Sadie's Journal: A letter from Kruger National Park

Dear Friends,

I went to Kruger! We went on lots of safaris! We had to wake up at 5:00am for our 1^st safari, which we thought was just a morning safari. Actually, it was an all day! Our guide was Burnhard. We saw the big 5 on the 1^st day just like Mrs. Marlinda, our neighbor, hoped! (The big 5 is a list of the 5 most dangerous animals to hunt on foot.)

Lion: Burnhard got a report of lions! There they were, a big and lazy male with a silky mane, 2 sleek lionesses, and even 5 little cubs that were so cute! One lioness took the cubs to the watering hole to drink. On one other safari, a lioness crossed the street right behind the vehicle about 2 feet away from me! I think lion cubs are the cutest babies! 

Elephant: Elephants are my favorite animals! We found 3 elephants that I named Duma, Muqua, and Taba after the elephants at Addo Elephant Back Safari (see below). Taba sprayed water all over his head to cool off. We also saw a cute newborn elephant (we called her Muddy) learning to walk!

Leopard: We hadn’t seen this in the big 5 before! Unfortunately, this leopard was more of a leopard lump because it was curled up asleep in a shadowy pipe. “3^rd pipe,” everybody told us. Ben, my brother, thinks it was a cheetah, but I don’t. It was pretty hard to tell, though! Luckily, we saw a better leopard the next day. It was in a tree eating an impala for lunch! One time, Burnhard joked, “Look! There’s a leopard! Tortoise,” (a leopard tortoise is a kind of tortoise.) 

Cape buffalo: They’re the most
dangerous in the big 5! There, in the rocks by the brook, were 3 Cape buffalo. “Moo,” mooed Burnhard, even though he had said earlier, “No silly noises!” One other day, we saw 2 more Cape buffalo. They were trying to get to a watering hole, but there were lions in the way! We named them Sue and Bill Buffalostien, and I made a comic about them! Here it is:

Black rhinoceros: This was a new one in the big 5, too! It was only Burnhard’s 46^th Black rhino! We were on the way to see a leopard, but then we spotted a Black rhino! Burnhard had expected to see a White rhino where it was (which we did on a different safari later), but no! This was a Black rhino. It rolled in the mud while a baboon tried to get some water. We missed the leopard, but it’s more exciting to see a Black rhino because they’re so rare. The Kruger booklet had to have pictures of White rhinos because they couldn’t find any of Black rhinos, and the animal book even said, “Black rhinoceros: seldom seen in Kruger.” We didn’t expect to see a Black rhino!

 

 When we got back to our rental house, 4 zebras were waiting for us! We named them Thike, Nod-Nod, Tri, and Stompy. There were also kudu. One was Keegan, and another was Granny. Some men let us feed Granny. At first she was afraid of us and would only eat out of the bucket, but she finally got used to me and ate out of my hand! I patted her soft nose. I’ve always wanted to pat a wild animal!

I think you’d love seeing all the wild animals in Kruger. There’s so much to see and you never know what you might see!

Love, Sadie