A Picture Postcard From Kruger National Park, South Africa

5:00 am, Ngala Lodge, Kruger National Park:

Sam, Willa and I take off in a jeep watching the sun rise with our guide Erich and scout Tom:


I was nervous for our daughter's sake. It was the end of the season and maybe we wouldn't see anything. Ngala doesn't stock it's park. It's entirely within Kruger, without a fence between it's private land and Kruger's public, so the animals have some 7,500 square miles in which to roam. Willa was the only one among us who managed to see nothing on our trip to Alaska last year: no bears, seals, whales or orcas and the only eagle she saw was in a rehabilitation centre. Given her luck, our expectations were not high.

We figured if we spotted one giraffe we'd be lucky. Here's what we saw:
herds of elephants, impala, water buffalo and antelope; a crash of rhinos; a pride of lions; a dazzle of zebras, a tower of giraffes, a thunder of hippopotami; a cackle of hyenas; a troop of baboons; an implausibility of wildebeast; a sounder of warthogs; and a leap of leopards. Yes. A leap of leopards. That was just in the first 24 hours.

For more animals, go to my second picture postcard from Kruger Park please.