SA-Botswana – Day 1

At the airport in Frankfurt I met two of my group to fly out to Johannesburg. After 10 hours we arrived in the morning and in Johannesburg we met two more. It took a while to find our shuttle to the Kruger Gate Hotel but once we found him he was kind of a tour guide as well. He told as a lot of things. Starting with slum areas in Johannesburg that were not wanted and have been vacated (and probably burnt). Another thing he told us was that the highway we were on was leading straight to Mozambique. So when we saw people at the edge of the road who were holding up a passport that meant that they were looking for a passage to Mozambique.

He showed us a ceremony held by a ‚healer‘ (whatever that means in South Africa 😉 ) in a small river. Not sure if it was baptism or some kind of voodoo. It was really good to have someone who explained things to us. It took us more than 5 hours to go up to Kruger National Park. We stopped at a place that I took as ’shopping mall‘. But there we saw our first animals. Unfortunately this is probably far from being wilderness for the animals. Continuing we saw a lot of things growing along the road like walnuts, citrusses and lots of other things. Industry-wise there was a lot of coal that was being excavated. At the end of the trip report I will write a separate entry for things ‚along the road‘. There are some really creative, funny and interesting road signs.

In the afternoon we finally arrived at our hotel where Raik was waiting for us. We checked in and then met at the river-outlook to have a sundowner. After that it was time for dinner which was a great buffet. Unfortunately it was very easy to eat too much… 😀 😀 😀 And then we went to sleep early. Long trip and we had to get up early the next morning for our first game drive.