Kruger

Not every bridge is as beautiful as the Golden Gate, or an engineering marvel like the Sydney Harbour Bridge. This is a very modest, but very practical, rail bridge in the Kruger National Park in southern Africa. I don't know when it was built, or by whom. I don't even know the name of the stream that it crosses in this photo.

Yet so attracted by bridges am I that when staying right near this bridge in Kruger just over a year ago, I went out specially to take this photo. I guess that it is a kind of memory cue for me, because it instantly recalls the Kruger visit during my first ever trip to Africa.

And memory is a peculiar thing, because the very next image that it brings to mind is this one:


A lurking menace, right by the bridge, and within a crocodile's crawl of where I was sleeping at night! Now I wonder how they constructed the bridge - were there camps of men in tents on the river bank while it was being built? Did the hustle and bustle of men and machines scare the crocodiles away during the building process? Or, were the crocs lying in wait for a careless, tasty bridge-worker as a dietary change from their normal fare?

I'll never know the answers to those questions, but boy, I enjoy thinking about them.

EXIF: - (bridge) Nikon D70; Nikkor 80-400mm VR; ISO 200; 1/320 sec; f5.6.
(croc) - ISO 800; 1/100 sec; f5.6.

TFF