South Africa Days 1-4: Safari Time!

When my friend, Alexandria, and I arrived in Johannesburg, our flight from Atlanta arrived later in the evening so we stayed at the InterContinental airport hotel. It was literally right outside of the International Arrivals hall, and most importantly, it was free! I had some miles stored from getting the InterContinental Hotel Group credit card so I used that to pay for it. It was quite a fancy hotel! We knew we would be jetlagged, so we took our time relaxing in the beautiful pool and steam room on the top floor of the hotel looking over the airport.

The first thing we planned for our trip was a safari! I have a college friend from USC who was actually just in South Africa over Thanksgiving last November, and he recommended that we book our safari through Rhino Africa. I am not usually a big fan of using tour companies to book trips since I usually can get a better rate on my own, but I don't know much about safaris so I figured I'd try it out! We did our safari at the Kapama River Lodge Reserve which ended up being pretty affordable considering that it was an all-inclusive experience. It was roughly $200 per person per night and that included 2 safaris per day, all meals plus a tea time before each safari, and all accommodations. This definitely was a splurge for me, but you can't go to South Africa and not do a safari! And this seemed to be the best way to get the most out of the experience in the few short days we had there. If we had more time, we would probably would have tried to do something within Kruger itself.

Getting on the tiny prop plane to Eastgate Hoedspruit Airport!

So on Sunday morning, we slept in and tried to adjust to the new time zone 9 hours ahead of Mountain Standard Time. We had a noon flight to Hoedspruit, a tiny town just outside of Kruger National Park, where a ranger was waiting to take us to Kapama. This airport, the Eastgate Airport, was the smallest airport I have ever been in! Yes, this means it is even smaller than the Provo Airport!

We got settled into our room and had a delicious lunch cooked by very friendly chefs who can speak a handful of languages or more. One of them could even speak 9 of the 11 native languages in South Africa on top of Portuguese, Spanish, and more! Our first safari started at 4pm. At Kapama, there are 2 safaris a day, one at 6am and one at 4pm. Each safari lasts 3 hours. The animals you see depends on the weather. The first day, we saw a ton of animals. We had barely left the meeting area when a handful of giraffes crossed our path in the middle of the road! But on the second day, the sky was overcast and it was pretty windy, so a lot of animals were seeking shelter and staying in the bushes to protect themselves from predators they may not hear as well in that weather.

Each safari vehicle had a ranger who drove and explained things about the animals and plants you were looking at and a tracker who sat at the very front of the vehicle (quite literally) and looked for footprints, droppings, and other signs of proximity to any animals. Our tracker, Alfie, was excellent and found two rare white rhinos for us on our last day. He had amazing stories of his service in the military where he learned to be a tracker. For instance, he was once chased by a herd of elephants while on a bicycle!

Alex recording her moment with the elephant (above) and our tracker finding the white rhinos (see video below)

The food was excellent at Kapama, but dinner was always the best! We got to eat dinner with our ranger, Angie, and there was always some sort of wild game dish that we got to try. I had ostrich bobotie and impala pie among other things while I was there. It was all delicious! And on the second day, it was Alex's birthday so the entire wait staff brought her a slice of cake while singing to her in one of the local languages.

Overall, I am extremely pleased with my experience at Kapama. While it was on a reserve and not in Kruger itself, we had a great view of many, many animals without the traffic that we have heard plagues the park. The staff also do not manage the animals on their property; we saw lions eating giraffes on more than one occasion, and that is just a natural part of the life cycle out there. While it was a reserve and not completely in the wild, a large benefit is that Kapama is outside of the moderate to high malaria risk areas that encompass Kruger, which is an important consideration to make when traveling to foreign countries, especially in rural areas. I still do want to experience a safari in the African wild one day, this was the best option for us given the time restraints and health risks that would entail. Plus, we ended our stay with a ride to the airport by one of the extremely attractive local rangers :) I'd say the safari portion of our trip was a great success!