Kruger National Park, 1

Kruger NP is one of the world's great national parks and biological reserves. It contains hundreds of species of all sorts and is perhaps the oldest and most storied of Africa's reserves. We were three days there and took perhaps a thousand pix. The park has several campground/resorts (we stayed at Praetoriuskop and then Skukuzu), all behind high electrified fences and gates. The gates close at sunset and open at sunrise. One drives through the park on both paved and unpaved roads, staying inside one's vehicle on pain of severe fine or on pain of being eaten or trampled alive. Here and there are several rest areas where one can "alight" from one's vehicle to stretch or snack. After Blydepoort and the rest of Blyde Canyon, we entered Kruger through the Orpen gate and then proceeded south and west to our initial campsite at Praetoriuskop. As for the pix below and in the next several posts, we favor the larger animals and the more fearful predators, so there will be relatively few pix of impalas, kudus, wildebeestes and such. All this on August 29th.

Entering at the Orpen Gate...rules of the road...main rule: stay in
you vehicle

The terrain, as much of southern Africa: brush and small trees,
semi-arid; flat

Not a kilometer past the gate, the animals appear; in droves

Impalas; of which we soon tired; they are the principal biomass;
snacks for lions, leopards, hyenas

Wildebeestes

Giraffes; yes! tons of giraffes, so graceful and majestic!

And then the big ones...we've seen hundreds now and will
always stop for more

Weird Gondwanaland fruit

Beautiful yellow-leaved trees (it's spring here)

More terrain

Street scene

Back off, human!

At a rest area

Beautiful pests

Crowd-sourced sightings boards at various stops

Thieves

African buffalo; one of the Big Five; also one of the Ugly Five

Another street scene

Southern Kruger is dotted with these large rocky out-crops...
croppies...somewhat similar to those in Joshua Tree NP in the US

A termite mound enveloping a tree

Elk-like animal--kudu?--to be identified in a later edit

Partridges in our campsite

Our camp at Praetoriuskop, after a very busy first day in the
park