Sabie, South Africa - Day 258 - Boots on the Loose

Took a good 4 hours to drive from Jo’burg to Sabie. Landscape started very flat and dry with plenty of farms all around (and lots of nuclear power plants scattered about), but around halfway turned quite green and mountainous. Passed through a good 5 or 6 tollbooths to get there. (totalling close to $10??) People drive incredibly fast – speed limit is almost always 120kph but if you’re not going at least 130 (or maybe 140), you’ll have someone on you waiting for you to drive in the shoulder so they can pass.

Checked out a couple backpackers in town but ended up upgrading to a nicer B&B instead. Due to it being winter now (and I’m talking seriously cold… around freezing at night; SA’s in a bit of cold snap and people here don’t have houses built for this kind of cold) it’s low season so most places we go, we’re the only ones there. It feels really weird being in the smaller towns around SA… very un-African (at least compared to what we’re used to); if it weren’t for the black people, Sabie would feel like it’s in the Alps somewhere.

Next day we took a drive a few hours north up the Blyde River Canyon; drive follows the river north and has many stopping points along the way to see waterfalls, potholes, panoramas, etc. It was all quite nice but got spectacular once we hit the view of the 3 Rondavels at the northern part of the canyon. Got back to Sabie, went out for dinner and decided to try an Ostrich steak! No kidding, I think it’s my new favorite meat. Yum. As well they had warthog casserole which seemed strange, but will have to try it if I see it again.

Another note on the weather – short of 1 rainy day back in Nkata Bay, Malawi, we literally haven’t seen a cloud in the sky since leaving Zanzibar over 2 months ago. MAN it’s going to be hard coming back to winter in Vancouver :o(

Originally we weren’t going to bother with Kruger National Park since we’d planned on a few other parks instead, but it was right there, it’s only about $30 a day for both of us (with a car), you can drive yourself, and we kept hearing how many lions they had… so I managed to talk Jen into it. Got to the gate around 8:30am (which according to any enthusiast is way too late to see anything important), but almost immediately found a rhino, followed shortly by 2 lionesses crossing the road. Cool! Unfortunately they would turn out to be our only rhinos and lions of the day, but of course saw plenty of everything else (elephant, giraffe, zebra, hippo, etc, etc). The park is quite neat because it’s almost entirely paved so even in our little rental VW Golf we could easily do our own safari (which meant rocking out to music while looking for animals!) Left the park around sunset and headed for a town called Grasskop, right near Sabie (thought we’d change it up for a night or two).

After checking into the hostel went for dinner at the Boat House restaurant, had a lady come over insisting she had met me at the Biltong Hut earlier that day (she definitely didn’t). Anyway we got talking about the park and insisted (she was very insistent) we had to go again but get there when the gate opens (6:30am) to see the big cats. Alright, alright… maybe after we’ve had a days rest. It’s actually quite neat because you’d think the safari thing would be a complete tourist trap but in fact, most locals we’ve met seem to be right into it themselves (this particular lady moved from the UK so that her and her husband could do regular safaris!!). Incidently the Biltong Hut sells biltong which is basically South African beef jerky, but is far more popular here than home (we’re kind of addicted now ourselves… I’m even in the process of writing a song about Biltong).

Next morning took a drive over to Pilgrim’s Rest which is a small, touristy (Ft. Langley/Dawson City style) town that was started in the 1870’s during the gold rush. Lots of neat old buildings, cemetery, plenty of little shops to look through (more than i care to). Portugese restaurant for dinner (there are plenty of them due to people leaving Mozambique during the recent civil war there), and in bed early for our 5:30am rise to have a second go at Kruger.

Made it through the gates by around 6:45am (Not bad I must say!). Ended up leaving the park by noon (wanting to drive back to Pretoria that day, close to Johannesburg) and would you believe it? We hardly saw a single animal at all, other than 2 incredibly hard to see lions way off in the distance! Bugger. Guess there are never any guarantees but nevertheless, it was quite disappointing (AND, the lions were about 15 minutes before noon!!). Ah well…