Finished with Cape Town, we flew back to Johannesburg, rented a car, and made for the Mozambique/South Africa border. We had one last stop to make in the fictitious-sounding town of Hoedespruit. Hoedespruit is ideally located between Kruger Park (home of the many animals you've been furiously guessing) and Blyde Canyon (a massive canyon that maintains rainforest-like climate due to the massive amount of water evaporating off waterfalls and rivers at the bottom).
Hoedespruit had more to offer than just its great proximity. The town has many private game reserves within 20 miles. We scored a great deal through air bnb to stay on one of the reserves. Our hosts, the Zimbabwe-born Ron and his daughter Angela, provided a guest house without rival as well as access to their truck and safari 4x4 for local wildlife viewing. We got up close and personal with giraffes, impala, and zebras having hardly left our rental.
The designation of main event would still belong to Krugar. We only spent an afternoon in the park, but managed to find hippos, which I had never seen, a leopard, which even frequent spyers often miss, and dueling elephants. I kept track of the Esser Big Five though. The final tally was 23 elephants, 22 giraffes, 9 hippos, 1 lion, and no rhinos. as a side note and a bit of a downer (sorry), it's actually quite sad the alarming rate that rhinos are disappearing, poached for their horns. We heard that south Africa has had over 500 rhinos poached this year, a rate that will have them extinct in 15 year's time. In case you are using rhino horn for any of your home remedies, knock it off.
Anyways, I think both Katharine and Sean guessed the order correctly. Katharine crushed the tie breaker though and was just one giraffe off. Many guesses only flipped lions and hippos. By all accounts we had surprisingly low attendance from the king of the animal kingdom. Thanks all for reading and guessing.
Blyde also proved sharp. We enjoyed the outlooks over the misty canyons below, but my favorite part had to be the short trail run that we completed. It felt good to stretch our legs between car rides and break a sweat in the dry air. Again and again, the run opened up into vistas that took away what little breathe remained in me.
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yayy!! Do I still get a prize? :)
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