A weekend in Nelspruit and a drive through Kruger // hospital life

Weekends have been a wonderful time to get out and see what is around is.

This weekend there was a picnic at the Nelspruit Botanical Gardens and we managed to stay in Nelspruit for the weekend (see how in the previous post). We managed to do a little bit of shopping that cannot be done in Tonga or Malelane, but also found that all the shops were ‘out of stock’ of the main thing that we needed.

It was really lovely to catch up with a few friends who have also been placed as dietitians in Mpumalanga. A few minutes walk within the Botanical Gardens gets you to a rather large waterfall.

We were really surprised by how hilly Nelspruit is and I am constantly amazed by the lushness of the area. This is an interesting plant from the complex where we were staying.

Some friends from Tonga headed back on Saturday afternoon and got stuck at a stop/go between Nelspruit and Malelane for about four hours. Apparently there were two accidents along the stop/go, one involving two trucks. This only cemented our plan to go home via Kruger. On Sunday morning, after church, we headed up through White River and went in at the Numbi gate. We saw all the same animals as our last trip, but also little turtles and kudu. We saw rhino seven times, bringing our total in two trips to 11 sightings. We also saw a lot more elephant, a huge herd of buffalo and a giraffe who seemed really unperturbed by our car. In fact it moved in to the road to keep eating while we were right there.