been told that if you headed down to Hippo Pools around 7.30, the ranger would take you on a guided walk down to the pools to see the hippos. I think the thought of a quick walk in Kruger helped us be so organised!

We left our camp and headed towards the pools and saw a huge group of wildebeest on the way. We also passed the ranger who was cycling along with his gun casually slung over his shoulder! We arrived at the pools before him and waited patiently. On his arrival he came straight over to the car and asked us if we wanted to walk down to the pools. Of course we did, so we all gladly jumped out of the car. Wildlife spotting is really great but it does also involve at lot of time sitting in a car, so it was nice to finally have a short walk. The ranger explained who lived where in relation to the pool and if we were lucky we may hear elephants!!! I was hoping we weren’t going to be that

lucky as I didn’t really fancy an on foot close encounter with an elephant!

Thankfully there were no elephants just a large number of hippos cooling themselves in the pool. We kept a safe distance although I don’t really think the hippos even knew we were there. We also saw a stony coloured baby crocodile sleeping on the bank. After watching these for a while we made our way back to the car and thanked the ranger with a little tip. I’m not sure if the ranger is supposed to do these walks or not, but it was great so we weren’t complaining.

Wow, we were on our last day in the park and today we would be heading to Berg-en-Dal, our first non tented camp. It was going to be our most upmarket accommodation as they hadn’t had any tents left at the time of booking so we’d opted for