Day 3

Kruger National Park and surrounding area is HOT!  Today we flew into a 35 degree celcius Hoedspruit airport.  There we met our Kapama ranger, Thomas who drove us to our camp - The Buffalo Camp.  The Kapama reserve actually begins just across the road from the Hoedspruit airport so we literally drove across the street and through a gate to get to the reserve.

We drove about 20 minutes through the reserve to get to camp.  The drive through was pretty cool as we saw quite a few animals.  We saw zebras, impalas, and a couple of warthogs.  Probably the coolest sighting was a giraffe that was literally right beside the jeep!

We arrived at the camp and were greeted with smiles and cold towels to refresh our faces after the drive.  Lunch had already been served and done with by the time we arrived but they were super nice and accommodating about it and made sure that were still served lunch.  Here is a pic of our tent - The Hyena Tent:

After lunch, we began getting ready for the evening game drive.  While I was out in the tent getting together the cameras and safari gear, I heard a scream from Dave in the bathroom.  I asked him what was wrong and he yelled "There's a snake in the bathroom!!"  I went to the bathroom and through the door I heard Dave say "Can you open the door slowly please?".  As I opened the door, Dave slipped out slowly and closed the door and told me he was investigating a spider web in the key hole of the bathroom door when he suddenly heard hissing.  He looked down to find a huge snake in a cobra stance hissing at him!  We immediately went to the main office to ask them to look into it.  They sent 2 rangers out who found discovered the snake was actually a Mozambique Spitting Cobra which apparently is considered one of the most dangerous snakes in Africa, second only to the Mamba!  They eventually had to kill the snake - they said if they had drove the snake out, it would've eventually made it's way back to the tent.

Our 1st game drive was still pretty exciting considering the cobra excitement that we (Dave) experienced!  We saw two lions (1 male and 1 female) resting beside their half eaten warthog carcass.  A jackal tried to steal some of their kill, but the male lion chased it away.

We also saw warthogs and  a female giraffe drinking water - our ranger said he thought the giraffe was pregnant and was probably going to give birth as soon as it rains:

Probably the most exciting part of the game drive was the high speed leopard chase.  We had just finished our sundown drinks when our ranger received a call that they had found a leopard.  Of the big Five, the leopard is the hardest animal to find.  Our ranger drove super fast through winding and bumpy pathways to get us to the location.  He was afraid that the leopard would run off as it is very skittish.  We made it on time and snapped several shots.  Here's one of them:

Tomorrow we have an early morning game drive, then we're off to the River Lodge for the next 2 days...