This is our third long weekend trip to the Kruger this year. We swapped some timeshare points for three nights (Friday - Sunday) at Ngwenya Lodge which is on the Crocodile River about 10Kms from Crocodile Bridge. As it was my birthday on the Monday so we opted to stay for an extra night at Lower Sabie.
Up at zero-dark-thirty on Friday, we finished packing the car and were on the road at around 05:45, just before the morning madhouse got going.
The journey went well until just before Malelane. There were two stop-goes on the Schoemanskloof road where we waited 10 minutes at the most. Between Nelspruit and Malelane there were two more; we waited a short time at the first one and then we came to a standstill. We waited, and waited and waited a bit more, then we got out of the car and waited in the hot sun. Every 15 or 20 minutes, some cars would come through from the other direction which made it very frustrating as we didn't move an inch and we were TWO KILOMETRES from the stop-go!!!!! After over 90 minutes of waiting we finally got going again. Two coal trucks had crashed into one another in the middle of the one-way - the way those idiots drive, it was NOT an accident - and I assume that it took them that time to get the debris off the road. I wish that someone had communicated this to us!
We finally arrived at Ngwenya at around 13:00 and decided to check in, even though the official occupancy time is 16:00. For those of you who don't know, the road past Ngwenya has been tarred and is now a very nice shortcut which bypasses Komatipoort on the way to Crocodile Bridge.
We decided to spend the time until we could get into our chalet (and remove the booze from the car) by having some coffee at Croc bridge camp. We left the car parked on the reception side of the gate and walked through to the camp. No sooner had we sat down with our coffee than Ngwenya phoned and told us the accommodation was available so we drank up and headed off but not before the coffee shop was raided by the local troop of Vervet Monkeys who were after their sugar fix.
After unloading the car, we were back at Croc Bridge before 15:30 and before we even entered the park, we'd seen Elephants and Buffalo from the bridge!
Gezantombi is home to a very big Terrapin.
We managed to get as far as Nthahdanyathi hide before we had to head back to Croc. There's still plenty of water for the Hippos in the riverbed.
The game spotting didn't stop when we got back to Ngwenya, we had several visitors during the evening, the most spectacular of them was a Cone-Headed Mantid (Eat your heart out Dan Akroyd!).
Then a Dung Beetle tried to crash through the window.
And a couple of moths were attracted by the lights.
To be continued.....
