As it was the South African school holidays I had booked our campsites before we left RIchmond.  Pretoriuskop was the only rest camp in southern Kruger that had campsites available so I'd booked us in for 4 nights before we went to Djuma.  After 1 night we both regreted this decision as the sites are close together and there were some very noisy groups around us.  We enjoyed the morning drives that we did despite the fact that we saw relatively few animals, although we did have some excellent elephant sightings.   Each morning we drove out and then parked up at a waterhole where we had coffee and cake (sitting in the bakkie) while we waited to see what animals arrived.  We often stayed at 1 place for an hour or so.  

 I took a lot of photos with my zoom lens but later discovered that most of the photos were out of focus - I should have uploaded them and checked them out earlier - so most of the following photos are with my phone. 

 A few of the animals we saw along our routes, including 3 inquisitive hyena cubs on one of the gravel roads. 

The parking at Metsel dam gives a good view across the dam.  The hippos mainly stayed in one place but were quite vocal and a few of them did move around a bit.  We saw a few buck and a lone buffalo on the far bank but they were mostly obscured by the vegetation.  A small group of elephants made their way down to the sandy shoreline and stayed for a while.  A couple of the young bulls had a mock play/fight next to the dam (not one of the photos I took of them was in focus).

Transport Dam gave us some good sightings and we stayed there for some time watching the hippos, some birds and animals coming down to drink.  There was an very large group of waterbuck who took some time to go down to drink.

On leaving the dam we drove a bit further along the track and were lucky enough to come across a family group of elephants with some monkeys running along the road ahead of them.. The elephants kept coming along the road towards us so we backed up and moved over so they could go past us, which they did.  We then turned around and followed them for a short way.  They didn't go to the dam but wandered off the road to browse on some nearby trees and shrubs.  We watched them until they were out of sight.    

We stopped at Shitihave dam on a couple of occassions.  The first time we just saw a lone buffalo lying down.  The next time we waited for a while and were rewarded by seeing an elephant family coming down to drink.  

One evening at the campsite this genet came to have a drink at a nearby tap.

Last updated: December  2022