Along the way, I had two flat tires -- one right after leaving Cape Point. That was no problem: swap out the tire, and on the road again. The second one was at the tail end of the biggest thunderstorm I'd seen in my life: rain coming down straight into my windshield, lightning bolts that looked like they were 1/4 inch wide and me driving on the left. Well, I cleared the rain, but the lightning continued from cloud to cloud. I kept thinking there was someone flashing their headlights behind me, but it was just lightning. Anyway, I hit the side of the road and bent the rim on my front left tire. Shit. So, got out to change the tire and the jack broke. Shit. Well, the nearest town was about 2 miles away so I started walking. A few minutes later, this armored personnel carrier comes lumbering down the road, and the driver asks me if I need any help. Turns out that the commando units in S. Africa help out the police and stranded travelers -- one of the guys went hom and found a jack. Then, with 7 of his buddies, they lifted up the front end of my car, put the jack under it, and changed the tire. I doubt anything like that would have happened in the US...
Anyway, I made to Kruger without further incident. The park there is a drive through park -- you can't leave your
car except in a few designated areas. There aren't many rangers enforcing the rules, but the stray elephant or lion
crashing through the bush makes it pretty easy to remember the rules. I think, on average, I saw some wildlife about
every 20 minutes in the park, from impalas and waterbucks,
to zebra,
to giraffe,
to wildebeest,
to birds,
to hippos,
to an elephant.
I guess being raised on "The Wild Kingdom", I expected to see herds of critters
stretching on to the horizon, but that must be in Kenya, since there were
only a few small collections of animals:
Still, being that close to BIG game was amazing and awe-inspiring. I grew up in a hunting family in S. Dakota, but I never really was interested in it. Still, trying to get the perfect shot with a camera gave me the same feel I had as a boy walking cornfields looking for pheasants for "the big guys". I can understand the thrill of the hunt, but I can't understand killing the creature. Oh, well, maybe that's why I never really got into hunting. After Kruger, I drove back to Cape Town,since my next plane flight was from Cape Town to Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. I pretty much avoiding Johannesburg as I heard that crime there was pretty fierce -- the S. Africans seemed almost proud of it -- maybe because the people who told me that weren't from Jo'burg. I did see a few other places in S. Africa, mostly on the way from Cape Town to Kruger.