Pine Lake Resort and Kruger National Park
My brother, John and his wife, Anne, have some timeshare. So, the mid term break (they are both in the teaching profession) in February 2016 was a good time to visit Mpumalanga and in particular the Kruger National Park.
Anne had booked time at Pine Lake Resort, near Hazyview. This was about 37.3km's from the Numbi gate into Kruger. But because of the problems that were reported on the road to Numbi, we chose to use the Phabeni gate instead.
Sue and I were going to be only staying for the weekend, leaving Randpark Ridge on Friday afternoon. According to the Garmin, it was about a 4 hour drive. We would be travelling back on the Monday morning, leaving Pine Lake very early. The drive over went well and it took us 4 hours and 5 minutes
The chalet. has 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, lounge, dining room and kitchen. very nice.
The view is over a dam/lake.
Pine Lake Resort is stunning and we had a lovely chalet (3 bedrooms) overlooking the lake. Good braai area as well, which we used on Friday evening and Sunday afternoon.
We departed early Saturday morning for Kruger. Leaving at 05h00 we arrived at the Phabeni gate just after they had opened.
There was already a queue and the processing was slow, with only one of 3 booths manned and open !. Anyway, we made it in !
Its always nice to be in the Kruger.
We had the opportunity to see 4 of the big 5, and only missed out on the Lion !!
It was exceptionally hot. The forecast for Skukuza was 44c and we stopped for lunch at Lower Sabie where it was, according to the parks-board, 45c. But there was a very hot berg wind and it felt more like 54c.
Even the monkeys and baboons were feeling the heat !
It was very dry and most of the grass has died and there is really just a lot of sand. The water situation seemed dire, and even the warthogs were batting to find mud to cool off in
We exited at the same gate at which we had entered the park. We left at 18h00.
On the Sunday we had decided to have a later morning and a decent breakfast.
It was very good.
The rest of the day was just lazing around with a short drive into the nearby attractions at White River where we spent about 3 hours milling around the local craft stores. Some had excellent local crafts.
Sue and I left Pine Lake Resort very early Monday morning as I had to get back to work.
It was an excellent relaxing weekend.
According to Garmin, the following are the statistics :
- Total Km's - 1,207
- Moving average - 62km per hour
- Overall average - 53 km per hour
- Moving time was 19 hours 31 minutes
- Total time was 22 hours 59 minutes.
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