Holiday in South Africa

This is the beginning of our holiday (aka vacation) in South Africa. We started in Johannesburg and went to Kruger National Park. We'll post pictures as we have time, but didn't want to delay any longer in getting started.


Typical hillside village between Johannesburg and Kruger National Park.


MacMac Waterfall between Johannesburg and Kruger National Park.


Did we mention it rained a lot the first few days?! Dani decided to "sing in the rain" before heading out for the day. This is the view of the garden from our room.


And this is the room. Typical style was twin beds.


Buffalo - One of the BIG 5. The BIG 5 are determined by the difficulty of hunting the animal on foot. The BIG 5 are buffalo, leopard, lion, rhino & elephant.


Leopard - This is a leopard eating it's prey. The picture is difficult to see, but if you open it up bigger you may get a view of the leopard's eyes.


Giraffe - This was Dani's favorite animal to see.


"Mini deer" - These are full grown, but look like fawns.


Vultures - We never fully decided what they were scavenging on, but it was impressive to see.

Baboon w/ Impala - Neat to see all the creatures living in harmony (as long as they aren't the predator.)

Baboons - Just look at the baby. Most of the baboons we saw had babies since it's spring in the Southern Hemisphere.

Water Monitor - Very neat lizard. We only saw a handful of them during our travels.

Here we are in Kruger National Park on top of a ridge. And guess why we stopped there - because there weren't "bathrooms" anywhere else. (And who do you think needed one?) The view ended up being a beautiful bonus!

Still in Kruger National Park. It did rain on and off throughout the day, but the cooler weather was a blessing in disguise since all the animals were out in the middle of the day. Usually the animals are active only in the morning and at night.

This is the Pretoriuskop "rest camp" within the Kruger National Park boundaries. One "hut" for two people. And you can see the little Toyota Versa we drove for 18 days, almost 3,000 miles!

Sausage Tree - The "fruit" on this tree was so fascinating!

This is the common area in the rest camp at Pretoriuskop.

Look carefully. . . Do you notice anything that seems not right? . . . Like the driver being on the right side of the vehicle and the vehicle being on the left side of the road?!

Saddle Billed Stork - Very interesting to watch! And the bill is so unique.

We visited the Shangana Cultural Village. This is the chief and his family. (Dani doesn't believe they actually live there - that it was a tourist trap!)