In recent years the number of illegal immigrants from Mozambique looking for the Promised Land has shot up dramatically and many people have tried to enter South Africa by going through the territory of lions, rhinos and hippos – short, the Krueger National Park. Now, Mozambique has a rather high rate of HIV infections and the lions in the Krueger Park are chronically undernourished, lazy and happy to go for easy victims such as illegal immigrants. So, recently there has been a sharp increase in HIV prevalence among the lions in the park and South African’s decided that illegal immigrants from Mozambique are to blame. In order to protect their lions, South African’s came up with a cunning plan to stop immigrants crossing through the Park and infecting the lions (while giving up their lives…): They spread the rumour that Jo’burg is an incredibly dangerous place with lots of violence, rape, crime and murder and that no-one could realistically expect to survive in this mad city of outlaws! Consequently, potential immigrants might just as well stay at home and not risk being eaten by a lion just to die in a cease fire in Joburg! Genius, if you ask me!
After reading this, I clearly felt that it was time to visit the poor sick lions in the Park – who knows how long there will be any! Unfortunately Chris, Alex and Lucy and I were too late: I am very sad to inform you that all the lions in the Krueger Park have died of HIV! This is clearly the reason why we didn’t see a single one on our two day trip to the park and it has nothing to do with bad luck, bad timing or poor animal spotting skills! The lions have all died and the Mozambiqueans are to blame! Thank god I am going there next week to tell them off!
Apart from this sad realisation and the fact that we got up at 5am on a Sunday, the four of us had a really nice time in Krueger! It is amazing how much a weekend trip can put you into the holiday mindset: nice dinners, a bottle of wine, a coffee in the sun and not a worry in the world!
On our (far too) early safaris we managed to get some quality game-watching done: Within the first ten minutes of being in the park, we had spotted some rhino’s (okay, it wasn’t so much spotting as noticing that there was something blocking the road) and got really close to them! They are just such fascinating animals with their seemingly peaceful aura and those gigantic horns, which can get up to 1.80m – try and picture that! Funnily, there was a little tortoise crossing the road just in front of the rhino and it was really bizarre to see these animals so close together…
We had the same encounters with buffalos and elephants, which all chose to wait for us in the middle of the road and let us get real close to them! But especially the buffalo made us feel slightly nervous and Chris kept the car in gear all along … after all, the last thing I wanted was to be attacked by a buffalo after the cow-incident the weekend before!
Luckily nothing happened and after spotting lots of monkey’s (apologies to Lucy for not naming them properly), one-horned impalas and warthog families, we left a lion-free park and spoilt ourselves with a trip down memory lane and lovely dinner at Hippo Hollow … the same place where Chris and I had stayed at three years ago!
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