back on our photos always makes me so heart sore. We love Kruger and all that it has to offer so much. We spend the rest of the year conspiring and saving to get back there again. Oh how I wish the life of a single parent weren't so costly!
In other exciting news, I am busy putting together a website whereby I'm going to try selling some of my images, especially overseas. I know that I have some good work and hopefully I'll manage to sell some to put towards our next trip. I've booked myself in to do another photography course in November - this time for editing and I'm really very excited about that. Fingers crossed that this new little chapter will be an exciting one. Watch this space, as soon as I have everything up and running, you'll be the first to know about it! In all fairness though, it will take a while and I imagine that I'll only really be up and running early next year. Wildlife photography has always been a passion for me and Jake is learning so much and is really very good too. Hopefully we can turn our hobby into something more on the side.
Sending love,
Sue xxx
In other exciting news, I am busy putting together a website whereby I'm going to try selling some of my images, especially overseas. I know that I have some good work and hopefully I'll manage to sell some to put towards our next trip. I've booked myself in to do another photography course in November - this time for editing and I'm really very excited about that. Fingers crossed that this new little chapter will be an exciting one. Watch this space, as soon as I have everything up and running, you'll be the first to know about it! In all fairness though, it will take a while and I imagine that I'll only really be up and running early next year. Wildlife photography has always been a passion for me and Jake is learning so much and is really very good too. Hopefully we can turn our hobby into something more on the side.
Sending love,
Sue xxx
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