Sunday August 18, 2019
This morning we left the Boulders Beach Lodge at 5:45 am. Howie was there to meet us on time, and drove us to the Cape Town Airport. (Good thing he was on time, as Simonstown was hosting a rather large road running race, and he got to our lodge right before the huge influx of traffic ground the inbound road to a halt!) We drove in the dark and so didn’t see much scenery on the way.
Airport check in was uneventful, and further cemented the fact that the Cape Town airport is the most efficient airport we have ever traveled!
Our flight took off on time at 8:10 am. We flew Kulula Airlines to Johannesburg, and landed about two hours later. There was a fairly long line for rental cars, and we got away from the airport a bit later than expected. Thankfully though, despite some less than flattering reviews we’ve read for Budget/Avis, our car pickup was uneventful.
We are driving a Hyundai Tucson, and Chad did a great job adapting quickly to the idea of driving on the left hand side of the road and sitting on the right in the car. This may be easy for me to say as the passenger, but renting a car and self driving to Kruger is a straightforward process and I’m glad we made that choice (despite passing a sign somewhere outside of Johannesburg that reads “High Carjacking Zone” – it was frankly in the middle of nowhere and there didn’t even appear to be anyone around.)
We stopped about halfway through the 4 hour drive at Milly’s, a rest stop with a couple of different restaurants, rest rooms, etc. We had sandwiches and drinks, but didn’t stay long. Our goal was to get to Hippo Hollow in Hazyview early enough to give us time to explore before dark.
The property here is beautiful, and our river chalet with a loft for the kids is a lovely, comfortable setup. We only had an hour or two before dark, but unfortunately, there were no hippos to be found. 😦 We were told that the hippos usually come around 7 pm when they are present – but they didn’t tonight. We ate dinner in the open-air on-site restaurant, in view of the river, but no luck. Right now it’s 9 pm and we’re in our chalet facing out to the river – still hoping they might come by, but I think we might be out of luck for today.
Our boxed breakfasts were delivered for tomorrow (they are huge!) as we are leaving at 5:30 am en route to Kruger, which is about a 15 minute drive away. We want to be there right when the park gate opens.
Cook Family Travels 