South Africa Day 7
On our way to Skukuza this mornings was to be our lowest sightings so far especially to what we had seen in our previous days in The Kruger.
In fact the only sightings were of Elephant and Giraffe.
Buffet breakfast taken at Skukuza again overlooking the Sabie river.
The museum here is dedicated to the first Official Game Warden James Stevenson Hamilton. The Kruger Nation Park was established in 1926 with the first visitors in 1927 all 27 according to records. In 2013/4 that number had increased too over 1.5 million. The numbers of animals in those early years are beyond comprehension only 25 Elephants were recorded and the latest count has the number of over 13000.
On our way back to Lower Sabie the traffic was at a standstill at a sighting of a Leopard in the tree just a little commotion ensured as traffic sorted it self out and everybody had their moment to witness the Leopard.
In the evening Anne and I took our own game drive towards Crocodile Bridge we had to be careful as the gates are closed at 1830 hr.
Sighting of a good journey of Giraffe on the far side of the river we diverted off onto dirt track to visit the Ntandanyathi hide here we saw a pod of Hippos and in the distance a small herd of Elephant had just left the area.
Towards the end of the drive Anne spotted an unusual shape in a water hole which turned out to be a large Rhino wallowing in the muddy waters. Back to the main highway north on our back to Lower Sabie we spotted some Southern Grand Hornbills we later to learn that some have been ringed and asking to report sightings to learn about their habits.
Back to Sunset dam for evening shot and back to camp in good time.
Today was very warm and we were treated to power outages from about 9 pm when a tremendous thunderstorm developed in the west reaching us quite soon the lightning was just like daylight for ages as well as heavy rain for a couple of hours.