South Africa: Kruger National Park and Exeter Lodge

We arrived back from South Africa on Sunday (26 July) after two weeks. I arrived in SA on Saturday 12th, Carla flew in a week and a half before and spent some time seeing her parents and friends.
I needed to get away from crowds for a bit, so on the Sunday we drove up to the Kruger National Park with Carla’s parents and booked into the Mopani camp for two nights and then one night at Satara. We have never stayed at Mopani before, but it was really nice with the main restaurant overlooking a beautiful dam, full of crocodiles and hippo’s. Our bungalow was a three bedroom place with a big balcony. Every evening we braaied outside, listening to the sounds of the bush and looking at the stars, just perfect! I haven’t seen stars in probably a year, most people here in Seoul do not believe me when I say we can see the “Milky Way”, they think the Milky Way is a fairy tale. On the Sunday we drove up, the weather had turned pretty cold, but it cleared up by Monday and gave us a few beautiful winter days with temperatures averaging around 19c during the day.

Elizabeth, Carla and Brad at Mopani Camp

Tuesday we drove from Mopani to Satara, it is just over a 100km, but you are driving that while spotting animals and we stopped at Letaba for breakfast, so it took us just under 6 hours to do.

Roy and Carla at a loout near Olifants

The game is always excellent around Satara. We had booked for a sunset night drive that evening, it seemed liked a good time to go on one after our long drive earlier that morning, now someone else could do the driving and we would just sit back and enjoy the scenery and animals. Sometimes you are lucky on the night drives and other times you don’t see anything at all. We had a good drive, seeing quite a few animals and a few rarer ones like a civet, it is the first time I have seen one.

This buffalo nearly put his head into the car window

Carla and Brad starting the night drive at Satara The following day Carla and I left the Kruger and Carla’s parents, who were staying over another night at Satara, and went to Exeter for two nights. Exeter is a private game lodge in the Sabi Sabi reserve, owned by Stephen Saad who founded Aspen Pharmacare, South Africa’s largest generic drug manufacturer. Exeter is fantastic, each bungalow is exquisitively designed and furnished, with your own private pool overlooking a river. In the Kruger we drive ourselves around, but at Exeter you are always taken by a guide and a tracker and are almost guaranteed of at least seeing the big 5, cheetah and wild dog are a little more difficult.

We arrived and had lunch overlooking the river, relaxed for about and hour and then went on our evening game drive. At night you are not allowed to walk around the camp without a guide as there are no fences and it is not uncommon to have leopard and other dangerous animals wandering through the camp.

Lunch at Exeter overlooking the riverWe were escorted to our door and arranged with the guide to pick us up fifteen minutes later to go for dinner. Carla and I walked into the room and both stood staring for a couple a minutes. The room had been prepared for us with a table setup for dinner, candles around the room and leading to a drawn bubble bath, and petals spread over the bed. For a moment we thought they had got the room wrong, as someone on the evening drive mentioned about some newly weds, but it was meant for us. The only problem was that I was feeling so sick, and just wanted to get into bed and sleep. The dinner was excellent with waiter serving us each course, it definitely was one of the highlights of the trip. Thursday was pretty much the same, we woke early for coffee and our morning game drive, came back to the camp for an enormous breakfast, relaxed in the bungalow for a couple of hours before heading back to the main lodge for lunch, another hour to relax and our evening drive. Dinner was a braai held in the boma, with some traditional singing and dancing while we enjoyed some good South African beer and wine.

Friday mornings game drive was excellent, we saw so much and to top it off, while we were following a pride of lion, they ran into a leopard and chased it up a tree. A first the leopard was a little agitated ( I can understand), but soon settled down on a branch for a well earned nap.

It was really disappointing to have to leave on Friday after our morning drive and breakfast, and head back to Johannesburg. The drive back wasn’t bad, with not too much traffic. It is approximately 500km and took us 5 hours (that is unheard of here in Seoul, normally Busan to Seoul, approx 400km will take between 8 and 15hrs depending on the traffic)