Flights Cape Town to Nelspruit (Kruger)

11-12-2103 Rating 5/5: July 2012 was one of the best holidays our family has ever had. My daughter, who lives in Cape Town, told me her fiancée from New Zealand had never been to a wildlife reserve so I hatched a plan for us to holiday in Kruger Park together. My other daughter lived in Durban with us at the time and so the planning began. How to get Melanie and Shane from Cape Town to Kruger Park? We had a brainwave. Claire, James, Gary and I could drive from Durban via Swaziland to Kruger and check into Berg en Dal. Shane and Melanie would fly with SA Express from Cape Town to Nelspruit, pick up a minibus at the airport and drive through to the camp and meet us there. Melanie has always had a fear of flying and kept asking if she would have to fly in a small plane. I reassured her that I had flown with SA Express many times and the planes were very comfortable. On boarding the plane in Cape Town she was still nervous, but they were welcomed aboard and reassured by the cabin crew. Melanie and Shane are both over 6 feet tall, but found the seating very comfortable and had a smooth flight all the way to Nelspruit. They landed at the airport, picked up the minibus, drove the short distance to Malelane Gate and their dream holiday began. Once they joined us in camp, we all went out together in the minibus. We were extremely lucky to see a leopard four times in two days, twice seeing kills up a tree while the exhausted leopard slept off the intense exercise of hauling an impala into the canopy. After leaving Berg en Dal we stayed in Skukuza for a few days and then moved up to Satara, where sightings of lion became almost commonplace. On two separate days we were fortunate to see the big five before ten o’clock in the morning. Of course those happened to be the days the youngsters decided to sleep in, while the ‘ballies’ were out the camp gate as soon as it opened. We shivered our way through the night drive which left camp at 8 pm and was supposed to return at 10 pm. The poor ranger kept us out until after 11 pm hoping we would see more than a furry tail swinging in the branches and one eye reflecting in the torch light. Unfortunately the extra hour was unsuccessful other than making us more cold than ever. One thing I learnt from that little escapade was to rather go out on the early evening drive. When we got back to camp and saw the list of animals the previous drive had seen we could have cried! We loved everything about our weeks holiday in Kruger and eventually parted ways at Berg en Dal as we left early for the long drive back to Durban while Shane and Melanie could take a leisurely drive back to Nelspruit airport. They said the architecture makes you feel as if you are still on Safari! They had a pleasant flight back to Cape Town on SA Express and Melanie said she would have no qualms about using SA Express again, even though she hasn’t quite got over her fear of flying. Ingrid Sweeney