Link of the Week: Kruger National Park Webcam

Live beasts are currently prowling through the Silicon Jungle, and one of the best places to spot them is the Kruger National Park OrpenCam, which looks down on a water hole.

• 20 Feb 2005 update: There’s now a second webcam at Kruger! Click here for details.

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In the Age of the Internet, Africa is never very far away.

OrpenCam is in the vicinity of Orpen Gate in the Park’s southern half. (For the official map of the Park, click here.)

Of course, Your Correspondent usually visits the water hole during the middle of the day in Africa, when animals prefer sitting in shade to slaking their thirst. So he sees images like the one here: a pool of water, with possibly something happening in the right corner, but it’s difficult to say.

The best time and place to log in for a peek is probably about 11 a.m. Mountain Time, USA, which is when bone-crunchers like lions and hyenas approach (in truth, only the latter can actually crunch bones), eyeing one another warily, and dipping their muzzles in the cool water.

The hole’s also often surrounded by herds of impala and wildebeest, as the many pics posted on the webcam’s site by desktop travellers testify.

You can thus have a real, live lion in your house without going through all the trouble of snaring one, arranging the relevant licenses, slaughtering fresh meat each day, and learning how to handle barstools and whips.

Hopefully, your initial, tentative contact with OrpenCam will encourage you to come visit the King of Beasts in person, tell him that you know what he did last summer, and prove to the world how hard you’ve been working on your 8X400 meter reps.