My weekend in Kruger

Monday… another scorching hot day here in Bizana. Trying to stay cool to start the week off. Time is winding down for the Bizana 4, Mike and Cathy are done on Feb 28, and this is actually their last full week at the Municipality. Soon it will soon be down to the Bizana 2 (Heather and me).

Amazing and unforgettable weekend for me. Mini vacation of sorts as we took an extra day. First we flew into Johannesburg and then drove out to Kruger through Blyde River Canyon, the 3rd largest canyon in the world behind the Grand Canyon and Fish River Canyon in Namibia. It was good to see since it was on the way of our journey, and at points spectacular, but nothing so amazing that it would have warranted its own trip there.

The landscape on the drive out to Blyde and Kruger has so many parts that reminded me of driving at home in the States. Unlike the Eastern Cape (where I work) that is just so hilly and green for miles… the first few hours out of Jo-burg was pretty flat, much like driving from Chicago to St. Louis. There were also some parts that reminded me of driving through the middle portion of California by San Luis Obispo or in the Santa Barbara region… and there was also the portion of the drive the looked much like my driving through southern Oregon on route to Crater Lake and then out to the Oregon Coast.

Through Blyde River, we headed up to Kruger National Park, which is in the northeast section of the country. A colleague once told me that all of Kruger is about the size of the entire state of Massachusetts, and after going there, I’d believe it. This was my first safari/game viewing experience since coming to Africa, and it was incredible. For me, it was jaw dropping – within the first 20 minutes of driving into the park, we had packs of impala running along side the car, saw a herd elephants crossing the road, were less than 50 yards from giraffes snacking on the trees and popping out onto the road.

A few zebra out for a morning walk

One of the thousands of packs of impala you see in the Park

We saw so many wild animals roaming the plains and in the brush, hanging from trees. The safari “Big Five” are listed as the elephant, rhino, lion, water buffalo, and leopard. Successfully, we saw all but the leopard. And so much more… some animals I didn’t even know of. Best of all, going on some of the game drives with the guides, when you see an animal, you get an earful about its mating habits, life span, patterns and traits, how to pick out the animal by its looks, etc. So it’s definitely a learning experience.

There are so many exquisite birds in Kruger too – large and small, just vivid colors. What I thought was most interesting was that when you sit and watch some of the bigger animals, like the water buffalo or the giraffe, you see birds sitting on the animals backs, apparently to eat off bugs and parasites.

By quick recount, these are some of the animals that we saw that I can remember off the top of my head: giraffe, elephant, black rhino, white rhino, hippo, impala (there are so many impala in the park… apparently 150,000), kudu (pictured right), water buffalo, zebra, lion, eagle, condor, chacma baboon, crocodile, leather-backed turtle, spotted hyena, klipslinger, water buck, springbok, owl, vervet monkey, bats, all sorts of birds that I don’t even know.

After the enjoyable and relaxing weekend , it was back to the grind today… and a lot to get done this week. Having been at the Growth and Development Summit last week, Department Manager and I were out of the office for most of it. I am catching up and planning out what opportunities we can accomplish with the department for the week. I called a meeting of everyone this morning – basically an open forum to hear what everyone had been working on, status of their projects, how I could help them – and nobody spoke up! It can get frustrating that the people in my department are just not used to speaking aloud in a meeting forum and confidently expressing themselves. So there’s just silence and they just sit there and look away hoping not to get address – so it’s sometimes easier to meet with each one on one, I guess. They were excited about more MS Excel training on Wednesday though…