Going to ... South Africa PART II

Feb 4, 2007

We woke, had breakfast back at Gerhard’s place, and started out for Kruger Park. This would be a long day of driving through some of South Africa’s most beautiful scenery. Lori had picked out the scenic route which would take us on a serpentine road running along South Africa’s Great Escarpment, a sharp ridge that separates the upper veld from the lower. A veld (pronounced "felt") is a vast plain of open grasslands with brush and shrub and a light covering of trees. The South African velds were home to the great assortment of mighty creatures that is Africa’s legacy to the world. Today, due to human encroachment, many species have been driven to extinction. Many others have been forced to flee the Highveld to the more isolated lower. Kruger Park, in the Lowveld, was established to provide safe haven and many animals have thrived there.

Our route was called The Panorama and it wove its way along a fantastic assortment of hill, mountain, heath and craggy rock formations which took our breath away with every turn of the road. As we drove along we looked out over an endless terrain with a sky as big as we’d ever seen, filled with incredible cloud formations and brilliant patches of blue


Lori and Stacey on the beautiful road outside of Dullstroom - beautiful hills covered with grass, rolled on for mile after mile.

The topography changed from hilly heath and rock, reminiscent of the Scottish highlands, to a wide open valley. Then the hills closed in again as the road traced the route of South Africa’s mighty escarpment. We were surrounded by towering cliffs of vari-colored, stratified and heavily fragmented rocks, fields strewn with millions of boulders and canyons etched by turbulent rivers.


Stacey looks out over a vast area from our road that traced the escarpment that divides the Highveld from the Lowveld.


Vistas of endless beauty.


Not too close to the edge, Peter.


African ladies selling crafts at the side of the road. The steep and rocky hills meet the road and continue below us.


The Pinnacle, a quartzite column, rises like a stone-needle, hundreds of feet from the river valley below.


They call this God's Window. From here you could appreciate the dividing line that forms the Great Escparment, dividing the Highveld and Lowveld.


We stop to get a view of the escarpment and surrounding mountains, after passing along it for miles.

We drove for a good seven hours to reach Kruger’s Orpen Gate at around five o’clock. You can enter the park through many different gates but the entire park, covering an area as big as Whales, is entirely fenced in to protect its inhabitants. At 6:30 the gates are locked and entrance is impossible.


We finally reached Kruger Gate, where we bought some provisions at the store, registered and set out for Satara camp, our base for the next two nights.

We had another hour to drive to our camp where we’d be staying. But just as soon as we drove through the gate we were greeted by first, a beautiful zebra,then impala, which are very numerous and then, to our delight, a group of giraffes.


A zebra grazing inside the entrance to Kruger Park.


Here's an impala family crossing the road. Animals get the right-of-way in Kruger.


Wow! What’s that we see crossing the road?

It had been a long day but one filled with unimaginable beauty and now this. We drove to the reception of Satara camp and checked into camp "rooms." Each was an air-conditioned, one-room thatched hut called a rondawel, complete with shower and sink, twin beds, and stove, fridge and barbecue right outside the door. We were tired from the day of driving but we had booked a nighttime guided tour that began at 7:30. We quickly unpacked and made our way back to the reception to board the open-sided mini-bus and headed out into the wild to view some more animals. I’ll tell you about that in my next post.