Krüger, whose love for this way of life is always evident, had to send her children away to school, bringing them home for weekends-not an easy task: she had first to row across the river, then pick up their car parked on the other side (and often the hippos were obstructive or the river either too low or flooded). There were no telephones or electricity, and no neighbors. Their first post in 1980 was at Mahlangeni, in the far northwest corner of the Park on the banks of the Letaba River-an idyllic spot far from civilization and home to lions, hippos, elephants, and a leopard that patrolled their compound each night. Krüger met her husband at college, married him soon after, but then had to wait a while before he was able to fulfill his dream of becoming a game ranger in Krüger National Park (South Africa’s largest game preserve).

It is a memoir of a magical place and time that can never be recaptured.Enchanting portrait of the South African wilderness, by a woman who lived there with her game-ranger husband, three daughters, sundry animals, and a lion cub whose best friend was the family dog. It is the rearing of this young king, and the hilarious endeavours to teach him to become a 'real' lion who could survive with his own kind in the wild, that lie at the heart of this endearing memoir. Reared on a cocktail of love and bottles of fat-enriched milk, Leo soon became an affectionate, rambunctious and adored member of the fmaily. Yet nothing prepared the Krugers for their greatest adventure of all, the raising of an orphaned prince, a lion cub who, when they found him, was only a few days old and on the verge of death. And one terrible day, a lion attacked Kobus in the bush and nearly killed him. They soon became accustomed to living with the unexpected: the sneaky hyenas who stole blankets and cooking pots, the sinister-looking pythons that slithered into the house, and the usually placid elephants who grew foul-tempered in the violent heat of the summer. But as the Krugers settled in, they discovered that not all was peace and harmony. Kobie recounts their enchanting adventures and extraordinary experiences in this vast reserve - a place where, bathed in golden sunlight, hippos basked in the glittering waters of the Letaba River, storks and herons perched along the shoreline, and fruit bats hung in the sausage trees.

Yet, for Kobie and her family, the seventeen years spent in this spectacularly beautiful park proved to be the most magical - and occasionally the most hair-raising - of their lives. When Kobie Kruger, her game-ranger husband and their three young daughters moved to one of the most isolated corners of the world - a remote ranger station in the Mahlangeni region of South Africa's vast Kruger National Park - she might have worried that she would become engulfed with loneliness and boredom.

The wilderness family by kobie kruger