June 7, 2016 - Driving into Kruger NP

In the morning after breakfast I walked back to the airport to pick up the rental car and promptly got headed in the wrong direction as I followed the instructions I was given at the rental desk to get back to the hotel. After a brief episode of cursing myself out I reoriented and made it back to the hotel. Greg and Magdel showed up shortly after and we got on the road towards Kruger.

Driving on the left side of the road is not much of an issue when you are following someone or are in traffic since other vehicles tend to keep you going in the right place so I was glad to just be following, I always worry that n my own I’m going to make a right turn and end up on the right side instead of the left. Driving is SA can be pretty aggressive, you are supposed to use the shoulder as an extra lane to get out of the way of faster traffic if there is only one lane in your direction of travel. In addition, there are many times where vehicles on the road are not even pretending to go the speed limit which leads to a very start stop type of driving experience at times. 

Lots of different plants and some pretty cool flowers out here .....

We made the one of the main park gate only about 20-30 minutes before it closed after 4.5 hours on the road, right at sunset and got checked in. We began our journey into the park not realizing that the gates to the camps also closed at the same time as the main park gates, not that that really makes any sense in that you may still need to travel up to 100km to get to your camp. The sunset was incredible ......

though likely due to air pollution. We stopped several times on the drive in to view the animals that we could see. There was a large pack of Elephants .....

and we saw a Rhino which Magdel (who grew up in SA and has since moved back to work for several year before returning to the US and Intel) claims to have only seen once in her 30+ visits to the park .....

We eventually made it to the camp gate and were scolded by the ranger on duty for being late. We finished the day with a nice BBQ or Braai, of which Greg s the master in our camp (though he can't stay still enough for the 1" exposure) .....