Part 2…Kruger National Park…It never disappoints…Odd day for us today…

We spotted this Leopard Tortoise crossing the road in Kruger National Park. The leopard tortoise is a member of the “Small 5” (along with the rhino beetle, the red-billed buffalo weaver, elephant shrew, and the ant lion).

Soon, Tom will be heading to the airport in Nelspruit to return the rental car for a required monthly inspection. With prices so high for rental cars lately, we went with Thrifty, which uses higher mileage cars and might be a few years old. By no means are they “beaters,”  However, we have been disappointed with the vehicle we have now. It doesn’t do well on the rough, dirt, and gravel roads.

It was fun to see a Spoon-billed Stork on the shore of Sunset Dam in Lower Sabie. See the more detailed photo below.

Thrifty’s contract requires that we return the car every 30 days for an inspection, which is a huge inconvenience when it’s a four-hour turnaround to make the trip. It’s a route I don’t like due to single-lane roads and lots of weaving in and out of traffic. It’s somewhat of a “nail-biter” for me as a passenger.

Today, Tom has decided there is no reason for me to ride with him. He’s leaving soon to make the trip on his own. I suppose it’s no big deal in the realm of things, and I should go with him. He insists he’ll be fine driving on his own, and thus I am staying behind.

What an interesting bird!

The four hours will be the longest we’ve been apart since we were in the US at the end of 2019 before leaving in January 2020 for India. Gosh, that seems so long ago.

The common starling.

We continue to research online daily, attempting to find reasonable prices on rental cars after June 30th, providing we’ll be able to return to South Africa. Right now, the cost of rental vehicles is more than our rent for 30 days. That makes no sense whatsoever. With travel at a minimum due to Covid, you’d think travel services such as rental cars would be reasonable to encourage travel after this long stretch.

Raising prices to compensate for losses only discourages travelers embarking on holidays/vacations when most prospective travelers have suffered financially during the pandemic. But, we’ve seen this happening with airlines, hotels, cruises, and auto rentals throughout the world. It makes no sense whatsoever.

A small crocodile was skimming the surface in the Sunset Dam.

Of course, I will be on pins and needles until Tom returns safely. While in the house alone, I’ll finish today’s post and get back to work on corrections on older posts, which I have been diligent about doing each day since I mentioned it here weeks ago. I am a week away from being 50% done with all of the over 3100 posts. It’s a slow and painstaking process that I am determined to complete, one way or another.

Once I reach the 50% mark, it will still be almost six months until I’m done, at the rate I am going so far, ten posts a day. Initially, I’d planned to do 20 posts a day, but that took several hours, more than I could do to stay motivated. As it is, I still spend two hours a day on the ten posts.

Two hippos were napping in the tall grass on the shore of the Sabie River.

As also mentioned earlier, I’ve found I can make the corrections while watching a series on the opposite side of the screen, using a split-screen. This helps the time go more quickly. Right now, I am into a few science fiction shows which Tom doesn’t care to watch. It’s not that I wish time to pass quickly, although some unpleasant tasks are best accomplished by some form of distraction for those of us who like to multi-task.

Hopefully, Tom will return by 2:30 (1430 hours) or 3:00 pm (1500 hours), and we can go about our day together as usual. Tonight is his final night of homemade low-carb pizza, which I’ll put together while he’s gone. I had chopped all the toppings and made the low-carb crusts in advance, making the balance easy.

This happened too quickly for a good photo. It was a crocodile spinning in the river with its prey in its mouth.

Some of you may not agree. Although not necessarily the most exciting photos we’ve ever taken in Kruger National Park, today’s photos are those scenes of wildlife we found to be worth sharing. Each time we enter the park, we do our best to come away with good photos for a few days, as we’ve done here.

We hope you have a pleasant day, and we’ll be back tomorrow with more. We’ve taken many more fun photos in the garden in the past few days and look forward to sharing those next.

Photo from one year ago today, May 12, 2020:

This is a Blue Kingfisher we spotted on this date in 2016 in Sumbersari, Bali. Click here for that post. For more photos from the year-ago post, please click here.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *