We may have been in the middle of nowhere, but that doesn’t mean to say we didn’t have neighbours.  Some nights it was really quite noisy – frogs, insects, birds and hippos can all be quite talkative at night!!

I was fortunate enough to camp all over Kruger National Park – starting in the South and working our way North over 12 days.  My holiday buddy had planned it carefully so that we would get to experience all different sorts of habitats.  At the start of our trip we had an amazing sighting of a rhino and on our final nights we were woken up by lions roaring in Mareola!

Our constant companion were the hyenas.  We had two good sightings of them on the roads in the south.  They are much fluffier than I expected.  I quite liked them!!  Yet in the souvenir shop there were stuffed fluffy elephants, griaffes, lions and leopards… but no hyenas!

In Shingwedzi I woke up at 4am as we were booked on a bush walk.  I unzipped my tent, peeped out… and peering  back at me was a hyena, just 10 m away.

Mareola went one better than that though!  Below is a picture of our tent set up.  Just the other side of the fence was the hyenas’ path.  In the evenings they would walk very purposefully backwards and forwards sometimes just 2 or 3m away.  It was difficult to tell whether we saw the same animal several times, but one time we saw two at once.

Suffice to say I was very grateful there was a fence!!

L