Update: 28th of June, 2006
Place : İstanbul/Türkiye
Day: 186 (return to Turkey)
Distance: 29,580km

Republic of South Africa
April 5th, afternoon, I arrive to the border of South Africa. It is the first time since the beginning of my trip that I am entering to a country without visa. It is "endangered specie" of countries, one who don't ask visa to Turkish citizens. Only for a month though. If you intend to stay longer, you should apply for visa from your home country.

Passport and carnet du passage checks done in a heartbeat. Two guards dressed like Australian rangers stopped me and politely asked me to step out of the car. They got me clean the bottoms of my shoes on the disinfectant doormat aside. Why not! But what about the shoes of the car? Obviously they don't expect any danger from the tires.

From the border of South African Republic on, I felt I am out of Africa. It is like a different continent. Roads, lane markings, traffic signs, everything reminds you modern and organized country, such as a western civilization.

Komatipoort, near the border, is my town for tonight. There are actually two different routes from Mozambique to South Africa. First one is Ressano-Komatipoort, which I followed. The other first takes you to Swaziland, a small country situated inside South Africa land. It would have been a better idea for me to follow the latter as I intend to go along south shore and reach Cape Town, but I didn't want to miss the chance to see Africa's most famous national park: Kruger. I will spend two nights there, but let me stick to Komatipoort tonight for it is a bit late to go now.

It is a silent town this Komatipoort. Don't know why but it reminds me of Port Augusta where I stayed during my first visit to Australia. Certainly greener here though. May be it is the regular tic-tacs of endless cargo trains passing nearby of these two towns, which makes me think that these two are alike. Komatipoort, a town consisted of neatly drawn streets on which lay nice houses with big gardens, mostly inhabited by white people. Since there was no vacancy in a few small hotels downtown, I headed for smaller pensions. You think you'd have more options since it is closer to Crocodile Bridge gate of Kruger National Park but in reality that's not the situation. Only place I could find was a pension run by a middle aged couple and their cat. Three individual houses in a big and very well maintained garden. There is a separate dining hall/bar by the pool in the garden. Last vacancy they had was the only room on the upper floor of the guest house with a hall equipped with a huge fireplace. "So I get to have my own house here right?" I said smiling. The lady answered "no" plainly. "The main hall is for all our customers". Different nations have different sense of humor anyway.


Trees Too, which I stayed in Komatipoort. The one at the back is my house :)

I had my dinner in a snack bar downtown. Walking back to my hotel, it is a 15 minutes walk by the way, I thought about all those things people say about how dangerous it was to go out alone at night in South Africa. The timid way black people salute me on my way is like a sign of their still surviving oppression against the white. What danger would you possibly expect from them anyway?

Kruger Park, which I am heading very early next morning, opens their gates to visitors at 06:00 in April. I emphasized April because the opening hours change on a monthly basis, based on sunset and sunrise hours. I need to get in as early as possible so that I can evaluate all the time with a good safari. Considering the 15 minutes drive, I should leave towards six o'clock. I set my alarm clock to 05:30.

After an early and quick breakfast in the morning, I tiptoed out from the pension and got there in about 15 minutes as I originally estimated.


Kruger National Park
It showed right from the reception area that this one is different from all similar places I have previously been in Africa. An organization prepared with tiniest details on mind. You pay based on the duration you'd stay within the park. You decide which camping zone to stay, pick the accommodation type that suits you best, your reservation is done, payment collected. All you need to do is enjoy your safari and be at your camping zone prior to closure time. After that no cars are allowed in the park but the ones on duty or with special permission and this is being checked thoroughly by the rangers. They regularly make speed checks with radars, too. Unlike the parks I previously saw, this one has the main roads covered with asphalt. Speed limit is 50km/h. On soil sections -very tidy by the way- it goes down to 40km/h.

Plan is to stay here 1 night. I rented a bungalow to spend the night in Skukuza, the biggest main camp of Kruger, and most popular, too, due to facilities and variety of accommodation options.

Kruger National Park as per today's borders was first introduced to visitors in 1927. Named after Paul Kruger, one of the most famous leaders and four time president of Transvaal (this Transvaal issue is a bit complicated, I will give you some details about it in the history section), this is one of the biggest natural areas of South Africa under protection. 350km at north-south direction and 65km at east-west direction, Kruger is bordered with Mozambique at east and Zimbabwe at west. In 2002, it became part of Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park by merging with Gonerazho in Zimbabwe and Limpopo in Mozambique. This is just on the paper now but expected to be put on application in a few years when the borderline fences will be removed and the animals will be wandering in all three lands freely.

My trip starting from Crocodile Bridge comes to an end in Skukuza after 6 exhausting and starving hours, Not much enjoyable I have to say.

Kruger A few shots frames from my first day in Kruger Park: African fish eagle; Water Lilies; Sabie River and a usual sight in Kruger: Elephants on the asphalt

After check-in formalities, I arrive to my bungalow. As mentioned earlier, they have a variety of accommodation options here in Skukuza. You pass by general facilities in the entrance such as reception, bank, post office etc and reach the wide area reserved for accommodation. This is a huge neighborhood consisted of several sections divided by perpendicular streets. 3 main areas are occupied by bungalows & small houses, tents and caravans respectively.



My bungalow in Skukuza Camp

I found my bungalow with the help of plan they handed me. A double bed, a very nice bathroom inside and a kitchen outside, with the barbecue also at your disposal should you feel like it. If you don't have any cooking equipment, you can utilize the common open kitchens located under lean-to roofs on the end of each street. But I have my portable stove, one of the most precious gifts I received from one of my friends prior to my departure i.e. I can treat myself with a real feast with all that food in the car I have not been able to consume so far. I need to buy bread, fruits and beverages. According to the plan, the convenience store is inconveniently far, so I go by car.

I will have a late dinner because I am joining a two hours night safari tonight. Therefore, I take a shower, get something small to eat and take a nap. You can join a safari either in a "trubus" (it's my word, a vehicle between truck&bus, public rate, fixed schedule) or in a Toyota Land Cruiser (luxury class, you choose the departure time and duration as long as you pay for it). Since I am a modest guy, I will take the trubus.



A Safari "Trubus"

The crowd was already there when I reached the departure zone 15 minutes before schedule. We ended up filling 2 trubuses. I got the most convenience seat to shoot photos, the one on the right to the ladder you see in above photo. But then I couldn't say no to the guide's polite request waiving my seat in favour of a mother/son who wanted to sit next to their father/husband, ending up on the last and least comfortable seat of the truck. I must be the last gentleman standing!

So you wonder what happens in the night safari, right? Let me explain. You hit the road. The sun sets completely and you try to spot the animals with the help of the trubus' lights as well as two very powerful (1 million candela each) projectors randomly given to 2 of the passengers and some other less powerful projectors owned by cautious passengers. The efficiency of this "help" surely depends on how serious and capable the holders are, by the way. I will tell you about it in a minute.

Anyways, we hit the road. As the twilight slowly turns into perfect obscurity, so does the merciless heat to a sweet chillness. Since the trubus is open on al sides, we feel the light wind, too. The trubus drivers are also the safari guides. Really good ones I have to say. They have a vast amount of knowledge, possibly through a serious education, about the fauna and animal population. But I feel a bit ashamed upon seeing how seriously the passengers had studied their lessons. They need not have diagnosed each flying bird and each wandering animal and answered all detailed questions of driver-guides such as "how do you tell the difference between the male kudu from the female?" or "how many babies do a baboon give birth to at one time?". They should have been more considerable about us, a couple of "don't have a clue-ers".

I preferred night safari because it gives you the opportunity to see some animals that are very difficult to see in daytime, above all leopard and cheetah. Although our driver/guide remarks that it would be like winning the jackpot to see that carnivores, you can't stop hoping. Still we got our nice little observations. For instance, we saw the "bush baby", a very small and timid sort of monkey, which is almost impossible to bump into. Our driver/guide spotted it with his eagle eyes and showed us. It was already difficult to shoot its photo while it was on the three but the projector-holders also contributed to the low quality photo below by aiming their projectors to asphalt, towards the interior of trubus, to my face, to the road signs, to the stars to many point irrelevant, but the bush baby. It is a 10x enlarged copy of a blur image, shot by a 200mm lens (conventional equivalent is 300mm). Sorry but it is the only one I have.



Bush baby

"Excuuuse me" I said, "any chance you may aim your projectors to the animals when you see one, so that I can shoot some photos". In an effort to find the owner of that voice, the projector lights ended up on my face after wandering between asphalt, sky, threes and other spots for awhile. I closed my eyes to avoid the blinding light, put my hands in the air, meaning to say "I surrender, I killed them all!". Instead I said "well, just like the way you are doing right now". "Suure" they all replied. At least I measured their abilities to seek a target with their projectors and I still have my eyes functioning.

We go on. The guide/driver suddenly stops, reverses and pulls over near a three by the road. He reached for a branch and picked up a chameleon. Remember the one our guide found on our way to golden monkey watch in Ruanda and I photographed? The same type! By the way two thirds of people I showed that photo asked whose hand that was. Why would they wonder the owner of the hand but not what the animal was? Anyway! Everybody touched and stroked and photographed the chameleon, our driver/guide gave some enlightening information about it and then returned it to its original location on the three. All is fine but can someone explain me how in the world this guy have spotted that tiny chameleon on a three 2.5m high from the road in total obscurity solely with the help of spotlights?

We hit the road again now knowing we were about to spot yet another rare sight, well may be not as rare as hitting the jackpot. A spotted hyena with her 3 new born babies, about a month old according to our driver/guide estimation. The projector holders work relatively better this time and I am able to shoot a proper photo of that mother laying there obviously proud to show her babies.



Proud mother and her 3 babies (two of them getting breastfed)

Probability of catching such sight in daytime is next to nothing. The mother moved to a relatively cooler area to protect her babies from the cruel sun.

These two incidents are pretty much hall we had in a two and a half hour safari. These and a few interesting owl sights. Here is one:



Spotted Eagle Owl

By the way, I joined the safari with my shorts and armless t-shirt as I was so tired of hot weather during the day. In the open trubus, I first enjoyed the early night chilliness, which then left the scene to a merciless frost as the hours roll into midnight, making me bloody freezing. I was trying to persuade myself it wasn't that cold as the others were busy buttoning their third layer of clothes. First thing when we got back, I rushed to my bungalow for a hot shower. I wouldn't believe it if they told me I would dye for a hot shower at the heart of Africa in Kruger Park.

Precooked chickpea for night supper, to go with beers I bought this afternoon from the convenience store in the camping area. If you want to buy a cold drink, you should walk in to either a "bottle shop" or a big convenience store as they are the only ones that have cold rooms. No fridges would be good enough at this heat. One of the best ways to get a relief from the heat wave is to spend 7-8 minutes in one of these cold rooms. But if you let yourself go with it and forget to choose the beer you want to buy (there are so many brands and types), you might end up buying the first one you can lay your hands on before you escape from hypothermia. By the time you take your first sip, you may find out you had something entirely away from your taste, as I did, finding out I had a special local sweet beer. Yes, chickpeas with meat and sweet beer for dinner, how sweet isn't it?

Before I got to my bungalow, I had made a reservation for sunrise safari, too. Just pursuing the jackpot (sight of a leopard or cheetah) starting from 05:30 in the morning. I am being cautious, taking my polar pullover this time. Watching the mist falling down to savannah in Kruger with first lights of the sun is probably the best thing about this safari.



Morning in Kruger

You sure get to see a few wild animals but we are still so far away from cheetah and leopards. I thought they'd be around at this time of the morning to hunt. We see a lot of lions though, in the bushes, on asphalt, merely everywhere.




Lions are everywhere

Although I am not much of a bird fan, I'd like to tell you the sad story of "Southern Yellow-billed Hornbill", which our driver/guide told me upon seeing a few of those flying around. When the female is set to give birth, the male finds a convenient cavity in a three and puts his lady in it. The female bird loses most of her feathers toward the end of her incubation just so she wouldn't be able to fly away, leaving the soon-to-be born babies to death. How injustice, aint it? The male also builds a wall entrance of the cave with a special soil mixture he produces himself. This is to protect her lady and babies from the cold and possible assaulters. He leaves a tiny aperture just big enough to feed them through with the food he brings in his bill. This is when the sad parts begin. Sometimes the male dies for a reason and this means an unpleasant death for whole family, too, as the female can never find the strength to tear apart the wall her male once build to protect her and her babies. Our driver/guide says that they find hundreds of nest/graves after each incubation season. How sad, isn't it?

A last super tasty breakfast with apricot jam donuts and then I bid farewell to my bungalow in Kruger National Park. It is Friday, 7th of April, 10:30AM. Target is Swaziland border. I am in the border of South African Republic by 14:19PM. Formalities are completed quickly. I am entering Swaziland.