Kruger National Park, South Africa

For the past four days we enjoyed safari driving in Kruger National Park located in South Africa’s northeastern corner.

Kruger ranks among the largest game reserves in Africa. It covers an area of 17,576 square miles which is approximately the size of New Jersey or the country of Wales.

It took us 4 days driving many hours each day & we only saw about 1/3 of the park. We were rewarded with seeing many animals along with some new first time safari experiences.

One rare sighting was seeing a mother hyena nursing her pup on the side of the road.

Our theory is the mother hyena knows that predators don’t like being close to the road where vehicles & people are, so she felt safe nursing her pup there instead of in the bush.

The other rare sighting was a dead leopard in a tree.

Apparently it was deposited there after being killed by another leopard.

Leopards are not only very territorial m’; but also, they have very strong jaws & are excellent climbers.

Leopards are the only cats who can climb that high carrying another animal.

Like most African game parks, you get very close to the wildlife.

We enjoyed our game drives each day. Here are a few animal sightings from the past few days.

Ol Pejeta Conservancy

We were lucky to have half a day to explore the Ol Pejeta Conservancy wildlife park near Nanyuki. This is a private park that helps protect & conserve numerous African wild animals. With the recent rains, we were glad to have a 4×4 vehicle to maneuver the muddy roads getting to & from the park as well as within it.

Near the entrance is a nice sign marking Zero Degrees latitude on the Equator.

One unique feature at Ol Pejeta is their chimpanzee sanctuary for rescued chimps which was started in 1993 by the world’s preeminent chimp expert Jane Goodall. They currently provide a home for 2 troops totaling 40 chimpanzees.

You can get up close & personal with a blind black rhino named Baraka which means “Lucky” because he was Lucky to be rescued & cared for. He likes to be fed & to have his ears rubbed.

Here is an assortment of other animals we enjoyed watching on our game drive.

The very rare white rhino.
They are protected from poachers by an electric fence.