Into Africa - Safari in Kruger Park Before the Cancervive Kickoff

Well it's hard to believe that I've been here in South Africa for only 5 days. It feels like I've been here for weeks. As you may know, I came in early to meet my friend Donna (the one who's done the Cancervive event twice before, and the reason I found out about it) to spend a few days before the ride in the Kruger Park area doing a 4 day safari .Besides being a real 'bucket list' thing for both of us, it would give us a chance to get acclimated to the time zone and culture before setting off on our adventure. Since this part of the trip was on my own dime, I tried hard to find a good deal, and what I ended with exceeded my expectations by - oh, I don't know - about a million times I think!

We were picked up from Johannesburg early Monday morning for long (7 hour) drive to the Balule Reserve where we were staying. Though the reserve is connected to Kruger (meaning no fences to keep animals in or out), it is not "Kruger" proper. Now here's the thing - Kruger itself is 2 million hectacres!

Hippo in the Balule Reserve our first night

On route to Tremisiana Lodge

Just a taste of the scenery along the way

Sunset in the Balule Reserve

Sunrise in Balule on route to our early morning Bush Walk

Beautiful African sunrise

Just a few of the large herd of Hippo that gretted us at the Olifante River

The Olifante River

A semi-tame cheetah (she still hunts for her food) at the private game reserve we visited.

Setting off for our sunset game drive at the private reserve

My favorite I think, and we saw dozens. So elegant!

Just a few of a huge herd of elephant we saw walkng in a line in Kruger Park

at Kruger Park

We saw a LOT of these at Kruger. Just beautiful!

At the private game reserve

LOVE!

The mother rejected her as a cub since she was the runt. The game reserve took care of her so spared her life

I'm not even sure how to begin explaining the experience, and because I've had very little time or access to wireless, I'll abbreviate for now and go into more detail (and share more of the hundreds of amazing photos and dozens of videos that I took. In short - we saw nearly 40 different species of wild animals - including  all of the 'big five' - buffalo, lion, leopard, elephant and rhinos. The trip consisted of a sunset drive the day we got to the park, a bush walk the following day as well as a trip to a private reserve where we had some of the most incredible viewing - until the next day when we spent the whole day inside of Kruger Park and saw the most amazing array of animals - herds of lions, elephants, zebra, giraffe, wildebeest, hyena, jackal, hippos, and witnessed a rare siting of wild dogs hunting a herd of impala to name just a few.

So much more to write about but we are now keeping quite a busy and tight schedule.

We kicked off the ride yesterday - too much to write about here so stay tuned for the next episode!!

For more photos, click here to see my online album. Video links below: