A week in Kruger National Park and Mpumalanga

We're back from an amazing 10 days in and around Kruger National Park. The holiday was slightly marred by the fact that we've all been struck down by a vicious lurgy, however we still managed to see and experience such a lot. Got back to Cape Town on Monday evening and returned the girls to school for precisely eight days before they break up for another week and a half to cover the combined Easter and Freedom Day holidays.

The highlights of the holiday included:

Crystal Springs Nature Reserve, Pilgrim's Rest, Mpumalanga.

We stayed on this reserve for three days at the end of the holiday. The accomodation was fabulous, and the surroundings even more so. On Sunday we walked the Kudu Trail, a 6 km rough walk through the reserve where giraffe roam free. We had great sightings of wildebeest, which made a loud snorting noise as they ran away from us, kudu and other antelope. If you're very lucky you can even spot leopard on this walk, but sadly that wasn't to be for us. Watching the sun go down from our balcony, with a wandering warthog below us, was very special, even if we were toasting the sunset with hot flu remedies instead of cocktails.

Blyde River Canyon, God's Window and Pilgrim's Rest

The Blyde River Canyon is the third largest in the world. (Must find out what the second largest is...) The scenery is spectacular, and from viewpoints like God's Window you get a real sense of the absolute enormity of this country. The vista stretches for ever. We enjoyed good weather and as a result the heat haze slightly obscured the far distance, but apparently on a clear day you can see from God's Window right over Kruger, across Mozambique beyond to the Indian Ocean. That must be well over 200 miles. We drove along the rim of the canyon stopping frequently to take short walks to waterfalls, viewpoints and the river where we paddled and splashed.

Lottie did some bargain hunting at a local market, buying little stone carved animals for friends.

Pilgrim's Rest itself is an old gold mining town that grew rapidly during a 19th century gold rush and was just as quickly abandoned when richer deposits were discovered elsewhere. It's now very sleepy, though also a bit touristy twee. Not that many visitors make it up here with almost all the tourism in SA focusing on Cape Town, Durban and Kruger. The cow that we encountered wandering down the middle of the road certainly wasn't concerned by too much traffic and the BP garage we filled up at is definitely a relic of the distant past.

Kruger!

What to say about Kruger? It was incredible. Although we were lucky enough to observe a lioness for five minutes or so patiently staking out a small group of impala, several rhino, a leopard in the dusk, elephant and buffalo making the official 'Big 5' the absolute highlight for me were the impala, as in the middle photo below. They are extremely plentiful in Kruger, so we had ample opportunity to watch them at really close quarters. So dainty and graceful, so beautifully marked and so athletic, I would have stopped the car every time we saw a group together, but with 130,000 impala or so in an area the size of Wales, we'd never have got beyond the first few miles.

The girls were wowed by the whole thing, even with two 4,30am starts to go on sunrise game drives.

Pretoria and Johannesburg

Before we arrived in Kruger we spent two days in Joburg and Pretoria, revisiting Neil's old haunts. We stayed in Melville in Joburg, now a thriving arty suburb near the centre of the city, but a distinct 'no go' area when Neil was here 15 years ago. Our only day of rain - and what a storm we had with hailstones the size of golf balls. The main photo is of the Vortrekkers monument in Pretoria, commemorating the Afrikanner push into the centre of South Africa in the mid 19th century. Inconceivably vast, it is almost Soviet in its starkness.

The overnight train from Cape Town to Johannesburg

We decided to see a bit of the interior of the country on the way and to go by train instead of flying. It took 26 hours, versus 2 to fly but was a very comfortable, fun and interesting way to travel.

Now we just need to quickly unpack, wash clothes and repack for our holiday that starts on 23rd April to Lesotho and the Drakensburg. What an astonishing year this will have been by the time it's over.