Welcome to South Africa! An included transfer will take you to your hotel close to the airport. You have today to explore Johannesburg - head to the Apartheid museum for a dose of history, check out sprawling Soweto, or take the Gautrain to the shopping destinations of Rosebank or Sandton.
Departing Johannesburg today, we’ll drive to Pafuri Gate, the entrance to Kruger National Park. After meeting our guides and taking the safety briefing, we’ll get acquainted with Makuleke Camp. After settling in, it’s time for our first adventure, an unforgettable game drive and night drive, to get introduced to the reserve, its wildlife, and that sweeping night’s sky.
Rise and shine! Today is all about Ecology & Conservation, so after a cooked breakfast we’ll head out on a game drive or bush walk. Along the way our Game Ranger guide will teach us about the area’s ecology and geology, as well as how the wildlife interact with the land. Back at camp we’ll enjoy an interactive discussion by our instructor about the inter-relatedness of geology and soils, weather and atmosphere, food webs and energy flows, and habitats and conservation. Clued up on all things ecology, we’ll then head out on another game drive, incorporating game viewing with an emphasis on ecology and the topics covered during the lecture.
Today’s topic is tracking, an essential skill if you want to be a safari ranger! We’ll take a morning bush walk and learn all about how to identify animal tracks. After living our best Aragorn lives, it’s back to camp for our daily lesson, focussing on track identification and trailing skills. Then it’s time to put it into practice, as we take a bush walk and try and trail some animals.
Good morning! Today’s topic is bird identification and behaviour, so we’ll take a morning walk and learn how to spot different types of birds using reference guides. Back at camp we’ll enjoy another interactive discussion, this time on Kruger’s magnificent birdlife. Then it’s time for our game drive, as we try to spot hornbills, storks, kingfishers, starlings and more, learning about their behaviour and conservation status.
Another day, another fascinating topic - this time Navigation & Orientation. We’ll take a trail from camp and learn how to use nature as a tool to navigate and orientate ourselves in the bush. Making our way to the midday picnic spot, we’ll enjoy lunch in the bush, discussing everything we’ve learned, before heading back to camp. Here we’ll take our interactive discussion around bush skills and navigation, including how to use landmarks, the sun, a compass and maps to make our way in the wild. Then it’s time for another game drive, where we’ll have the opportunity to take a walk and put everything we’ve learned into practice.
One more day of lessons, and today’s topic is animal identification and behaviour. We’ll take our customary morning bush walk, trailing from camp and learning about the behaviour of mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish and arthropods. Then we’ll enjoy another interactive discussion on how to identify and study wildlife, before another afternoon game drive, with a focus on spotting Big Game animals.
It’s our final day! But don’t feel blue: we’ve still got time for one more unforgettable game drive to end the trip on the high… Then it’s back to Johannesburg where our adventure comes to an end. But having lived life on the wild side, it’s hard not to start planning our next safari…Botswana, anyone?
