5 out of 5 - Kruger Park, South Africa

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3 sizes of elephants crossing

Once we figured out that we were going to fly out to to Madagascar next week, we needed something to do for 6 days.  We had a good night at the hostel bar, meeting some new friends and woke up the next morning to figure it out.  Our first task was to find a rental car - usually easy, but this was Freedom Day in SA.  Next, we searched for camping in Kruger Park and were able to book the VERY last sites for 3 nights over the Easter weekend.  They were at different sites, but we thought this was fine, although not knowing the distance between.  Now we needed a tent and a few camping supplies - hopefully a shop is open to buy some cheap stuff.
On our rushed way out to get the car, we spoke to new friends Fia and Christo briefly to say goodbye.  A long story short, they live up on the outskirts of Kruger Park, and invited us to stay the night.  Not only that, they offered up all their camping supplies for us to borrow for the 4 nights there.  WOW!!  So in a few short hours after waking up, we were on our way to Kruger with an overnight stop in Hoedspruit - the air base there, as Christo is a helicopter pilot there. 
In Kruger you drive yourself around the park wherever you want. You are not allowed to get out of your vehicle (for good reason) and have to be in your camp by gate closing time.  To say that luck was on our side in these days would be an understatement.
In search of the Big 5 animals, we managed to see them all!!!  I guess you should consider yourself lucky to see all, and we did.
African Buffalo - a huge herd or about 400 rumbled across in front of our car including young
Elephants - about 30 or so were watering themselves off, then passed in front of the car, including some babies
Rhinos - we spotted 11 rhinos, including one baby and a group of 4 about 20 feet from the car
Lions - 2 huge male lions lying in the road, and a group of 8 sunning themselves on some rocks, along with another female on the road
Leopard - our last one and most elusive - who would think we would see this nocturnal animal on the dirt road ahead, and cross just 100 feet in front of us on our very last day!!

Two huge male lions on the road in Kruger

We also spotted some wonderful other sights including baby giraffes, a hyena feeding her young just 10 feet off the road, 3 cheetah in the distance, yawning hippos, baby zebra, hornbill birds jumping onto our window sill,  the huge strides of a running giraffe, families of warthogs, the stereotypical watering hole scene with loads of animals, ostrich, horny baboons, blazing sunsets, elephants freaking out and charging across the road, and tons of other wildlife.
The camping was great, and the noises in the park were fabulous.  We managed well with all the camping gear and owe a massive thanks to Fia and Christo for helping us out.  You meet some great people traveling, and some will give you the shirt off their back after only a brief encounter.  We hope to one day reciprocate, because without them our trip would have been much more difficult.  We even managed to spend another night with them on our way back to Jo-Burg.  We had a lot of luck on our side this trip, and can't believe it came together so fabulously from no real planning.  What a great adventure!!  *Stub

A leopard crossing in front - the last of the Big 5