Elephants and friends at Kruger Park

by Diana Studer

- gardening for biodiversity

in Cape Town, South Africa

We headed all the way up North to see his animals at Kruger Park in September this year. (To be honest, sitting at a waterhole, waiting, for animals - is not my choice). Burchell's zebra mother and foal were very skittish as she taught him - look right and left then right again, make sure the traffic has obediently come to a complete halt, listen out for speeding idiots! (Sad baby giraffe incident is under investigation)

Zebra crossing

Happy electric car waited silently (but ready to move at once if needed). We watched a herd of elephants among trees ... then crossing ... the road ... last mother and calf waited till she was ab-so-lutely sure.

Elephant crossing

Waterbuck with white ringed rump. Neither a wildebeest nor a hartebeest, tsessebe are found in Northern savannah woodlands. Donkey lady is a female kudu. Striped white ladies are nyala. Impala (lion food) with a vervet monkey. Leaf ears - steenbok.

Antelope at Kruger

Male nyala, took one wary look at us and fled!

Wary nyala

When you see cars queueing, you slow down. Which side are they looking at? What can they see? Once it was lions. This time it was a leopard, after lunch, carefully washing her face clean.

What are they looking at?
A leopard!

Elephants came in all sizes from the bull and mothers, down thru the teenagers to the babies.

Elephants in all sizes

They like to drink fresh water straight out of the dam, tall with a trunk is so convenient. The littl'uns have troughs, or the natural pools I prefer - since they are accessible to all the creatures.

Elephants at water

Battered and scarred the face of this buffalo.

A battle scarred buffalo

Dark fork tailed drongo. Party colours for the lilac breasted roller. Ruffled by the tail wind a saddle-billed stork. Chunky yellow-billed hornbill (we have a wooden one on our patio as a souvenir of his tour guiding days)

Kruger birds

A lone elephant.

Lone elephant

Two wasp or handmaiden moths on our final tent. A pod of hippos waiting for summer rain - which has arrived - floodwaters cutting off Sable Height camp! Those logs on the shore, are crocodiles. Marabou storks (his nickname when overlanding to meet me in Cape Town). Some careful synchronisation required to get a giraffe down to water to drink. Sturdy and square the warthog.

and other animals at Kruger

Closing the day with an evening bath at the waterhole at Punda Maria in Kruger Park.

Evening bath at Punda Maria waterhole

1 Yellow BMW i3 to the Limpopo River in Kruger Park

2 Cape Town to the Limpopo River - the journey up

3 Pilgrim's Rest to Cape Town - heading home
5 Clivia and Gerbera at home Walter Sisulu and Lowveld National Botanical Gardens

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Pictures by Diana and Jürg Studer

of Elephant's Eye on False Bay

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