We had great wildlife viewing during our five days at Kruger. During the days that Rich attended his meeting, mom and the kids and I spent some of each day driving around the Skukuza area to look for wildlife.One morning we drove east from Skukuza to Nkuhlu, where we stopped for some breakfast.
We were warned about the mischevious monkeys by a staff member whose job seemed to be to hang around and scare the monkeys off when they got too close. Apparently the monkeys have a particular fondness for sugar packets, but the also don't appear to be too picky!Our breakfast arrived, and Gram and Ian left the table to get more forks, leaving me feeding Theo and "guarding" our breakfast. But those monkeys worked fast!
The second they saw that both the staff monkey-deterrer and my personal monkey protectors had gone, they swooped down into action. Our toast was gone before you could stay "shoo"! Thankfully, they weren't able to make off with our eggs or bacon, so we did get some breakfast. And even though I am bigger than they, these little monkeys still scared me, particularly when I was feeling vulnerable feeding Theo. We were so stunned by the event that we didn't even manage to take a photo of the monkeys! (Plus, we didn't want to encourage them, says Ian.)A short list of our wildlife sightings: the "Big Five" (elephant, lion, leopard, rhino, and buffalo), zebra, wildebeest, giraffe, impala, kudu, warthog, bats
The photo of bats is taken at outside the cafeteria at Skukuza; they roost up in the top of the underside of the thatch roof of the little shelters where folks eat their lunches. They were a continual draw for new tourists. Needless to say, the tables and chairs under this thatched roof were at the outside edges of the thatch, not directly under the bats!Our lion sighting was more adventure than quality viewing - on our way to Satara camp,
where we spent one night, we came upon a traffic jam of cars on a bridge. Sure enough, through quick chats with folks in stopped cars we learned that under the bridge was a family of lions who had just feasted on a wildebeest kill. We could only get in close enough to confirm that lions were there: we saw a fat, sated lioness lolling on her back while her two cubs nursed. Alas the cars with the best views were in no hurry to move on (and frankly couldn't have anyway, given the number of other cars blocking their way out), so most of the occupants of those cars had settled in for sundowners.
