Kruger National Park and Sabi Sands, the most amazing places.

Day 7

we leave The Royal Sawzi and drive through Swaziland in daylight, different place, much nicer.

We are heading for the Kruger National Park.

We now have a full compliment of rally cars again, unfortunately we lost a Buick. It developed a major engine problem and had to retire. The owner lives in South Africa. He got it shipped home and then rejoined the rally in a 1973 Merc, welcome back Udo.

All the other cars are performing pretty well. Molly is running very well but has had to have a major service ( by my standards ) I have tightened up the rear exhaust clamp and changed a petrol filter. I have managed this all on my own with no manual, no phoning Gantspeed and more impressively not hitting or cutting myself in the process.

The petrol here is what they call 95 octane, it what I call rubbish, still we are going along and having a ball.

Very excited about driving through Kruger National Park. You have to fill out all sorts of forms and promise not to hunt any of the animals.

Kruger is not the sort of park I am used to, can’t find any swings and the ice cream vans seem to have gone home. But what we do see is a baby elephant crossing the road closely followed by its Mum. 

Before we came here we looked up elephants and Kruger Park on Google/Utube. The video of the elephant rolling the car over in Kruger suddenly became very real. Mummy Elephent did not like the cars that close to her baby. There were only two cars, the guy in front and us. He slams his car into reverse and I try to find a similar gear, I know its in here somewhere but in my moment of terror I can’t find it.

Fortunately Mummy elephant seems to have proved her point, baby is safe and so are we as she carries on her way.

Think the guy in front may need to stop at the nearest building for a change of attire :)

Kruger is vast covering 2,000,000 hectares, you could spend a week driving round it (bit like an Ikea car park). We only have a couple of hours.

We need to press on to our next accommodation at a place called Sabi Sands.

Julie advises me its not far only about 40 km. What she doesn't know is it is along really sand covered safari park tracks.

Sabi Sands is a private game reserve with lodges scattered around it. To give you an idea of the scale of the lodges some of the owners are the Getty family and a chap called Sir R Branson.

As we enter Sabi Sands Molly gets thoroughly searched in case we are poachers and trying to sneak guns and such like into the reserve. Apparently they do this to all Porsche 356s which enter the reserve :) Whilst this search is going on one of the residents comes up to us and says that he has seen some crazy cars try to get to the lodges but nothing as crazy as us in Molly.

We have tried to photo the tracks we used, not sure they really show how ‘interesting ‘ the tracks were.

Molly proves them all wrong and we arrive just in time for late lunch.

The lodge we are staying in is called Leadwood.

I am not usually stuck for words but this place has done it. Simple stunning will do. 

As some of you will know we are not very lucky with our hotel rooms, we think we have cracked it with this lodge, settle down for an early night (5.30 start tomorrow) and just when you think you’re about to go to the land of nod a lion roars outside, and you know what you don’t care, this is Africa this is stunning.

In the morning we actual get up close and personal with said lion and his girlfriend. That will be day 8, where we have 5.30 start and one of the most amazing days we have ever had.

Next blog is all about the Big 5 + + +
Sorry for the lack of photos but we are in the middle of nowhere and its bait slow :)
Hopefully tomorrow the connection will be faster.