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We spent four days on safari, driving through the Kruger National Park in South Africa.  Our guides drove us around for hours each day as Oksana and I hung out our respective windows, searching the countryside for the next amazing animal.

Before we arrived in South Africa, I never would have guessed that so many of the iconic African animals could be spotted in a single country.  For some reason, I thought you had to travel all over the continent if you wanted to see lions, wildebeest, rhinos, giraffes, leopards, hyenas, elephants, crocodiles, zebra, buffalo, baboons, and warthogs.  (We saw most of those the first day in the park.)  About the only big African animal I can think of that we didn’t have a chance of seeing was a mountain gorilla.

The highlight of the safari, for me, was spotting a cheetah.  After we stopped the car to watch him, his brother also emerged from the brush.  Both of those beautiful animals eventually crossed the road directly in us before disappearing into a ravine.

The next day, it got even better.  Oksana spotted another cheetah.  Our guides were blown away.  Not only are cheetahs among the rarest animals seen in the park, but we were the ones to spot them – not them, the more experienced guides!

It was nearly sunset when we spotted the cheetah on the second day and we were far from our camp.  Still, it was such an amazing animal, our guides graciously allowed us to stay as long as possible.  As we watched, the cheetah got up and stretched, then went about marking his territory.  Against all odds, his path again took him across the road we were on.

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Way back at the end of May, we embarked on a private safari of the Kruger National Park with African Big 5 Safaris.  I spent the following week working hard on editing the video and it’s since been an ordeal trying to get it online.  As you may have suspected, internet connectivity in rural Africa is slow and expensive (when it’s available at all.)  Livingstone, Zambia was the first city we came across since wrapping the edit that was big enough (and touristy enough) to have a worthwhile connection and it still took me three days to upload the 315MB video file to our website.

Yes, 315MB.  It’s a big one!

We had a fantastic time on this safari!  Really, I’m quite sure it’ll go down as one of the most memorable excursions on our year-long trip!  Because we had so many stories to tell and so much good footage to share, I couldn’t make myself trim anything else out.  The resulting video is almost 30 minutes long and, yes, I know, that’s a lot to ask from your typical internet audience.  All I can say is that Oksana and I have watched it quite a few times now and it still holds our attention.  I hope it’ll hold yours, too.

If the downloading is going slow, why don’t you let it buffer and click on over to African Big 5 Safaris’ website?  Browse around. We also have a tour review up on our Recommend Tours page. If you’re in the market for a safari in the Kruger National Park, you can’t do any better!  (And if you weren’t thinking of going on a safari before this, I trust the video will change your mind.)

Leave a comment to let us (and Marcel and Retief) know what you think!

Notes
African Big 5 Safaris
Kruger National Park
The Story of Duke
Our tour review of African Big 5 Safaris

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