Sweni Road

The jewel in the crown of a trip to the Kruger Park is seeing all of the Big Five: lion, buffalo, rhinoceros, leopard and elephant. M and I have had that privilege only once in our many visits together, particularly because one of the hardest finds in the Big Five is the leopard.

Our third day in the Park and our search was going slowly. In the first 20kms of the morning we had seen just one giraffe. It was slim pickings for the rest of our slow search from Talamati to Satara. Our best viewing was from our shaded vantage point on the verandah at Satara. Sipping cold cider drinks, we watched blou wildebeest, an elephant and a small family of warthogs going about their lives on the other side of the perimeter fence.

On the return trip to our camp, M's mother suggested we take Sweni Road enroute to Talamati. It seemed as good a suggestion as any other.

First I spotted a rhino. Stop! - a command everyone wants to hear. It means our efforts aren't for naught. We stopped for one and got two. Just meters apart, two lumbering hides were munching on grass. Surprisingly, just like elephants, these mammoth animals are herbivores.

Our second encounter was with a herd of elephant straddling both sides of the sand road. They had found a mud patch and were taking turns spraying themselves with the cool mud. The smaller ones rolled in the mud. Protecting their young, the matriarchs kept a close eye on our car. We knew to keep our distance and to be prepared to reverse at great speed if a matriarch stared us down and started to flap her ears.

Thankfully, there was no such excitement. One of the matriarchs did cross the road to round up two youngsters still wallowing at the mud bath. As she traversed the road there and back she gave us a beady eye. We weren't about to disregard her warning and she was satisfied with that.

Our next spot was a lone buffalo tucked back in the bush but still easily identifiable. A large herd of buffalo is a sight to behold, especially when they spill across the road and you are not going anywhere except back from where you came. They don't move out of your way - you're in their territory, remember? This lone buffalo wasn't about to hold us up and on we went.

M's dad turned in at a dam for a closer look. The road for the turnoff looked treacherous and there was concern that we could get stuck. M's dad persevered and we crossed the small donga. We scoured the bush and the dam: no buck, no hippos, no crocs. It was all quiet. Looking keenly, M spotted a light coloured head above the grass. Lion - surely that was a lion. If so, we would have spotted the big Five as we had seen a leopard in a tree the day before.

Up went the binoculars - it was a beautiful leopard. He lay there for a short while, head above the grass, but our voices carried across the water and he chose to move on. We tracked him as he put distance between us - a stunningly beautiful specimen!

Four of the big Five spotted one after the other on the Sweni Road - such unlikely odds. Would we possibly spot lion next? No, it wasn't to be. Instead, we sighted two elephants drinking from the concrete reservoir just outside our bush camp. The sides of the reservoir stood taller than the elephants but over went their trunks, sloshing and filling with water.

That's the joy of the Kruger Park - it is a wildlife reserve, not a zoo. Each sighting is a gift and we're grateful for each gift, no matter how big or small.