Zuid-Afrika 2017 - Marloth Park

It’s 25-02-2017 and we have left Lydenburg. We already told about the weather, but…..

It was really bad. Yesterday we told the owner of the Hotel that we were going to Marloth Park. Her reaction was clear: “Should I call to ask if the roads can be travelled?”. We didn’t realise yet, but after a long period of no rain, mother nature thought she could get even. A cyclone in Mozambique took 400 lives there and flooded a large part of South Africa. We just didn’t realise that yet, because we just had travelled the main roads. We were going to travel smaller roads to Marloth Park.

And boy, did we have fun! The roads were really, really bad. Large holes, missing parts of road and potholes the size of small villages (in The Netherlands). At some places trucks had created new roads, just by driving by through the sand. As I did most of the driving (it was my turn to drive), I had most of the fun.

After an entire day we arrived in Marloth Park (only 250 km). Contrary to our expectations, the roads here were just fine. Our hotel was more than fine! We stayed in a secure compound with lots of guards and fences around the entire compound. The compound was on the Crocodile River, which just happens to be on the border of Kruger National Park. During the dry period lots of animals made it over, so on the riverside we saw (among others) Elephants, Kudu’s, Zebra’s, Monkeys, Warthog and Impala’s. Just staying in the park was great!

We have been to Kruger National Park twice. The first time with a guide, the second time in our own car. The only animal we didn’t see was the leopard. But we did see both the black and white Rhino (which is really special, because the black one is only spotted a few times a year). Actually we were told that the Park loses two Rhino’s per day due to poaching. In 2014 about 3000 Rhino’s were counted, so do the math and figure out how many are left.

The highlights (besides the Rhino’s) were the lions. We spotted a lioness, which just had made a kill and was walking around with a dead Warthog. Our guide called the sighting in and within minutes there were more people there than on the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam.

Later on the day we spotted group of two adult lionesses and one whelp. They were playing and refused to leave the road (which we didn’t mind). Just marvellous. Our guide went out of his way to show us everything he could. If you’re ever here, try to find him: Willem Pieters is his name. And yes, his great, great, great, great, great-grandfather was Dutch.

The day we took our own car into Kruger was special. The Elephants didn’t agree with our visit. We engaged a large group (we counted 20) of them when they were about to cross the road we were on. We probably made the small ones feel threatened, because the matriarch walked to us. The moment she was 5 meters away we thought it was time to go. We backed the car up for about 30 metres. Evidentially that was far enough. While the matriarch remained standing, the rest crossed the road. After the last one the matriarch gave the road back to us.

In the afternoon we engaged a solitary male (a big one!). He was standing besides the road and was clearly irritated with us. With a lot of noise and with his ears wide he walked (fairly quickly) to us. Nonna was driving and we know (now) how fast a Toyota Corolla can back up. That was exciting! While he was busy with us, another came from the other side and (later) got the same treatment. So we waited. It took about 15 minutes before he decided to leave and we could go on.

Anyway, our stay in Kruger National Park was great!