Facts and figures: 


Ninety per cent of the population of South Africa is non-white. And coincidently, 90 per cent of the visitors to Kruger National Park are from Africa, but they're pretty much all white. The remaining 10 per cent of the visitors are from overseas, as in Europe, Asia, the Americas and Australia. And most of that 10 per cent come here through prearranged group travel. Almost all of the cars plying the nearly vacant Kruger roads are private vehicles. 


So self-safariing foreigners like us are few. So few that South African trekkers often approach us and start speaking in the Afrikaans language, assuming we're brothers and sisters of the veldt. I always smile when this happens. It reminds me of the old Saturday Night Live skit where Eddie Murphy disguises himself as a white guy, then goes about discovering how and why the white people have so much more going for them than black people do. In the skit Eddie soon learns that the whites get everything for free, but blacks have to pay. Being here makes you feel as though you've joined some sort of secret society, like Eddie mixing with the whites. 


The beauty of self-safariing is you don't have to know anything about spotting the animals. All you need to be able to do is spot cars. Less than three cars stopped by the side of the road means elephants, giraffes, wildebeests or zebras. More than three cars means a big cat. A half dozen or more and you can be certain it's a cat with a kill. Our first kill was a lion that had taken down a giraffe. Here's how it works with lions. The female does the deed, then the male eats. The following day, while the King of Beasts rests, the female and her cubs eat. On day three, it's just smelly leftovers for hyenas and vultures. 


Avoid coffee and other diuretics while on safari:

On day two, while the lions were eating and the hyenas were waiting, there were a total of eight cars blocking traffic in both directions. There isn't anything more frightening - or forbidden - than having to get out of your car for a pee under such circumstance.



On a far more sober note:

Nine thousand 'trophy' hunters come to South Africa each year contributing an estimated 1.2 billion rand (12.5 million CDN) to the South African economy. The hunting website below is authentic. It sells trophy hunting excursions, and describes how to track and shoot the Big 5 - lions, elephants, leopards, rhinos and buffalos. It probably ranks right up there with kiddie porn on the obscenity scale, still, I am glad I shivered my way through it. If you love animals and think you can handle reading and seeing the horror that humans can do, please open it. If you can't thanks for getting this far.  


http://www.africanskyhunting.co.za/hunting-big-five.html
 
Route and distance:
 
We drove straight from Joburg airport to Blyde River Canyon on day 1. After three nights we entered Kruger at Orpen gate, then headed north to Letaba camp for two days. From there we went south to Satara camp, then farther down to the south end of Kruger for a night at Berg-en-dal camp. Then we travelled into Swaziland, staying a couple of nights at Hlane Royal National Park before heading south through Swazi and back into South Africa. Our next stop was Sodwana Bay. Four nights in Sodwana was enough. The weather was chilly and the seas were high, so diving and snorkelling was out. We then decided to retrace our route. We went back up to the same great place we stayed at in Hlane NP in Swaziland for two nights before returning to Kruger. It was an excellent choice, (Olifants camp) for this was where we encountered our lion (wildebeest kill near Orpen); leopard (impala kill near Olifants) and cheetahs, also near Olifants.

During our three weeks in South Africa and Swaziland we drove just under 4,000 kilometres.
  

Rating the camp accommodation:

The place in Hlane was tops. After a lengthy drive through the forest, our house, a 2 bedroom w/ ensuites, had a big kitchen and living room, along with fireplace. The house alone, ($105 per night for 4 people) made it worth the trip to Swaziland. 

 Kruger accommodation listed 1st to worst:

1) Olifants - best cabinas, best location, best food (all places had utensils except Satara)
2) Berg-en-Dal - newer camp - larger cabinas. I liked this place, the others weren't so big on it
3) Letaba - oldest, kind of musty, but nice w/enclosed porch.    
4) Satara - cabinas were much the same Letaba, but no utensils were provided