South Africa 2025: Sept 21 Drive to Kruger Park

Today we were up early for breakfast and onto the bus by 745 for our 7hr drive to Kruger Park. First, I must say as we left the hotel and toured through Johannesburg, I had a change of heart on the city. As with every other city in the world, there are beautiful areas and areas of poverty. The part that we drove through today had beautiful homes, manicured yards with beautiful trees everywhere. The highways we drove were in much better shape than most of the ones in Alberta. As we left the city, I noticed extremely modern farming techniques. Irrigation for the crops, hog farms, nice fat cattle, fruit orchards all being taken care of perfectly. Even spotted up-to-date farming equipment and round bales in the fields. There were also massive power stations along our route. The first stop for gas and a bathroom break we saw ostrich, African buffalo, and Sable antelopes in the fields next to the highway. It was surreal. As we continued on our drive, there were multiple fruit orchards with citrus fruit, and even macadamia nuts noted. Right before we got to the Blyde River Canyon, we spotted more baboons in the fields as we pass by. I was unable to get another picture at this time. We stopped at the Blyde River Canyon for a hike to see the Bourke’s luck potholes. It took 45 minutes for us to walk down to the bottom for great pictures and back up to the top. When we got back to the top, we saw Vervet monkeys climbing in the trees and across the edge of the building. It was sooooo cool. Once we left the canyon, we continued on our way to “Gods Window” where we had a view of the valley that went on for miles it was absolutely breathtaking. Once we left there, we had about an hour drive and we passed banana plantations and eucalyptus plantations and beautiful pine forest in the mountains. I had no idea that they were mountains on the way to Kruger Park. So as we pulled into our beautiful hotel, the Umbhaba Eco Lodge, a male and female Nyala greeted us. Unbelievable! After getting our luggage to our rooms and changing into dinner attire, we met the rest of the group for a fantastic African dinner in a beautiful restaurant, again with a bottle of South African wine. We had great conversation learned a lot about our new friends and finished up near 8 o’clock as we have to be up at 4:30 to be ready to go by five for our first big safari. I’m so excited!!!🦁🐘🦓