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- Uncategorized (90)
- 30/12/2008: Sunday 30 December
- 27/12/2008: Thursday 27 December
- 31/01/2008: Thursday 31 January
- 30/01/2008: Wednesday 30 January
- 29/01/2008: Tuesday 29 January
- 28/01/2008: Monday 28 January
- 27/01/2008: Sunday 27 January
- 26/01/2008: Saturday 26 January
- 25/01/2008: Friday 25 January
- 24/01/2008: Thursday 24 January
Sunday 30 December
30/12/2008 by admin.
Despite all good intentions we were not out of bed too early this morning! We keep trying but never quite succeeding! Once the tent was down we trundled over to the shower block for a well needed shower. We normally do pack the tent down before we shower as it gets so so hot. All set up to jump in - clothes moved out the way so as not to get wet, as normal no shower curtain, shower gel and razor in place, step into the shower and guess what? No bloody water - from anywhere! Not even a dribble! Its going to be a hot (and smelly) day!
That put us ahead and we ended up leaving the park at 9.00am.
As were driving down the road kids just kept jumping out at us all over the place. There were so many roadside stalls with all sorts of carvings and stone things to buy. The kids were dressed in leaves to attract your attention - it certainly did the trick. After passing quite a few different places to buy we decided the next one we were going to stop at - to get photos of the kids if nothing else.
We did. They didn’t mind us taking their pictures at all, especially after I paid them for it, and Angela bought something from one of them “good price because you are English” Normally the price goes up because we are English but hey, its not a lot of money either way we can’t grumble.
We passed back through into South Africa at about 11.00am. This time we were prepared and even looked like we knew what we were doing! No dodgy customs declarations for us!
From the border it was a couple of hours drive to Kruger National Park. We had said when we left home that we probably wouldn’t bother with Kruger as we would be living on a reserve for five weeks so wouldn’t need to go to any others, but as the time went on, and the closer we got, we just couldn’t resist! How could we say that we’d driven past Kruger. Its the Big One, The Daddy of National Parks in South Africa.
We pulled up to the gate full of excitement - we should have known! All booked up, we would have to stay somewhere outside the park for new year instead. Hey ho, we were getting used to this!
We drove on towards the next gate (there are loads of them) and stopped in a town for lunch. It was a scorcher! We decided to go into the park at first light when the gates opened, take some lunch, and get our monies worth, and spend the whole day there. As we finished lunch and got up to go to the supermarket…it closed! Typical! Now its Sunday, the supermarkets is closed, we have no food and no drink for New Years Eve tomorrow! Umm been here before me thinks!
Never mind worry about where we are going to stay first. We found a very nice hotel and caravan park that we thought we’d ask if they did camping in. As we were walking up the drive we thought theres no way we can afford this - it was well plush, even for a caravan park! There was even a swimming pool - I could do with that right now, and yes they did camping and it was only 120 Rand bargain for all this.
We pitched up and went and found a supermarket that was open - Hoary! Now we have chicken, cheese and bread for lunch and dinner tomorrow. This was better than our Christmas lunch! Still no alcohol though. Worry about that tomorrow. It wouldn’t have been a problem at all if we weren’t going into the park at some ungodly hour!
Went and used the internet when we got back - civilisation! Send all my diaries off and sorted a few bits out, the computer was in the hotel lobby and I definitely didn’t feel like I should have been there - stinking the place out. We need to find a laundry very soon and I’m off for a shower right now! Then an early night for me. Gonna be a long day tomorrow.
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Thursday 27 December
27/12/2008 by admin.
Oh what a fabulous day! Very nervous this morning. All the excitement from last night flown out of the window. Two very silent girls paid to get into the park this morning and went to the dive shop to buy underwater cameras. Very silent. Anyone who knew us would have thought we’d had a row - that’s how quiet we were. I know that may be hard to believe but no word of a lie we were quiet!
We were ready at the dive tent on the beach by 10.00am where we sat and waited for the first boat and divers to come back. I think the wait made it worse. We didn’t have any equipment and no one was around to help sort us out - they were all on the boat obviously. We didn’t mind waiting but it did make us even more nervous (and quiet)!
Eventually the guys on the first dive came back. Still nothing happened for us. What’s going on? Ben was pretty busy sorting out who was on the next dive etc. We knew we would be looked after and it would all be cool but we were feeling it!
Eventually Ben sorted us out with equipment and we kitted up, still very quiet. Ben knew this was to be our first proper dive and was really cool about looking after us and making sure we saw stuff - they’d seen a whale shark this morning. How cool would that be? On our first dive! We would expect nothing less from now on! If we saw one that is.
We pushed the boat into the sea and all jumped on. We went out to two mile reef, about a 15 minute journey, to Archies Reef. I thought divers were supposed to be a friendly bunch, but no one spoke to us on the boat other than Ben - who again was great, helping us get our kit on and ready to go.
Ok, one, two, three and over we went. Cool! We are in the water and I haven’t done anything incredibly stupid yet! No time to think about stuff - we were going down. True to his word, Ben stuck with us at all times. Actually it was mainly the other way round. We were so close up his arse at most points that if he stopped we had a domino effect!
It was amazing though. Brilliant! I just can’t explain how cool. The water was warm, crystal clear, fish everywhere and not a supermarket trolley in sight! It lasted about 30 mins before Angela and I were down to 50 bar and came up. We were both breathing so heavily to start with its not surprising we used more than everyone else. We forgot all about our safety stops on the way up - just too excited to get up and talk about it. Just followed the buoy line straight up, we were only at 12 meters so not too drastic but have to remember for next time.
Archie came and picked us up in the boat and had to help us both into the boat. No way I was going to manage that on my own - practice! I’m going to need a lot of it! And we sat and waited for the others to come up. It was brilliant and we decided to do the third dive later on.
Back on shore there was just enough time to have a quick bite to eat and a drink before we kitted up ready to go again.
This time it was again at two mile reef but at Anton’s reef. We were feeling much more confident by then, and the second lot of people were much more friendly towards us, right from the start. This was going to be great.
Off we go again. This time we didn’t crowd Ben at all. We went down with him and followed but much further behind - proper like! As soon as we got in one of the other guys pointed out a turtle which had just disappeared into a cave. He was massive and just as we got to the cave he popped out the otherside ready for some pictures. Very obliging!
This time we managed to last as long as everyone else, and we pretty much all came up together from about 18 meters. Safety stops and everything!
We were full of it by the time we got back to shore. Cool as! How lucky was it that we had stopped where we did to find out about camping?
We went back to our rooms at about 4.00pm and had showers. Then six of us went off to a lake not far from the accommodation for a sun downer. Ben led the way it was on sand roads and he took over the driving not far in as it takes a bit of skill and if you don’t know what you are doing you can get stuck very easily!
It was a really nice part of the evening, just watching the sun go down having a beer and a laugh with great people. Got back to base by about 7.00pm where they were just having a meeting about the following days diving. They had been on at us all day to stay and do some more diving and as much as I would have loved to, we really did have a lot of places to go to and very little time to do it in. They were very trying though, kept going on and on. Eventually Archie said “Commode on girls - you didn’t qualify for nothing” What a bugger. How could we say no now. He was right of course! Well that’s what we told ourselves anyway, so we booked up for the following morning. We were going out to five mile reef this time.
Eventually we got the fire going - that’s the royal we! And all sat round it into the evening. Some of the guys that were diving on the second dive came over and we chatted for ages. Telling stories of where we’d been and what we’d seen and visa versa. It was really good to talk to people from the country and find out what they thought of different things.
Eventually most people drifted off and there were just a couple of left. We at last drifted off to bed at about midnight. Another big day tomorrow. Can’t wait. Probably had a bit too much to drink tonight but if either of us are not comfortable we won’t go down - simple! Hope its all cool though!
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Thursday 31 January
31/01/2008 by admin.
Knackered this morning and loads to do. Really didn’t want to get out of our King sized bed, for the last time, couldn’t miss breakfast though! Unfortunately we were rudely awakened by the bell ringing at 8.30am, constantly. It was our taxi driver coming to pick us up – 7.5 hours early!! How rude is that? I really didn’t want to get out of bed and to see him stood on the doorstep was not a great start. Out like a light again as soon as my head hit the pillow. We had done most of the packing last night when we got in but it was still a struggle this morning. We have got so much stuff to post. We couldn’t carry it down to the post office without the help of a taxi, how bad is that? We spent the best part of 2.5 hours at the Post Office wrapping everything we had to post in newspaper and then covering the whole surface with brown tape. The noise, carrying on for that amount of time must have driven the staff mad, it drove me mad. I’m sure they were really pleased to see that we’d finished and were now ready to post it. I think the weight was about 20kgs, the same as our flight allowance, and cost us £95 between the two of us. I didn’t think that was unreasonably really. It’s going to take about 30 days for it to get home but that’s cool, it’s all clothes that I won’t be wearing in the winter in England. By the time we got back to the B&B it was nearly time to get the taxi, at the right time! The girls had very kindly left the shower and bathroom dirty, till after we’d gotten back so that we could have shower, it was so appreciated, it really was. We were flying at 8.45pm so to start refreshed was great. Our taxi turned up at 4.00pm on the dot and whisked us off to the airport. He was a bit more subdued on this journey – probably feeling guilty for my alarm call this morning.
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Wednesday 30 January
30/01/2008 by admin.
Nearly missed breakfast today – that would have been a very bad start to my day! Woke up at 9.55am and was in the dining room by 9.57am, not bad for me! If we missed that we would d have to buy our lunch as well as our dinner today and we’ve got other very important plans today – tan topping up. We were going to try a different beach today – Camps
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Tuesday 29 January
29/01/2008 by admin.
After our marathon TV session last night we were a bit bleary eyed this morning. Breakfast was good though. Can’t beat bacon and eggs for breakie, orange juice, toast, cereal, yummo! Had to take our car back today which turned into a bit of a palaver really. At breakfast the guy Peter, who runs the B&B said he would phone the car company to ask them to pick the car up from the B&B rather than have to take it to the airport ourselves. That sounded like a great idea to us, meant we could get back into bed for an hour! He sorted out and said that they would be over to pick it up between 9.00am and 10.00am, marvelous! We waited and we waited, and we waited. Still no one shows up. Eventually we realise that something is wrong and we call them again ourselves. Our car was booked through a company called Aroundabout Cars but picked up from National Alamo, when Peter had phoned in the morning he had phoned Aroundabout Cars who hadn’t actually passed the message onto National Alamo, now they wanted to charge us for an extra day as we hadn’t got it back to them by 10.00am. What! No way hosay! We spent ages on the phone or waiting for them to let us know what was going on, by 12 lunchtime we though sod it and just took it back ourselves. It’s along way out from the city, felt like it anyway, seeing as everything else seems so small and close, but we couldn’t wait any longer, we were booked on the 2.30pm Robben
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Monday 28 January
28/01/2008 by admin.
Horay, hurrah! Today is moving day. Can definitely tell you that I burnt my eyelids yesterday, really sore and swollen! Loaded up the car as soon as we were up and about. Really couldn’t wait to leave. The party wasn’t still raging though there were still a lot of people around. The girl who was running the place had to be woken up for us to pay her this morning and my god she looked rough. She didn’t charge us for half our drinks; think everyone must have been too drunk to keep a track of them all. Hey ho!
Packed and on the road to our new home by 10.00am. Marvelous! Still can’t believe how much stuff we have. Quite frustrating really. Would like to pack the postage stuff up now but can’t as some of the stuff we will be posting is stuff we are going to use before we leave and if we do send stuff home and then realise we can’t fit everything in our rucksack’s we would have to go back again anyway, might as well do it all at the same time. Got a few hours to kill before we fly so that’s the plan for the morning. Arrived at Four Seasons at 11.00ish. Wow, it’s lovely, really nice! The king sized bed is humungous, we have a bathroom that I would be happy to sleep in and its our won bathroom, no more visitors, TV with movies, tea and coffee and we haven’t even been out of our room yet.
Once we had fully unloaded the car we headed off into town. Really pleased we spent the time looking last week as we know exactly what we want this time and where to find it. Did all our last minute bits in one swoop. Got some real bargains. Lucnh was on the waterfront again, not german this time though. Angela dropped me off at the B&B and she went horse riding. Turns out that she was on a ride with an American woman who nkew the person Angela had worked for while she was in America. Small world eh! I spent a lovely afternoon packing. One of my favorite pastimes. I love packing, I really do. Everything has a home, and is its place. Quite pleased I did manage to get all my presents into my rucksack and I don’t think its weighs that much more than it did on the way out here and I was under weight but a touch then. Fingers crossed. Angela came back at about 8.00pm and we jumped in the car to head down to the beach to take pictures. Then we wandered up the road to have something to eat. Really nice meal, chicken wrapped in Parma ham, cheese sauce and mash potato. It occurred to me half way through my meal that this was the first time we had eaten out when the restaurant has full power and not had chips! Considering the amount we have eaten out, that is disgusting. No wonder I haven’t lost any weight. No one does chips like the Brits do though, not a chance. It was really nice; perhaps I’ll have to be more adventurous more often! We got back to our palace later in the evening and put the movie channel on while in bed – what luxury! Only trouble was we didn’t actually turn it off until gone 4.00am! Must have had bloke syndrome I think “ooh, flashing lights” and been immediately hypnotized! We watched three movies which were all really rubbish, but we just couldn’t take our eyes away from the telly! Lie in tomorrow, in a palace. Hoary!
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Sunday 27 January
27/01/2008 by admin.
Arrgggh! Party is still going! Sounded like it was going to quieten down until midnight last night when it seemed to get its fourth wind! 39 hours, how much longer can it go for? And what are they all on?
No hanging around this time – straight down to the beach. Boulders again. How can we resist? It’s not everyday you get to spent a day on the beach with Penguins is it? As we were there pretty early this morning we had a better pick of the spots, not by much though, they are pretty keen around here. At least it was a more sheltered spot. Slapped loads of sun cream on – don’t want to burn and peel before I get home.
We went up the road to the harbour for lunch which was nice, a very sheltered spot on the promenade. Then back to the beach for the afternoon session. It’s tough you know, getting this tan. Really hard work!
We eventually left the beach at about 6.00pm having had a fantastically relaxing day, feeling thoroughly sun kissed. Not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing at the moment but I’ll keep you posted. Think I may have missed my eye sockets with the sun cream though as they are very sore and seem to be getting more and more swollen. Looking good, as always! (Please go by the time we fly on Thursday, not a good look to go home with).
We had a nice leisurely drive back to the backpackers where we expected there to be a few sore heads around. Not a sore head insight, but the party was still in full swing. Ok this is getting silly now, I want to have a shower and can’t with the whole world being able to see into it. I want to sleep tonight! A bit fed up by it all really, can’t wait for Tuesday to come. I’m such a party pooper!
Spent a good couple of hours sorting out all our stuff and trying to pack bits up. We have a massive amount of things to be posted. Going to try and get all the presents in my rucksack and send all my clothes and bits home. Decided to leave the camping stuff here. We put an add in the local free ads equivalent but haven’t had any phone calls. Shame really but hey, it saved us a fortune without getting any money back on it. Still hasn’t made as much room in our stuff as I thought it would, getting rid of it all. Don’t think its going to fit back in the car, where did it come form? Ended up back at MacDonald’s for dinner again. How bad is that?
Party is up to 51 hours now. Please no more!
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Saturday 26 January
26/01/2008 by admin.
Party still going strong at 11.00am this morning, actually it was still going strong when we left the place at 12.30pm this afternoon. 18 hours and counting so far! Had a bit of a lie in but when the party looked like it wasn’t going to get any quieter down at all we decided to head out for the rest of the day.
Don’t mind all the people being here but the ablutions are not the best. The toilet is fine but the double doors close with a catch that opens when you push it, meaning that last night at the party I didn’t manager one uninterrupted visit; and the shower is in the same area facing the bar with a just a shower curtain that keeps catching the wind so is never in the right place at the right time. This is fine when it’s just the few of us but when it’s as packed as this a bit of privacy would be nice. We decided to head off to Boulders
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Friday 25 January
25/01/2008 by admin.
Party night tonight! Off to do some more sight seeing today, this time it’s the 12 Apostles, Bloubergstrand beach to view Table
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Thursday 24 January
24/01/2008 by admin.
Really felt like I’d had a couple of beers this morning. At 4.00am I felt really rough and not much better by the time I woke up at 8.00am. Better but only marginally! We went to Cape of Good Hope today, a section of Table
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Wednesday 23 January
23/01/2008 by admin.
Up, bright and early today. Enough chillin’, time to do some sight seeing. We went into Cape Town itself today. It’s a really smashing city. The drive into the city was just so stunning. We went on the toll road along the coast and it is just amazing. The sea is so blue and the road pretty much hugs the coastline past bay after bay all the way into the center, really lovely. Our bibles only listed one car park so it was pretty important to find it, we were sure there would be more but this one looked central and we had a fairly good chance of finding our car later! It took us two attempts at the one way system but on the second go we actually managed to find the entrance. Not bad eh? We headed round to the information center. We had our list and had loads to sort out. First stop though was coffee. We managed to book our accommodation for the last three days in Cape Town and find out about the trips we wanted to do. We give the car back on Tuesday so we need to be in the city by then and we want a bit of luxury before we leave. We have booked into somewhere that looks really nice – Four Seasons Boutique Guest House. Sounds lovely doesn’t it. A king size bed (that is probably bigger than our tent) en-suite, Jacuzzi, honesty bar, breakfast, you name it pretty much. Can’t wait. Its just on the outskirts of town so will be able to get about pretty easily.
We also found out about the shark cage diving. It was something we had talked about al the way round on our travels, but now I’m not so sure. It is very expensive - £150 at its cheapest. With that you are not guaranteed to get in the water, you will get a discount on next trip if you don’t see any but not if you do see some but not get in the water. Also when the guys from Madolos did it they didn’t have any breathing apparatus apart from a snorkel. I don’t know about you but getting into a cage, which is then lowered into the Atlantic Ocean, with freezing water, and relying on a snorkel is not really a very clever idea in my mind. To do the ones with regulators to breathe through it would have cost a lot more money but again no guarantees that you will get in the water. We are also told that December and January were the worst two months of the year for visibility. Not great odds eh? By this stage in the trip I am getting pretty low on money and just can’t justify spending a vast majority of it on one trip with no guarantees. Once we’d done in the Information
Booked Robben
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Tuesday 22 January
22/01/2008 by admin.
Well, even though we slept like the dead for most of yesterday we still managed to have very decent lie in this morning, we didn’t wake up till 10.00am ish. Absolute bliss. Nice (pretty uncomfortable) bed, a door to close, no blinding sunlight, no tent to pack away, all in all its looking pretty good really. It was just nice to wake up and not have to think about much really – and no that’s not normal, thank you! At the moment our little palace is looking pretty tidy but today is the day that we empty the car out – arrgggh! That’s going to be a nightmare. Apart from anything else the car is parked miles away and we’ve got to lug it all up the hill and stairs before we even get in the doorway. Question is ‘is it actually going to fit’? It took ages to get all our stuff out. We must have done about 10 trips each. The other people at the backpackers thought it must have been like a Mary Poppins bag car! I don’t think they could believe how much stuff we had – neither could we to be honest. Where did it all come from? They didn’t rush up to help us though, which would have been nice obviously. We’ve got loads of stuff to sell, and a broken tent!
It is a real shame. We bought the tent with the intention of selling it when we finished with it and throwing in all the other camping bits and pieces. We’ve got enough stuff for someone else to be fully set up and we only want about £85 for the whole lot. We spent a fortune on it all so it’s a bargain really and it saved us a fortune. Hopefully get out in next couple of days to put some signs up in other backpackers, someone’s bound to want it. Perhaps not the tent now but the other stuff should go. The people who own the backpackers we are in are selling up at the end of next week and going traveling themselves so maybe they’ll want some of it. Or do a deal on the camping stuff for accommodation, bit of wheeling and dealing. You never know. Our cabin is now absolutely chocka block. The car is now empty. It took ages and we were getting pretty hot by the end of it all, but a good job jobbed. Just need to clean the car now – that’s another day o0ut of our trip!! We have had it for seven weeks so they can’t complain about it not being spotless – it’s not going to be. The outside maybe if we find someone who is willing to do it for us, we always had done when we didn’t necessarily want it done, I bet now we want it done we won’t find anyone willing. Typical, shock, horror, we might actually have to do it ourselves. Not sure about that mind you, lets not jump the gun now!
After a full mornings hard work it was time to get something to eat. I know we have a lot of stuff to eat that we have just emptied out the car but hey we’ve carried it around this far we might as well go the whole hog. I had a Caesar salad. No bread involved at all, not a single scrapping of spread cheese in sight. Delicious! It was a pretty lazy day after that really. Sunday night has really whacked us so we spent the rest of the afternoon chilling out and reading. Going to miss all the reading when I get back, I always read loads on holiday; don’t really have the chance at home. By 9.00pm we were both ready for bed.
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Monday 21 January
21/01/2008 by admin.
Sleep was distinctly lacking last night! What bloody sleep. Not in the best of moods today at all, spent all night waiting for a smidge of light so we could take the tent down and leave. Awful! The worst night I have ever had. I really didn’t close my eyes at all, and the air we were breathing was mostly covered by canvas! Not too easy to get a decent breath through tent, as I’m sure you can imagine. Was waiting for the poles to break most of the night - they held out really well till bout 3.00am and then snap. One of the main tent holdy up ones went. Gone all round Southern Africa sleeping in this tent in a lot of different conditions and a week before we want to sell it, it bloody breaks. How typical is that! The sun eventually showed its face at about 4.30am and that was it we were up and packing away. Couldn’t wait a minute longer. We just threw everything in the car and left. We hadn’t even paid for our site but the office didn’t open till 8.00am and we couldn’t wait till then. No way hosay! We drove around Simonstown looking for something that was open to get a drink from and eventually found a 24 hour garage. Definitely hit civilisation with anything that’s open 24 hours! Then we headed off to Boulders
Once the beach opened we were straight in. The beach itself is stunning, possibly one of the best beaches I have ever seen. Funnily enough it is surrounded by boulders, can’t think where the name comes from! They form beautiful little coves with the clearest, bluest sea, if it wasn’t so early and bound to be cold I would have jumped in the sea with the penguins. They are so not bothered by us at all, very inquisitive infact. If you move too quickly they will move out your way but if you just sit they will come within a foot or two of you. How cool is that? We spent a good couple of hours taking pictures and just generally enjoying them. There is a staircase up to the cliff tops half way along the beach, where some of them were nesting, it was hilarious to watch them hopping from the top of the stairs to the bottom. Shuffle, shuffle, hop. Shuffle, shuffle, hop. Hilarious! Even funnier to watch them shuffle, shuffle, hop, all the way back up again though! The sun was coming up while we were watching so they were quite active around us. Could have stayed all day and it doesn’t seem so windy down on the beach not sure if we are just sheltered though - probably! We left the beach at about 9.30am and headed for the nearest tourist information centre in Simons Town. We really need to get somewhere to stay sorted out. She was very helpful but laughed her head off when we said we needed somewhere to stay that wasn’t windy! I guess that’s Cape Town! Our tent will never survive another night like last night and I don’t think we will either. She did manager to find somewhere that said they had some sheltered spots eventually but it was a hard job! We thought we’d go and check it out though - rude not to really. We looked everywhere, could we find it? Not a chance. I know they are talking the same language here so why do we find it so difficult? Eventually we stopped on a hill and phoned every backpackers in our books to see how much they were, where they were and if they could fit us in for a week before we checked into something more luxurious in the city itself. Not many could fit us in for that length of time and lots were very expensive, but we did find one that could give us a room for the week at 200 Rand per night (15 pounds between the two of us). We almost bit his hand off. By this time we were dropping fast - I needed a bed and soon. The guy on the phone sounded really helpful and friendly and at that price we were pretty chuft. That meant the whole week was going to cost us 101 pounds. Can’t complain at that can you?
We knew the area that the address was from driving around last night so off we went. It sounded idyllic in our books, wooden huts overlooking the beach and mountains - sounds great eh? It wasn’t actually in the area that th3e address said but about 3kms down the road and we had passed it the night before on our hunt for a campsite. The room wasn’t actually ready when we got there at about 11.30am so we went off to the shopping mall to get something to eat, hoping that it would be ready when we got back - it had already been a long day!
Luckily it was all made up ready for us - horay, sleep. The place itself is pretty nice. The ocean and mountain views weren’t a lie just further away than we thought they would be, stunning all the same. Our room is not much more than a shed build on the hillside but it’s great - it’s got a door that locks, shelves and enough space to unload the car (maybe) while we sort stuff out. Oh and a balcony! A shed with a balcony - cool eh? We pretty much said hello to a few people and got into bed. Cream bloody crackered. We slept and slept till 8.30pm. I did manage to drag myself out of bed then and go and make coffee. Best thing about backpackers - kettles! Didn’t think I was going to be able to sleep for the rest of the night but I did get back into bed at about 11.30pm and slept straight through. Think we are going to like it here, everyone is really friendly.
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Sunday 20 January
20/01/2008 by admin.
Just plain sailing into Cape Town now! Probably should be looking at what we could see on the way but we have heard so many good things about Cape Town we really want to have the time to enjoy it while we are there, and of course the time to top up our tans before we leave the country - that’s very important!
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Saturday 19 January
19/01/2008 by admin.
No great hurry to be up and about this morning, but we were due to the traffic going on outside the tent. Sounded like we had camped on the M25! We went into town and had a wander. It s great little town. Very alternative, with some great shops to wander round. Spent a lot longer than we expected to just enjoying the place. Had some lunch in a courtyard with a bandstand where we listened to a group playing while we ate. A great morning.
Not far past the town we came across a lay-by with a load of street sellers in which we stopped to have a browse at. Oh my God, did we browse! And then some! Bought all my presents there. Sorted in one go. Can’t tell you what I bought but it was all so, so cheap. And beautiful! It’s so hard to say no to people though and I felt like the meanest person in the world by the time we left. They are so wanting to sell you stuff and you know that this is how they make their living, it breaks your heart. Especially as they know where you are from and that the pound is so strong that we are rich in their country. They really don’t understand that we are only rich if we have the money still. “Please buy from me, I need to support my family, I need your support. I give you good price” It really is hard to say no. But obviously we can’t support all of them. Our car is now full of stuff that we have no idea how we are going to get home. Definitely don’t have big enough rucksacks! We beat a hasty retreat before we got caught by any more bargains, and headed off to Mossel
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Friday 18 January
18/01/2008 by admin.
On the ball again this morning. Up and out by 8.30am. Not so far to go today but hopefully can fit a lot in. We hit the coast again by lunchtime. It really is great to be back on the coast. Inland has some lovely spots but also a lot of not a lot! At least on the coast if there’s not a lot to see or do you can find a bay and chill for a while. Maybe spot a dolphin or two.
We pulled into a place just off the freeway for lunch. Wasn’t till we made ourselves comfortable and had drinks that they told us they had no power so the menu was limited! Typical! Hey ho! They made us the best and possibly the biggest burger I’ve ever had (even if the egg on the top was broken). It was delicious and the salad that came with it was very healthy! I drove after lunch. While we were in
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Thursday 17 January
17/01/2008 by admin.
What a long day today has been! We were ready to move on this morning and were up pretty much as the alarm went off at 7.00am. It was really nice not to have to go anywhere yesterday especially as it seems that we have done not a lot but drive over the last week or so but that’s done now, ready to move. There were no towns of any kind on our journey today. Just driving, driving and driving, straight through the middle of South Africa.
We were heading to the coast - Storms
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Wednesday 16 January
16/01/2008 by admin.
What a lovely day! Have really enjoyed catching up on some me time! We got told off when we went to pay for another night at reception as it was after 9.00am, but there was no way I was going to go to reception before 9.00am. I was enjoying myself too much. I woke up when I felt like it and read for ages. Two funny things happened this morning. Firstly in the early hours of the morning, I was woken up. I had been listening to the Vervet monkeys running around for a while and was enjoying the noises as I dozed. It was probably only about 5.00am so I was still in the land of nod. Occasionally they would come and play in the trees above the tent and as we hadn’t been putting the roof of the tent on for a while now we could see them playing above us, which is pretty cool and not a bad way to start the day at all.
All of a sudden there was quite a big rustle of trees and something landed on my head! A monkey had fallen out of the tree above and landed on the tent! And hit me on the head! How rude is that? It wasn’t til I spoke to Angela about it that I realised it wasn’t a dream, it did actually happen, she had heard it and felt it hit the tent but hadn’t realised it had actually hit me. I sat up to see what had happened but all I could see were monkeys running away. The cheek of it! The other funny thing happened a bit later. We were in the tent reading, enjoying the shade and the fact that we didn’t have to pack the tent away this morning, we could hear things outside the tent, shuffling around and when we looked up we saw that we were surrounded by rock dassies. They look like massive hamsters, about the size of a fat cat without legs! We sat and watched them for a while, they seemed completely unfazed by it all. There were a few over by our car as I got out of the tent and went over to the car they scattered, as you would expect. I was busy minding my own business getting things out of the car when I heard a noise coming from under the bonnet of the car. It couldn’t be! Is it? We both wondered and dismissed it, there can’t be any dassies in our engine. There it was again, the noise. Maybe! It took ages for us to find the catch to release the bonnet and with all the noise we made we must have been hearing things. Nothing came out from underneath the car anyway When we did eventually release the catch and lifted the bonnet up there was a dassie sat quite happily in our engine. I can’t believe he hadn’t run already. We just got the chance to take a picture of its behind before it did scurry off and join the others. Better make sure we check that tomorrow before we leave. Cooked dassies in the engine is not high on my list of accomplishments while I’m here in Africa! So now we can add naughty Vervets and dassies to our growing collection of wildlife surrounding our tent. We went for a wander around the site this morning and wandered over to the reception area. Feeling pretty pleased with ourselves for not having food poisoning this morning. Always a bonus! We had some lunch and decided that for lunch we would buy some more kebabs and use up the rest of the wood on the briaa tonight for dinner.
We spent the rest of the daylight hours sat next to or in the pool. It was lovely. Boiling hot! We’d lugged our sleeping bags and all sorts of other bits to make us comfortable down to the pool. It looked like we were going to set up camp there we carried so much stuff with us. Once there though we didn’t want to have to move. And we didn’t! Apart from to hop in and out of the pool every 30 mins or so. Marvelous! As the light was fading on the day we wandered back over to the Falls to take some sunset pictures. It wasn’t quite what we expected but spent ages taking pics of the gecko’s and dassies. Really lovely end to a lovely relaxing day. At about 9.00pm we lit the Braai and waited for an eternity it seemed for the coals to be ready. We eventually ate at about 11.00pm. It wasn’t as good as last nights but still not bad Not like the true English BBQ, it wasn’t black! Got a really long drive tomorrow. Looks like we are going to clock up about 750kms. I think that will be the longest yet.
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Tuesday 15 January
15/01/2008 by admin.
Slept really well last night. Back on the floor and in a really shady spot. The site is used by a lot of overlander tour busses but we didn’t even hear any of them leave this morning. Bliss! Tried the showers out. Not so bad really. We are shorter than the guys we could see last night! Reception also had a book exchange - great, I’m nearly out of reading material. We swapped all the stuff we had finished with for new books. Marvelous!
We had decided not to go straight down the coast to Cape Town. We wanted to spend a least a week to ten days in
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Monday 14 January
14/01/2008 by admin.
Real struggle getting out of bed this morning. Mmmm beds! Really hard to get to sleep in a bed but waking up is even harder! It was an awful night’s sleep - it was hotter than hot on, you’ve guessed it, National Hot Day! The fan helped but we had to have that on rotate to both have the benefit of it, and if I’m honest, the thought did cross my mind to wait till Angela went to sleep and put it directly on me. But I’m a nice person - honest, and that wouldn’t be fair! Like I say though it did cross my mind and I’m sure it crossed Angela’s too.
We eventually dragged ourselves out of bed and into the showers. Wasn’t much point though as we were sweating almost as soon as the shower water was turned off. Hey ho! We were clean and tidy for at least a couple of seconds. We left the backpackers at about 11.00am - late eh? And hit the road (Jack). Because we had driven much further than we expected yesterday we didn’t have much further to go to our next destination - Fish
I was really looking forward to getting there, described in the book as “Nowhere else in Africa is there anything like
We arrived at Ai-Ais Hot Springs Resort at about lunchtime. The road was very hot and very dusty. The cloud of dust coming up on the passenger side is quite amazing, and we thought the hot springs sounded just up our street. We planned to set up camp here and then go and explore the river. We had loads of time - could even fit in a walk or two. We waited outside the gates for a while but no one came to let us in, so eventually we walked up the main drive way. It was then we realised that something was up! The place was deserted! Not a soul to be seen. As we got further up the drive we saw that some of the chalets were being renovated, then we spotted the pool. What a pool! Huge! Best looking pool we had seen on our travels. Couldn’t wait to jump in there - only it was empty! Empty! The whole place was closed for refurbishment! Typical! The road here led to no where else and was about 45kms long - why didn’t it say that at the start of the road? We were so disappointed. Couldn’t believe that we could spy a beautiful pool with no water in on such a hot day.
We got back into the very hot car and drove back out the way we had come to the other resort at Fish River
It was pretty amazing. Massive! But I have to say I was a bit disappointed. I was expecting a flowing river, and there were a few pools of water but certainly not running by a long way. We had driven over hundreds of dried up river beds in the last few weeks, I’m not sure what made me think that this one would be flowing but I did! And it wasn’t! Still can’t have everything I spose! We sat at the view point and had our lunch. It was so still out there. Nothing moved at all. The walks were inadvisable because of the heat so once we’d seen it we thought we’d move on again. Really steaming ahead now. We could be in Cape Town in a few days if we wanted to be.
It was only a couple of hundred kms to the border of South Africa now so we decided to make a dash for it and cross before we settled down for the night. The border crossing itself was a breeze. The most organised border yet - for us and them! By 6pm we were back in South Africa. Our last border crossed and at last we seemed to know what we were doing!
The border of South Africa and Namibia is set, at this point, by the
Oh and the bar was a great place to sit and watch the sun go down on Namibia, just across the (flowing) river. Beautiful!
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Sunday 13 January
13/01/2008 by admin.
Up at the crack of dawn this morning - no, even earlier. It was still dark when we left camp this morning at 5.30am. Not bad considering we had put the tent down and away in that time too. Our best yet I reckon. The park doesn’t open until sun rise so it was a bit of a race against the sun, which we pretty much managed to win. We didn’t realise that it was still another 70kms to go once we were in the park, that race we didn’t win! It’s always a pretty silent journey at that time in the morning, which is cool; need my time in the mornings to come round. We got to the car park for 2×2 vehicles and decided to save ourselves the 200 Rand transport fees and walk to the 4×4 car park. We thought that 200 Rand was a bit steep for 2kms. The walk there was cool, loads of footprints to track, very, very sandy. Not sure I’ve ever seen (or walked on) such soft sand which made it harder but not a problem really. We went straight round to Sossusvlei - the most accessible of the sand dunes, towering 200m up. They really are incredible. Didn’t quite get what I wanted from the morning sun unfortunately but it was better then it would have been later in the day. Angela went up the dune while I wandered round the bottom taking pictures. Sossusvlei (we have been pronouncing Soo soo flay!) is a large ephemeral pan, set amid red sand dunes which tower up to 200m above the valley floor and over 300m over the underlying strata. It is the most accessible part of the 300km long and 150km wide sand sea that covers over 32,000sq km of western Namibia and contains the world’s highest and oldest dune. Once done there wasn’t much else to do there so we started to head back on foot the way we had come. It had gotten hotter now and my shoulder was starting to really hurt - this bloody bag! Why do they make things so heavy? We were having a good old chuckle at a couple of guys who had gotten there car stuck in the sand. It was funny because it was fairly obviously a 4×4 track and although his car said 4×4 on the outside it wasn’t 4×4 in the true sense. Apart from that we had walked past the same car, in almost the same place on our way to the dunes. Not so clever now eh? They smiled and waved all smug when they went past us the first time - at least we knew what our car was capable of and we did the same journey on foot quicker than they did in their 4×4!
Just past them when we were beginning to get thirsty and not so clever ourselves, a lovely tour guide stopped and offered us a lift. How nice is that? Really nice let me tell you. Very much appreciated. We were back at the car in no time at all. Marvelous! God it was hot in there! No shade to park in anywhere! Saddle up - we’re heading out again! Back on the dirt road. Not quite a desert road but a bloody dusty one for a couple of hundred kms until we hit tarmac. What joy! It sounded like we had taken off - no flick of stones hitting the underneath of the car, or the constant roar of gravel roads, or the glare of sun shining off the white roads - bliss. We ended up in Keetmanshoop, which is apparently said ‘kayt-mahns-hoo-up’! Who speaks like that? Does it actually make any sense? That’s how our books describe it anyway - doesn’t make it any clearer in our heads! By the time we got here it was belting it down with rain, the really wet stuff and we were cream crackered again. This heat kills us! Stopped in a deli and bought some dinner and checked into a room in a backpackers. Don’t know why we get so excited about beds as we know we are not going to sleep very well in them but it is so nice. They had a TV room so we ate our dinner sat in there watching Eastenders. Haven’t seen that for years but it made a nice change to the norm. After which we made full use of the beds and got into them and read. That’s when it is more than comfortable - reading before bedtime, with a wall to lean on and everything! The only problem was that it was hot. Really hot! Definitely the hottest night yet. We had a fan which made the most horrendous noise but we didn’t care we had to have it on all night. Hot!
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Saturday 12 January
12/01/2008 by admin.
After a quick stop at the supermarket we were off and away again this morning. Chicken rolls today - can’t wait. Not a spreadable cheese in sight! Felt pretty ready to be on the move again, sometimes we feel we could do with another day in some places, other times it feels right to be packing away and moving on again. We have been really lucky in that we have had showers to use every morning but it does add to the time it takes to get us on the road. This time it was a hot shower - bliss! How novel is that. Not only are we nice and clean, hair washed and everything but we also have clean clothes to put on too! We just don’t know ourselves! It was a hard choice as to what to wear this morning that’s for sure! We were going down a desert road today though so I’m not sure we should have bothered as by the time we got to our destination not only us but the whole car was full of dust. Hair was like rats tails again! Hey ho! We knew we were clean when we left this morning. We could have put the air conditioning on and closed the windows but we have only used t hat once on our travels and that was so that the flies didn’t keep harassing us not because of the sun. So why would we want to start using it now, must have saved us a fortune in petrol! Or maybe not, but if we had used it regularly then getting out of the car each night and into a tent would have been unbearable. At least this way we were used to the climate we were going to be sleeping in. Doesn’t mean to say that it was nice and cool each night - not at all, but if we’d been used to a nice air conned car it would have been even hotter! It’s nice to have the wind blowing in the windows, unless of course it’s so hot that the wind seems to boil your eyeballs!! It’s only been that bad a couple of times, but my god we felt it! We drove down the coast for a few miles before we left the tarmac and hit the desert road. Oh my god this was a desert road! We had driven dirt roads loads before but this was exactly what it said, at points the road just seemed to disappear. For as far as you could see, and that was a long, long way on this flat land, there was nothing to be seen. Nothing, nada, zilch, zero but white, white gravelly stuff. Occasionally you would come to a road sign which meant that we hadn’t inadvertently headed off the road and gotten ourselves hopelessly lost, but other than that there was nothing to be seen. We did pass a Gemsbok antelope - how the hell does it live out here on nothing? Hopefully made for some good pictures though! It was hot too. Hotter than hot on national hot day! We did eventually come to Kuiseb
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Friday 11 January
11/01/2008 by admin.
We were early this morning. At the jetty by 8.00am. Very unusual for us! Had boarded by 8.45am and were off. The boats were very small and there were 16 of us on them which was just enough. Any more would have been too much but as it was it was just about right. Before we got out of the harbour we had seen a seal who wanted to perform for us. Very cute. It was a fantastic trip and we did see all that was billed. We had seals jumping onto the back of the boat every time we stopped for any length of time. We’ve got pictures of seals sat on our laps. That’s not strictly true - we’ve got pictures of seals sat on top of us squeezing all the air out of us, they are bloody heavy! Saw lots of seals, and dolphins and Pelicans. The flamingos were hard to see as we couldn’t get close enough to them but cool anyway. We also saw a leatherback turtle, the biggest turtle. It was huge, and very cool. The Pelicans just floated round the boat in and out of the air for most of the trip, got some brilliant photos. We also went out to an oyster farm which was pretty cool, didn’t know how that was done til now.
At the end of the trip we were all given a glass of bubbly and an oyster lunch. Angela had managed to convey without saying a word that she wasn’t too keen on trying an oyster and hadn’t done for a long time. So the guide made a target of her, showed her how to prepare it and then made her have the first one - in front of everyone else. I think she was pretty worried that it was going to hit the back of her throat and fly back out again. She was good though, it went in and stayed in and when she’d finished she even managed to sound convincing when she said “umm not bad”! I have to say that I’m not a great lover of oysters but these were really very nice. I’d definitely try them again. So a boat trip, champagne and oysters, what a life! And I’ve had a cup of free coffee this morning. This is true civilisation! Surely can’t get much better than that!? Once we’d got back to town we wandered into the main center to use the internet. What was I saying about civilisation? Spent ages in there just reading my mail, downloading pictures, up loading diaries etc. Two hours later! Can’t believe we spent so long in there while the sun is shining so brightly outside. Hey ho, had to be done and for the first time ever it was Angela who took longer than me in there! Normally she sits and waits patiently for me but this time it was the other way round. Then at 5.30pm we were picked up to go quad biking on the dunes. Had done quad biking before in New Zealand but only in a track, this was up in dunes up to 160m high. It was great. We’d chosen the sundowner session so we could take some pictures of the sun going down on the dunes but guess what, by the time we stopped for our beer the sun had disappeared behind a massive bank of clouds. Must be a normal thing on the coast. Hey ho! It was brilliant fun and I only got bogged twice and only nearly went into the back of Angela a couple of times, so not bad eh? Once we’d worked out the speed thing it was great to let the others go off before we floored it. Great fun. We arrived back at the backpackers at about 8.00pm and went out to eat. We ended up at a restaurant just down the road where we had Crocodile tail for starter. It was really lovely, I’ve had crocodile before but this was scummy. We didn’t crawl into bed until gone midnight, a really late one for us! I was too busy drinking free coffee to go to bed!
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Thursday 10 January
10/01/2008 by admin.
Slept really badly last night. Think we have gotten far too used to sleeping on the floor a bed is now so uncomfortable and my back was hurting more than ever this morning! Typical eh! When I get home I’ll be making my bed up on the floor each night just so I can get some sleep!
Didn’t mean we wanted to get up though, no fear. Being awake in a bed is very comfortable! Eventually we crawled out of our beds and went and had a shower. Another cold one - this is getting to be a bit much! I want a hot one. I know its hot outside but I don’t like cold showers! Hey ho, I shouldn’t complain as at least we have had the facilities to have a shower everyday so far. Reluctantly we left our lovely Rondavel and hit the road again. This time we were going to Swakopmund. Swakopmund bills itself as Namibia’s beachfront paradise, and perhaps that’s why the tourist office rarely discloses the meaning of its name. In German, its simply ‘mouth of the Swakop’, but when you get to the bottom of the matter, Swakop is a variation on the Nama words tsoa xoub, or bottom excrement! Yes, that’s what you think its is. The moniker was inspired by the appearance of the sea around the river mouth during rare periods of high water. Well there you go, now we know!
The road there was dessert. Nothing to be seen for miles and miles and miles. Glorious sunshine, no shade what so ever, and just flatness on all sides. The road went on and on into the distance, you could see it miles away. Really quite incredible. We were heading for Namibia’s sand dunes and looking across this massive expanse it seemed impossible to imagine there were any there at all. It was a long days driving with not a lot to entertain you. They have a lot of road blocks in Namibia, not sure what they are for but they stop every car and check licenses etc. They carry guns so are more than welcome to check the license. Not sure they know what they are looking at but always nice and friendly.
As we got closer to Swakopmund we were driving into clouds and about 5kms from town it became black outside. Typical! Sat in the car all afternoon in blazing sunshine and now when we are just about to get out we hit clouds. Hope it doesn’t rain now as well! We checked into a backpackers outside the main town but still in town and boy did we know it. Bloody noisy buggers! I much prefer to be out of town. The garden was pretty small but there was just about room for us for a couple of nights. They’ve got free coffee and tea here! Pure luxury! Civilisation. If I ever have a place used by campers etc I will definitely be providing free tea and coffee to all my guests!
We’ve booked a boat trip for tomorrow out on the ocean. We will see pelicans, flamingos, dolphins, and seals, hopefully. Should be good anyway. Got to be at the harbour by 8.15am in the morning, so early night tonight. Cream crackered. It didn’t rain and was quite nice sat outside the tent for the evening.
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Wednesday 9 January
09/01/2008 by admin.
Wasn’t feeling too clever at 4.00am this morning. Being in a tent isn’t great for hangovers. Close your eyes Allison, it will all be alright when you wake up again. And so it was. Woke up at 8.00am and felt almost human, only almost though. Lets not go too far! Still need some food though. Got that really empty, alcohol fuelled stomach that normally only a Burger King will sort out, Macdonald’s if you‘re desperate! Its not far to the border of Namibia so we’ll wait till we get there before we buy. The problem was that we’d spent all our Botswanan money last night and didn’t want to get any more out else we’d have to change them and that’s not good. So we’d have to wait till Namibia where they accept SA Rand, which is good as that’s all we’ve got! It turned out to be a much longer journey than we first thought. We could have crossed the border this morning but only on 4×4 routes. Our car is good but not that good. So we actually crossed at about 2.00pm this afternoon. Starving hungry! Still had quite a way to go before the nearest town and food.
The border was in the middle of no where. And as soon as you crossed you knew you were in another country. Things are a lot sparser here. The warthogs are extremely skinny but there are shed loads of butterflies. Admittedly most of them are now attached to our front bumper! They are everywhere. I’ve never seen so many. I can’t believe this is the last border into a new country. Next one will be back into South Africa. One other thing that did happen - we were caught speeding! Bummer! Going 136km p h on a 120km p h road. Our options were to go to the police station in the next town and pay or give the policeman 150 Rand now. We handed over the 150 Rand no worries. That’s about 10 pounds, so not too bad really. They were in the middle of nowhere - so won’t be speeding in Namibia again that’s for sure! At about 5.00pm we came to a town called Gobabis. No food to be found anywhere. What is going on? I’m hungry! We headed off just out of town to a campsite that was listed as a friendly place with a pool. We arrived and it looked closed but just we were going to get back into the car a woman came and opened the gate for us. We asking about camping and she pointed out a Rondavel that she said was 70 Namibian dollars. What about camping - 50 dollars. It was about 2 pounds more each to stay in the Rondavel so that’s what we did. They are not equipped with anything except a electrical socket, two beds and a table. What else do we need? Perfect!
As soon as we’d made the beds up we wandered off to the pool for a dip. The water was great. Lovely and the first pool we have used on our travels. It was set in a stunning place, looked very posh and they were obviously doing some major renovations. Dried off and wandered over to the bar - are you doing any food tonight? “I can do” was the reply. I don’t think they were infact open but thought as we camping they’d squeeze us in. We sat down to enjoy the sunset and he wandered off. It took a while (it was so worth the wait) but when he did return he had two plates of food - fillet steak, homemade potato wedges and Greek salad with dips and sauces for everything. Very unexpected! Then his family turned up and sat inside eating the same meal. He’d obviously just done us as extras. It was the best meal I’ve had since leaving home. Stupendous! Now theres a word! Really smashing. Had our food at last and so glad we hadn’t found a crappy fast food place instead. Hopefully going to sleep like a log tonight, in a proper bed! This is the life! How nice is that though, made us feel very welcome, almost part of the family. In talking to him later we found out that they are really upgrading the place and have a wedding reception booked for Saturday. I was half tempted to offer our services in return for another nights stay and dinner. Could do with a day sat around a pool chilling. It might sound like the highlife but all this driving from place to place is really tiring. Honest! The accommodation, food and drinks came to 360 Rand. A grand total of 13 pounds each. Bargain or what? We couldn’t believe it and in a bed too!
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Tuesday 8 January
08/01/2008 by admin.
Right we’re off on the move again. Another cold shower - wakes you up, still don’t like it!
On our way by 9.00am. Had quite a long days driving to the Okavango Delta. We had heard that it was lovely. Its Botswana’s main attraction. What we didn’t realise till recently is that to get into the main delta you have to charter a flight! Yeah right! Or spend three days on a canoe, which as just as expensive! We knew we wouldn’t be able to afford either, but we had to head down that way anyway to get to Namibia. We really didn’t do anything accept drive all day. Its pretty hot in Botswana so that’s a lie we do something else - we sweat! Nice! We need a launderette!
We arrived at site that the guy we were talking to last night had recommended at about 5.00pm and set up. Really getting good at this now, 10 minutes and all done, beds made, lantern and books inside ready. Didn’t think we’d get it at one point, but now its all routine. Simple done sorted. Now where’s the bar! We only popped into the bar to find out the cost of the trips around the area. They all sounded fantastic but we just don’t have the money for it. No big deal we knew that anyway, no harm in asking, or having a beer while we were there.
We did buy one more after that. Then we were going back to the tent for a supper of crisps and dips. Really needed to eat but as we getting up to go a guy bought us a round and we sat chatting to him for a while. Then he left and we made plans to leave ourselves, when another drink was bought for us. We ended up sitting with a guy from Botswana, one from Zimbabwe and one from South Africa for the rest of the night - all on them. Even better. Turned out to be a very funny night. Obviously the more alcohol consumed the funnier the evening became! We left the bar at about 10.30pm pretty wasted, still needing to eat. Back at the tent we demolished the crisps and passed out. Gonna feel good tomorrow!
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Monday 7 January
07/01/2008 by admin.
Had a nice lie in after yesterdays excitingly busy day. The only thing we had planned to do was the washing. Oh and let me tell you - it really needed doing! When we did eventually drag ourselves out of bed we completely emptied the car. No mean feat. It is chocka block! Where has it all come from. We haven’t bought hardly anything, not that takes up any room anyway. But the car seems to get more and more loaded.
We pulled everything out that could do with a wash, all the bits that we’d been hanging onto that would pass as nearly clean went into the bagsss! (there was more than one)! We stripped the beds - everything was going to be cleaned today. Horay! We had been wanting to do this for weeks it seemed but nowhere has ad washing machines and we haven’t stayed anywhere long enough to take it in to be done for us. They don’t have launderettes like we do back home, someone does it for you. Right that’s that sorted, shower time. After our busy morning and our very busy day yesterday we needed one of those too. Had to wash the Zambezi out of my hair, was feeling like rats tails. Only one small problem - no hot water, and the cold was colder than cold on national cold day. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a cold shower! Oh well needs to be done!
Off in to town to put the washing in - only one small problem there too, she can’t do it till tomorrow afternoon!! Arrggghh! Quick lets get back to the tent and take all those passable clothes out of the bag so they are still almost passable! We can’t hang around tomorrow as well so it will have to wait. By the time we got back it was lunch time and we were starving. I know lets have bread and spread cheese with an added touch of tomato! I don’t think I will ever want to see a cheese sandwich again when I get home.
In the afternoon we had booked a river cruise. You can hear the hippos all around site at night (don’t worry there were fences to keep them out) so we hoped to be able to see some on our cruise. We were picked up and taken to the launch site. We were with seven others who were on an organised trip. We thought that it was quite an expensive outing at 20 pounds but it was worth that and more to realise we had done the right thing in not going on a tour. I think I would have killed someone if I’d ended up on their tour, them or me! They drove us round the bend. First they complained about the boat being too small. It was small but that was cool, really cool. Very close to the water and only able to fit the 9 of us on. The last trip was done in a big boat and though that was great for the height, this one gave a whole new angle Brilliant.
These guys didn’t stop going on about it “I’m not sure if we should get on, it might capsize. Blah, blah, blah” Then they went on about one of them having been ill all day so she probably shouldn’t come cause she might get sick. So go then! Leave us to enjoy the trip! Eventually we set off. All of us. The trip itself was fantastic, if you blotted them out. Really brilliant. We saw loads of birdlife, big and small, crocodiles, hippos galore. Loads. It was great and lasted til the sun was just disappearing. Fabulous. We could also see the rain coming towards us so it was great timing.
Back at the site we popped into the bar - it was getting to feel like home. All the same people there asking how we were today and what we’d been up to. Dangerous when a pub gets like that! Might not want to leave! We did fore go the cheese sandwiches for a steak though. Bad but yummy. I really can’t face more cheese spread! Glad we did pop into the bar actually as we got talking about our next plans and routes and were informed that if we went the way we were planning to we would waste 3 days of driving. The road that is 4×4 only on our map has been surfaced - horay! Also given some advice on where to go in Namibia. Cool! Looking forward to next few days now. Wasn’t fancying an extra three or four days driving.
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Sunday 6 January
06/01/2008 by admin.
What an absolutely marvelous day today has been. Didn’t do the enormous amounts of driving that we have been doing over the last few days - we did something exciting today!
We were up at stupid o’clock - 4.30am the alarm went off and we were on the road by . It didn’t take us as long as we thought to get to the border, we were there at so had 25 minutes to wait. No worries we just put the seats down and slept.
We were in the door at which was a good job because it took us ages to get through al the paperwork. This was definitely the hardest border to cross and cost a fortune. Still cheaper than a transfer but not cheap at all really! Hey ho!
We eventually got through at and we had an hours driving to do and be at the meeting point by . Arrggghh!
It was still dark as we were driving to
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Saturday 5 January
05/01/2008 by admin.
Didn’t make a massive effort to be up and away early today but didn’t do badly and were ready to go by about . It was going to be another long days driving up to Kasane on the border of
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Friday 4 January
04/01/2008 by admin.
Guess what we did today? We drove and we drove and we drove. But first we had to get up! At stupid O’clock. We wanted to be at the border post for 8.00am, when it opened and we thought it was a good 45 mins journey. We weren’t sure how these border controls were going to go, whether it was going to be easy or if we were going to be conned or what really. Again we had heard so many horror stories about them charging the earth and all sorts of other things so we wanted to ready and early, just in case it was going to take all day.
All good plans…The night before it was relatively easy to find the way to the reserve and so we thought we’d just follow the same way out. But we couldn’t actually find the way we came in or the way we were supposed to be going out. There are so many roads and tracks that are not marked on the map nor are they named or numbered on either the map or the roads themselves its almost impossible to have any idea where you are.
Eventually at about 9.00am we found the main road! At the border by 9.30am. There was no problem with us going through once we’d worked out all the different things we had to do. Its all very confusing. Then they wouldn’t let us in until we could give them an address of where we would be staying. How do we know? We just picked one out of the guide books and that seemed to be fine, paid up and at last we were through.
The roads all seem to be pretty good something we weren’t expecting them to be so that’s cool. So then we drove and we drove and we drove!! Stopping only to get some Botswanan money and some rolls for lunch. Roads here seem very straight which is great for overtaking the very very slow cars and lorries on the roads.
The landscape is very flat and you can see for miles. Seen quite a few elephants today just munching away on the side of the road. How cool is that? Getting a bit blasé about it all now though I have to say. Bad really!
There are also so many people hitch hiking its unbelievable. Its obviously a mode of transport around here, it was the same in South Africa but all the same its not something we see every day. You can be in the middle of no where and there will be a woman with five kids sat on the side of the road waiting to be picked up. We really don’t have the room in our car top pick anyone up and even if we did we wouldn’t pick anyone up anyway, but sometimes you just feel so awful for not. They probably wouldn’t care about the lack of space - they can cram more people onto a vehicle than I have ever seen before. We’ve even seen live sheep tied onto the roof of a mini bus before! Space wouldn’t be a problem.
We got to Francistown at about 5.00pm and set up our tent in a hotel, casino, campsite complex. It was really nice. The huts that you could rent were stunning, up on stilts overlooking the river. Really nice. We just took the camping pitch!
We were really tired again and didn’t think we’d be out of bed for too long. We were sat outside the tent for a couple of hours reading listening to the most awful singer in the hotel ever. He absolutely slaughtered some really good songs. Thank god we didn’t wander over there for an evenings entertainment!
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Thursday 3 January
03/01/2008 by admin.
On the road again today. Another day of just driving and driving and driving! This time we are headed for the Botswana border. We have decided, after speaking to many people , that we are going to drive to the most northerly point in Botswana and then go on a day trip over to Zimbabwe to see Victoria Falls.
We have been um ing and arr ing as to what to do for ages. We thought about flying up from Jo’burg to Vic Falls, we thought about getting the Baz Bus, an organised tour Its been agonising! At last we reached a decision - we are going to drive it. If we don’t drive where are we going to leave the car, what if we want to stop longer than we get, what if, what if! We’re going to drive.
We left fairly early as we had another full on day of driving and hit the road (Jack). Guess what? We drove and we drove and we drove! I’ve said before - its tough on a trip of a lifetime! Its not as if there are loads of places we are missing out on, there just isn’t anywhere to stop. We have decided to stop being tight and spend the money on the motorway tolls - it could take weeks otherwise!
At about 6.00pm we arrived at our last nights destination in South Africa - Botsalana Game Park. It turns out to be the cheapest nights accommodation yet. Even better! That’ll make up for all the bloody motorway tolls. Loads of them today. Stop, start all the way!
Once in and set up we went on a game drive. How cool is it to get in the car and go on your own? We love it anyway.
Wasn’t long before we had seen a Rhino or two, loads of birds including a vulture, been wanting to see one of those for ages. We also saw a pair of Ostrich which was particularly cool as I have seen a beautiful Ostrich Egg that I want to bring home but can’t really if I haven’t seen one can I? That would be rude.
It was looking to be another fabulous sunset so we went off hunting for the perfect spot We drove for ages on very bumpy dirt roads until we found just what we were looking for. In the meantime he sun disappeared behind a load of bloody clouds!! Can you Adam and Eve it! Typical! Good game drive anyway so can’t complain!
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Wednesday 2 January
02/01/2008 by admin.
You can tell we are in a city! All the noises last night, we are just not used to it. Police sirens, dogs barking, music blaring, people talking and having fun, people arguing! What’s that all about? We are on holiday don’t they know!
For that reason we were up fairly early and have booked a trip into Soweto for this afternoon. Really looking forward to it, though not sure what to expect from it all.
In the morning we went to the local mall to get some money changed and have a wander. It was really hard looking at all the clean clothes and not buying. Its not that we wanted or needed new clothes but we hadn’t come across a laundry for ages and desperately needed to get some washing done. We were good though and strong and didn’t buy anything.
Back to the backpackers for lunch and then waited for our tour guy to pick us up. He arrived at 1.30pm and was called Abraham. Really nice guy who was born and still lives in Soweto itself.
South Africa’s most famous township, Soweto (short for South West Township) is a place of extreme contrasts. The area has the only street in the world where two Nobel Peace Prize winners once lived yet suffers one of the highest rates of murder and rape in the world; it is the richest township in South Africa, but has some of the most desperate poverty; it is the most political township, yet has the most nihilistic youth.
Southwest of the city center, Soweto is huge, stretching as far as the eye can see, with a population estimated at between three and four million. Like any city of its size it is divided into a number of different suburbs, with a palpably middle and upper class neighbourhoods among them. At first sight it appears an endless jumble of houses and shacks, overshadowed by palls of smoke, though parts of it have a villagey feel.
The student up rising that began in Soweto in June 1976 was a defining moment in South African history. The revolt was sparked off by a government ruling that Afrikaans should be used on an equal basis with English in black secondary schools. While this was feasible in some rural areas, it was quite impossible in the townships, where neither pupils nor teachers knew the language.
On June 16, student delegates from every Soweto school launched their long planned mass protest march through the township and a rally at the Orlando football stadium. Incredibly, details of the plan were kept secret from the omnipresent informers. Soon after the march started, however, the police attacked, throwing tear gas and then firing. The crown panicked, and demonstrators started throwing stones at the police. The police fired again. Out of this bedlam came the famous photograph of Hector Petersen, bleeding at the mouth, being carried by a friend, while a young girl looks on in anguished horror.
The police retreated to Orlando East, and students rushed to collect the injured and dead, erect barricades, and destroy everything they could belonging to the municipal authority, including beer halls. The attacks heightened the antagonism between the youth and many older people who thought that class boycotts were irresponsible, given the students’ already dismal employment prospects. Students responded angrily, accusing their elders of inactivity in the face of oppression, which they attributed in part to drunkenness. In a society that has traditionally regarded respect for the old as sacrosanct, this was a historic departure and its effects still reverberate throughout South Africa’s townships.
In the days following June 16, all Soweto schools were closed indefinitely, thousands of police were stationed throughout the township, and police brutality continued unabated. In the face of worldwide condemnation, the government insisted that there was no real problem, scribing the violence to Communist agitation. As evidence, it cited the clenched-fist salutes of the students, though this was really an indication of their support for South Africa’s Black Consciousness Movement, founded by Steve Biko. Meanwhile, rebellion spread to other townships, particularly Cape Town. In Soweto, schools did not re open until 1978, by which time man students had abandoned any hope of formal education. Some had left the country to join the military wings of ANC and PAC, while others stayed at home, forming “street committees” to politicize and police the communities. Others drifted into unemployment.
Now the armed struggle is over, the problems that face the former students of 1976 are manifold. As their parents warned, their lack of qualifications count against them in the job market, even if June 16 ids now a national holiday, during which they are praised for their role in the struggle. Street committees have also dissolved but the guns remain.
So as you can imagine we were both very unsure of what to expect. Our guide was great though. Very funny, very informative - what he doesn’t know about Soweto is not worth knowing. He knows all the people we passed too. Always waving and greeting people as we were driving through.
Our tour was conducted from a mini buss and it was just Angela and I on it which was pretty cool. We drove through Jo’burg City and then onto Soweto. First stop was a bridge near the hospital. Abraham told us to go for a wander up onto the bridge to view the city on our own. I have to sat I was very nervous to start with but that’s why he did it I’m sure. To show us that there really is nothing to be nervous about - no one is going to knock us over the head and steal anything, this is how a lot of them make their money, by the tourists coming into town. People were infact very friendly, and stopped to speak regularly. They didn’t hassle you they just wanted to speak to you. Abraham sold me to one guy for two Rhino which I personally think is a bargain - he could have gotten a lot more for me! But it was nice to be out and about and talking to the locals.
Back in the minibus we drove round the city. It was incredible the way people live here. A lot of houses had garages in the nicer end of town - in one garage a family of five or six could live and pay the owner of the house 450 Rand per month (32 pounds). Other houses had five or six tin shacks in their front spaces and would take rent from those too. It really was incredible.
We drove past Winnie Mandela’s, Desmond Tutu’s and Nelson Mandela’s houses. Winnie Mandela’s is the only one occupied by her at this time. Winnie moved into her high security place while Nelson Mandela was in prison - when he was released he insisted on going back to old residence but was soon made to leave Soweto for security reasons.
We also stopped at the very sobering Hector Petersen Memorial and Museum, named after the first student to be killed in the uprising. A very informative display of how Soweto was formed and the stages it has been through.
Then for our last stop Abraham took us to a sheebeen (unlicensed tavern) for a drink. Again we were made very welcome and tasted a drop of the local beer. That’s what they called it anyway. I can’t say that it was very good but I can say that I have tasted it!
Abraham dropped us back at the backpackers at 5.30pm a very enjoyable tour and well worth the coming into Jo’burg for.
Once we were dropped off we jumped straight in the car in search of the sunset seen yesterday. We had asked the guide and someone else at the backpackers but they couldn’t grasp the fact that we wanted to have the city and the sunset in the pictures and both of them directed us to the city its self so we couldn’t get what we wanted so we ventured off to find our own spot out side the city. Easier said than done and after driving around for an hour and a half we eventually thought sod it and jumped out the car on a bridge going over the freeway. Not exactly what we wanted but it would have to do else we were going to miss it! It wasn’t quite as good as yesterday but still stunning none the less. And again we were driving round Jo’burg at night. At least we knew which was we were going home this time!
Spent a nice chilled out evening reading outside the tent before getting into bed ready for another adventure tomorrow.
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Tuesday 1 January
01/01/2008 by admin.
So we are back on the road again. Feels good. We didn’t leave til very late, it was about 1.00pm before we actually got in the car. We slept very late after our extremely late night. What were we thinking - crazy. But we had taken the roof off our tent and it was in a good position, out of the direct sunlight so we slept and slept.
So at 1.00pm we were heading towards Johannesburg. We have heard lots of horror stories about the city but I really wanted to go into the township of Soweto on a guided tour and that’s just outside of Jo’burg. Soweto is not a place I would want to wander around alone - but I’ll get to that later, Jo’burg isn’t really a place I want to be on our own either but its better than Soweto.
It was about a 550km drive from where we were to Jo’burg with not a lot to see or do in-between. The scenery has changed dramatically - its flat for a start, much better farm land and seems to have more money floating about. Even the rondavels had an almost up market feel about them.
It was motorway all the way there, pretty boring driving really. Though they did have proper service stations , not quite a Costa and Starbucks at every one but almost. Lots of industry works going on around us too. Shame really - we could have been driving anywhere in the world.
We did stop for lunch in a service station but that was just about the highlight of the day! Its tough, you know, doing all this travelling. We have gotten so used to seeing lots and doing a fair amount that a days driving seems like such a waste. But hey that’s what happens when your on a trip of a live time!! Its not all roses you know!!
We didn’t really want to be driving round Jo’burg at night so we pressed on to get to the city as quick as we could. Of course it would have been a lot easier if wee had gotten up earlier!We eventually arrived in the city at about 6.00pm - still daylight. We then drove round and round and round the city til we found the backpackers we were looking for at about 8.00pm, not so much daylight. Darkness infact! But we had found it. We had also missed the most amazing sunset over the city as we were driving - truly stunning. I was going to ready for that tomorrow night, that’s for sure.
Where we are staying has a fridge and a kettle - what luxuries! Who needs Starbucks eh?
We were pretty crackered after all the driving and didn’t stay up much longer after we arrived. The backpackers is pretty nice. We are still camping - but they have a really nice kitchen (with a palm tree growing out of the middle of it), swimming pool, TV room, security gates and guards so I think we’ll be ok here. In fact most, if not all the sites we have stayed on have had security guards on a the gate and patrolling all night, not sure if that is for wild animals or wild people but its reassuring whatever the reason.
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Monday 31 December
31/12/2007 by admin.
Oh my goodness!! New Years Eve already! We’ve only got one more month to go - I can’t believe it. Where has all the time gone? We’ve still got so much to see.
Had a fantastic day today in Kruger. We were up and outside the gates at 4.50am - can you believe it. That’s the second time in a week! Gates opened at 5.30am and there was a rush to the ticket office. Once we’d paid we were told to go to one of the visitor centers and pick up a map as they didn’t have any on the gate! What! This park is 422kms long - with no maps on the gate? I ask you!
We asked directions and off we went. We had missed the sunrise while we stuck outside the gates but the sun was blazing by the time we headed off on our adventure. We didn’t really know what to expect - animals everywhere or were we going to wait all day before we spotted something? Answer to question number one - they were all over the place - as we came round a corner there were two cheetahs strolling down the road infront of us. We followed them for ages before they headed off the road and into the bush. One of them promptly climbed up onto a massive rock and stood in the sunlight - stunning, then without stopping he took a dump, right on top of the rock! I had asked them to pose but that was too much! How rude!
Once they’d disappeared we carried on to the visitor center. Just before we got there we saw some Baboons in the road picking nits off of each other - charming. They could have done their grooming before we arrived!
We arrived at the visitor center at 6.30am and it didn’t open til 7.00am so we sat and waited. Got the maps and jumped back in the car. The baboons were still there as we went past and had been joined by a big rock - which turned out to be an elephant! Animals everywhere!
It’s highly questionable whether Kruger National Park can be considered “a pristine wilderness”, as its frequently called, given that people have been living in or around it for thousands of years. San hunter-gatherers have left their mark in the form of engravings and paintings at 150 sites so far discovered, and theres evidence of farming cultures at many places in the park. Around 1000-1300 AD, centrally organised states were building stone palaces and engaging in trade that bought Chinese porcelain, jewelry and cloth into the area.
But it was the arrival of white fortune seekers in the second half of the nineteenth century that made the biggest impact on the region. African farmers were kicked off their traditional lands in the early twentieth century to create the park, and there has been an ambivalent attitude to the hunters, criminals and poachers, who made their livelihoods here decimating game populations.
Paul Kruger, former president of the South African Republic, is usually credited with having the foresight to set aside land for wildlife conservation. Kruger figures as a shrewd, larger-than-life figure in Afrikaner history and it was James Stevenson Hamilton, the first warden of the national park, who cunningly put forward Kruger’s name in order to soften up Afrikaner opposition to the park’s creation. Infact, Stevenson knew that Kruger was no conservationist and was actually an inveterate hunter; Kruger “never in his life thought of animals except as biltong“, Stevenson wrote in a private letter. He also remarked that few people had any interest in wild animals unless they were dead. It was his tenacity which saved the animals which hadn’t been shot out, rather than Kruger’s. Times have changed a lot in the management of the park: the first black director, David Mabunda (now head of SANParks) was appointed in 1998.
The park is going from strength to strength The park is being extended into Mozambique with the establishment of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park.
You couldn’t go more than 0.5km before stopping to take pictures of something else, monkeys, birds, elephants - you name it! We took it in turns to drive in the morning as we were bother knackered and slept for a few minutes at a time before the driver was waking the other one up to see something else. It was an absolutely boiling day.
Stopped at one of the many hides around the park. Not much going on there, there were some terrapins swimming around but other than that a very peaceful spot. We could hear elephants in the distance though so we went off to find them. Didn’t take long - just round the next corner. There were about 8 of them down by the dried-up river bed - must be a completely different place in after the rains.
There was also a massive herd of buffalo, I didn’t take any pictures as they were too far away and looked like a group of rocks but there must have been over 100 of them.
Next stop was Hippo Pools. When something is named Hippo or whatever you don’t actually expect to see Hippos there do you? Or is just me? There was a permanent guide there with a big gun - should have given it away really, but he invited us out of the car and showed us some of the rock art and pointed out two Hippos in the water. Imagine that! I would have thought they were fake and for show if they hadn’t moved down river in front of us.
Then it was off to the next hide - wow! Right infront of us was a big pool of Hippos. They didn’t come out of the water which was a shame but we sat and had our lunch there and watched as they watched us. Amazing! Think its about time I learnt some more descriptive words don’t you - stunning, amazing, brilliant! Are you bored of those yet? I’ll see what I can do!
Next opportunity we had we stopped at the campsite to buy some alcohol for tonight’s celebrations - not that I think we will last past 9.00pm. But we were sorted, just ice to buy on the way home then we really get the party started!
On the way out of the Hippo hide we came round a corner straight into a herd of elephants who were having a quick wash down in a roadside pool. I think we frightened them as the big Mamma turned and started to chase us down road. I was saying “Angela, stop, stop, I need to get some photos.” They would have been great pic’s. Angela just wasn’t stopping. What’s her problem? Ah, it might have something to do with that huge elephant that is still chasing us well past what I would have thought. We are not that scary! Honest! Wed did try reversing once she’d stopped chasing but she definitely on the watch out for us and the moment she spotted us coming back she was on our case again. Sorry people, I’m going to have to pass on those pictures! Never been charged by an elephant before, not sure I want it happen again! This car is not very easy to poke your head out of the window for the pictures!!
It was by now about 4.30pm and we knew that the gates closed at 6.30pm so we should be starting to head back. We decided to go the scenic route and take it slowly - we’d got plenty of time. And we certainly took our time. We stopped every time we saw anything move. By 5.30pm we thought we really should be making the effort now so we did! The only thing we didn’t take into account was the 50kms per hour speed limit! At that speed it was going to take us 2 hours! Oops!
I guess that we are surely not he only ones to do it! Angela put every effort into getting to the gate as close to the time as possible but it was not going to happen - especially when we came face to face with our second unhappy elephant. This time we were chased backwards down the road. I think I prefer the forwards chase rather than the backwards ones. Though I did find it easier leaning out o the window for the photos facing this way! I did wonder if Angela was going to do the backwards three point turn at very high speed, she didn’t and I’m not sure if I’m glad about that or not. If he had wanted to really come and get us I’m sure he could have done while we were in reverse. Its pretty scary having an elephant running towards you though.
Just round the next corner we came across a pack of Wild Dogs. How cool is that. Have only seen them in a boma at Madolos, and hadn’t expected to see them anywhere else but here was about 25-30 of them. It would have rude not to stop and take a few pictures.
We eventually arrived at the gate at 7.00pm, which considering the distance we traveled, the running elephant and the Wild Dogs I think is pretty good. Unfortunately we were alone on that one.
The security guards told us that as we were late we were to pay a fine. What? Where does it mention that in the fine print? Why were we not told this before? We had done our best, and were only half and hour late. Don’t you know how many sunset pictures I missed to get here when we did. If I’d known we were going to pay a fine I would have stopped at every opportunity. Its new years eve and we just wanted to go home! How much is the fine? 500 Rand. What! No way!
We were asked to sign a form which we didn’t really understand so refused to sign it. They checked the boot of our car - what for I don’t know? Elephant, Giraffe? We can’t squeeze another thing in there. At first I thought they were joking but they got more and more serious. Guess maybe it doesn’t happen all the time! Though there were other cars coming out after us but they may have been workers or the guys were just picking on us.
Eventually after much to ing and fro ing the guard called the ranger out. We explained that we had done our best to get back here on time and had underestimated the time it was going to take but that we had done our best. If we had known about the fine, which was no where to be found on the paper work we had, we would have made doubly sure that we were back on time. The ranger then showed us where it was on the forms - in bright red ink! How could we have missed that?
It took us a while but eventually we sweet talked the ranger into letting us go without being given a fine that we had to go down to the police station to pay. 500 Rand! If it had been about 100 we would probably have paid and left but 500! Do you know how many nights accommodation that is? Its new years eve!
We got out the gate by 7.45pm. 45 mins we had been waiting for that to be sorted! Now lets get back to the tent and get into the party mood.
It took ages to get back to the tent as we’d come out a different gate but eventually we arrived! Cream crackered. We ate what we had left and I was sure we were going to be both be asleep within an hour, but, we managed to see the new year in and before we knew it it was 3.00am. How did that happen? Bedtime!
Hapy New Year to you all. See you in a months time - where has it all gone?
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Saturday 29 December
29/12/2007 by admin.
Its stopped raining! Horay! Didn’t stop us sleeping in as long as we could though! We hadn’t decided whether to move on today or to hang around a bit longer but we wanted to go to the cultural village and a craft center and decided to make up our minds after that.
We got to LigugulemaSwati (meaning “the pride of the Swazi people”), Swaziland’s most authentic cultural village at 11.00am just in time to see the dancing that starts the visit off. It was fantastic. What is it about African voices? They can’t all have superb voices but combined they sound amazing - truly beautiful. I took loads of pictures, including ones of Angela dancing as they dragged her up towards the end. I couldn’t possibly get up as someone had to look after the camera! That’s my excuse anyway. No one could catch my attention with my head hidden behind the camera!
After the dancing had finished we had a guided tour of the 16 Rondavel huts in the village by a great guide who gave us all a role to play in the village. He was very funny and engaging. Angela and I were only one of the hundreds of likely kids but hey!
We stopped at the café there and had some lunch before we headed off to Mantenga Falls for a quick walk. Couldn’t really get very close to the falls but got some great pictures of some Vervet monkeys raiding the bins and fighting between themselves. At one point I was possibly a bit too close and managed to unwittingly get myself in-between two monkeys fighting. I moved pretty quickly to the outside of the ring and rang the bell! They weren’t taking any notice of me though! While all this was going on the smallest of the monkeys had jumped into position and was eating all he could before the other came back. He’s not stupid!
After a thoroughly enjoyable morning we headed off to the Mantenga Craft Center. Wow! If only I had a small fortune and an aircraft to fly all my stuff home! I treated myself for the first time. Can’t tell you what I bought as they may end up as presents yet but I could have spent a lot more. I nearly even bought a chair They are stunning and if I can find one in Cape Town I will send it home. It took us a good couple of hours to wander round there and see it all. What a great day. Culture and shopping!
Once we’d finished wiping out our money we decided we’d better start moving again. We wanted to be in Kruger National Park for New Years Eve so we were off again.
We only drove a couple of hundred kms. Swaziland is really beautiful and I wish I knew the area also better so as to be able to get exactly what I want from he pictures, but as in the Transkei everytime we stopped the car we were surrounded by kids. Some running from ages away to get to us, some just appearing out of no where. They don’t intimidate us as they used to but I hate to say no to them. We haven’t got any food to give them else they could have it and the look in their eyes when we say that is awful. They don’t believe us but its true. I wish I could give them all something that I know would be of benefit to them. I can’t afford to give them money each time we stop so we try and move before they get to us. Sad really it would be nice to talk to some more of them. But for us to be actually getting out of the car is a bonus!
We drove onto Malolotja Nature Reserve, where we pitched our tent for the night. Once sorted we went up to one of the view points to watch the sun go down. It would have been brilliant if it wasn’t for the hills that blocked the view!! Who put those there? Really is beautiful though.
Early night tonight - think we were trucked in by 8.00pm. Of course that meant that I woke up loads during the night thinking that we’d over slept!
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Friday 28 December
28/12/2007 by admin.
Not feeling too clever this morning! Up and ready to go by 7.15am and although I definitely didn’t have a hang over I knew that I’d had a drink the night before. Never mind as I said before - if we’re not comfortable we’ll not go down.
Got out to five mile, rippon’s reef by about 8.30am and as before no time to think - we were going. This time though Angela didn’t feel cool at all. Just couldn’t seem to get a good enough breath. Arrggghh! What shall I do? Stay or go down with the others. Ben had gone down already as had everyone else. Angela seemed ok and Archie had come to pick her up so I decided to go down and catch up with the rest. If we had been at the bottom when Angela was unhappy I would have come up with her but as we hadn’t left the boat almost I wanted to go and do it.
It was cool, and I found Ben and stuck with him (not right up his arse though). Once he realised that I was cool he went back up for Angela who re appeared about 10 mins later. Horay! Again it was fantastic. Saw loads and one day I might be able to tell you all what we actually saw but not at the moment. I might even, one day, be able to sign what we saw! But again not at the moment.
Almost before we knew it we were going back up again. Its all over too soon. Back on shore we really wanted to stay longer. They were all going out on a second dive and then off to another lake for the afternoon with another sundowner. But we had to head to Swaziland - so much to see and do. They again tried really hard to persuade us and I think we would have caved if we’d stayed any longer. But we were strong! Not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing but we were!
Back at the hut we couldn’t help but put our heads down for a few minutes, two hours later, it was time to get a wriggle on! Showered and loaded up we left at about 1.30pm - latest yet I think, but we had been diving too and had a sleep so not too bad at all. And we were off!
Country number two coming up. We entered Swaziland at about 3.30pm. The border control was pretty confusing to leave South Africa. The people were very friendly and helpful but confusing none the less and just when we thought it was all over we had to do it all again to enter Swaziland!
Swaziland is stunning, incredibly beautiful. Just as I imagined. Mountainous, green and very African. Lots of rondavels dotted around the countryside, all over the place infact. We stop for a few photographs but the clouds coming across spelt wetness. And boy when it came, it came big time. Driving was a nightmare.
We weren’t really sure what to expect from the country as to camping etc and we hadn’t seen anywhere at all since we entered the country. We headed for the main town of Mbabane (or menbrain to us).
Swaziland is ruled by a King - the present king is on wife 11 with 19 children. His father, the previous king had 78 wives with 219 children. This King is the last born son of the previous. 219 kids - is he crazy? Swazi monarchs are always men of the Dlamini family, and over the course of their reign marry a number of women who are carefully selected from different clans to cement national unity. In theory, the King marries women from increasingly important families as he goes along, which means that the son of the last wife is always a strong contender for the succession. In practice however, other wives with older sons are also in with a chance, resulting in unrest and power struggles every time the king dies. After his death, the royal council, or liqoqo, selects the new Queen Mother who rules as regent until her son is old enough to take charge. She usually has to work hard to ensure her position against ambitious uncles. The main advantage of this awkward process is that by the time the new King is old enough to rule, he and his mother have generally garnered enough support for him to do so effectively.
We pulled into a backpackers at Ezulwini valley and checked straight into a room. This is getting a bit much - three nights in a row that we have slept in a bed! Absolutely drenched outside. Hopefully will clear up for tomorrow - we are off to a cultural village. Pretty wiped out tonight, been a busy and exciting couple of days. Wonder if the guys at the backpackers in Sodwana had a nice time at the lake?
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Thursday 27 December
27/12/2007 by admin.
Oh what a fabulous day! Very nervous this morning. All the excitement from last night flown out of the window. Two very silent girls paid to get into the park this morning and went to the dive shop to buy underwater cameras. Very silent. Anyone who knew us would have thought we’d had a row - that’s how quiet we were. I know that may be hard to believe but no word of a lie we were quiet! We were ready at the dive tent on the beach by 10.00am where we sat and waited for the first boat and divers to come back. I think the wait made it worse. We didn’t have any equipment and no one was around to help sort us out - they were all on the boat obviously. We didn’t mind waiting but it did make us even more nervous (and quiet)!
Eventually the guys on the first dive came back. Still nothing happened for us. What’s going on? Ben was pretty busy sorting out who was on the next dive etc. We knew we would be looked after and it would all be cool but we were feeling it! Eventually Ben sorted us out with equipment and we kitted up, still very quiet. Ben knew this was to be our first proper dive and was really cool about looking after us and making sure we saw stuff - they’d seen a whale shark this morning. How cool would that be? On our first dive! We would expect nothing less from now on! If we saw one that is.
We pushed the boat into the sea and all jumped on. We went out to two mile reef, about a 15 minute journey, to Archies Reef. I thought divers were supposed to be a friendly bunch, but no one spoke to us on the boat other than Ben - who again was great, helping us get our kit on and ready to go. Ok, one, two, three and over we went. Cool! We are in the water and I haven’t done anything incredibly stupid yet! No time to think about stuff - we were going down. True to his word, Ben stuck with us at all times. Actually it was mainly the other way round. We were so close up his arse at most points that if he stopped we had a domino effect!
It was amazing though. Brilliant! I just can’t explain how cool. The water was warm, crystal clear, fish everywhere and not a supermarket trolley in sight! It lasted about 30 mins before Angela and I were down to 50 bar and came up. We were both breathing so heavily to start with its not surprising we used more than everyone else. We forgot all about our safety stops on the way up - just too excited to get up and talk about it. Just followed the buoy line straight up, we were only at 12 meters so not too drastic but have to remember for next time. Archie came and picked us up in the boat and had to help us both into the boat. No way I was going to manage that on my own - practice! I’m going to need a lot of it! And we sat and waited for the others to come up. It was brilliant and we decided to do the third dive later on.
Back on shore there was just enough time to have a quick bite to eat and a drink before we kitted up ready to go again. This time it was again at two mile reef but at Anton’s reef. We were feeling much more confident by then, and the second lot of people were much more friendly towards us, right from the start. This was going to be great.
Off we go again. This time we didn’t crowd Ben at all. We went down with him and followed but much further behind - proper like! As soon as we got in one of the other guys pointed out a turtle which had just disappeared into a cave. He was massive and just as we got to the cave he popped out the otherside ready for some pictures. Very obliging! This time we managed to last as long as everyone else, and we pretty much all came up together from about 18 meters. Safety stops and everything!
We were full of it by the time we got back to shore. Cool as! How lucky was it that we had stopped where we did to find out about camping? We went back to our rooms at about 4.00pm and had showers. Then six of us went off to a lake not far from the accommodation for a sun downer. Ben led the way it was on sand roads and he took over the driving not far in as it takes a bit of skill and if you don’t know what you are doing you can get stuck very easily!
It was a really nice part of the evening, just watching the sun go down having a beer and a laugh with great people. Got back to base by about 7.00pm where they were just having a meeting about the following days diving. They had been on at us all day to stay and do some more diving and as much as I would have loved to, we really did have a lot of places to go to and very little time to do it in. They were very trying though, kept going on and on. Eventually Archie said “Commode on girls - you didn’t qualify for nothing” What a bugger. How could we say no now. He was right of course! Well that’s what we told ourselves anyway, so we booked up for the following morning. We were going out to five mile reef this time. Eventually we got the fire going - that’s the royal we! And all sat round it into the evening. Some of the guys that were diving on the second dive came over and we chatted for ages. Telling stories of where we’d been and what we’d seen and visa versa. It was really good to talk to people from the country and find out what they thought of different things. Eventually most people drifted off and there were just a couple of left. We at last drifted off to bed at about midnight. Another big day tomorrow. Can’t wait. Probably had a bit too much to drink tonight but if either of us are not comfortable we won’t go down - simple! Hope its all cool though!
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Wednesday 26 December
26/12/2007 by admin.
What a great day yesterday was. Feeling thoroughly sun kissed today! Not too burnt though - not bad considering how long we were on the beach for eh?
I forgot to say in yesterdays post that while we were making our lunch we were invaded by Vervet monkeys who were very cute to start with and we stood for a while taking pictures. Then we got our food out and they turned into monkeys from hell! No they weren’t that bad but they did dare to steal a couple of slices of bread when we had our backs turned. This was our Christmas Dinner ok so I wasn’t turkey or any of the other lovely things you have at Christmas but…don’t mess with my Christmas dinner. To add insult to injury they threw the crusts back down onto the roof of our car! Bloody ungrateful if you ask me!
Packed up the tent slowly this morning Had had a really lovely couple of days but were definitely ready to move on to the next stop. Hopefully going to Sodwana to do some diving.
We had phoned a couple of times to book some diving but had been given a bit of a run around with it all, and we were again when we phoned today - hey ho we would be there in a couple of hours so we’d check it out then.
Supposed to be the best diving in South Africa and I can’t wait to do some proper diving. This is what we qualified for!
Left St Lucia at about 11.00am and off we went north again. I really hope this is what its been built up to be.
It was about a 2.5 hour journey, so we arrived at Sodwana National Park at 1.30pm. We went straight to the Coral Divers reception where we were told that they couldn’t tell us anything until 7.00pm. 7.00pm! What’s that all about? We only wanted a yes or a no to the diving.
We ate there while we decided what to do. Why does it have to be so complicated?
After lunch we thought we’d go and check into the campsite have a wander around and then come back at 7.00pm. Didn’t really have any choice - couldn’t leave here without trying everything in our power to go diving. We would only have regretted it otherwise.
Only one small problem - no available camping pitches! Minor details! Getting pretty peeved by now! What are we going to do? Sod it! Lets leave the park and go and find somewhere else to stay then decide. If we want to go back into the park later to find out if we can dive we’ll have to pay again, but if we stay in the park until 7.00pm we might not find anywhere to stay outside the park! Arrggghh! Why is it so complicated? Its not as if we haven’t tried to book. And if we’d wanted to camp we would have had to have booked before we knew we were coming out here!
We left the park in not the best moods ever. We really wanted to go diving. If we went back at 7.00pm they could still have said no to the diving and then we would have wasted a nights accommodation. What a palaver!
We pulled into the closest backpackers to ask if they did camping and was met by a guy who introduced himself as Ben. Yes they did camping - “just bare with me a second I’ll get someone to help you, I’m in the middle of a I’ve course here” He disappeared and came back a few minutes later in the mean time we were talking to the guys on the dive course who suggested we had a hut instead of camped as they were really reasonable. When Ben came back we asked about the huts “they are 150 Rand per person per night and the camping is 50 Rand per person per night” “that’s cool, we’ll take the camping thanks”! He directed us down to the kitchen area and told us to wait for someone to come and help us.
We waited, and we waited. In the mean time it started belting it down with rain. On top of everything else we now had to put the tent up in the rain! Marvelous! If we’d been shown straight across we would have had it up by now. Huffy, huffy, huffy!
Eventually a guy called Archie showed up “Hi, I hear you want to stay and are not happy with my prices!”
Well as you know that’s not quite what we had said, we were truly happy to camp. He persuaded us to have a look at one of the huts and said as he could negotiate on the prices. He opened the door to hut 3 and let us in. I think he thought us very strange when the first thing I saw was a fridge “Oh my god Angela. Look at this its one of those funny things that keeps your stuff cold!”
After a very small amount of negotiating we got the price down to 100 Rand per person. Then I asked about the diving course that was going on and did they do the diving themselves. If so could we go diving tomorrow? No worries! Now we had a bed to stay in and and dive booked for the next day - sorted! As we were diving the next day we decided to stay an extra night which bought the price of the room down even further and eventually we settled on 80 Rand per person per night, from 150, that’s not bad at all. We had been used to paying up to 140 Rand for a camping pitch per night now we had a bed for 160! Brilliant!
Now we are very excited! I really like it here, everyone is really nice and friendly. Had a few beers with everyone in the kitchen tonight, met some great people though I can’t remember all their names so I won’t put any so as not to offend! Some very funny stories being told and good banter going round. Then we went across the road for a cocktail before bed. Didn’t have too much though as we are too excited about tomorrow and don’t want to ruin it.
Everything happens for a reason! Got into bed at about 10.00pm. A bed, in a room, with a fridge - now that’s luxury! Hope its all going to be cool tomorrow. Booked on the 10.00am dive. How cool is that?
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Tuesday 25 December
25/12/2007 by admin.
Merry Christmas Everyone! I hope yours was as relaxed and chilled out as mine has been.
Alarm went off at 4.00am. Yes, 4.00am. To go to the beach! Crazy fools! I would like to say that we jumped out of bed and got ready on the double but you know that’s not likely. We did eventually crawl out of bed at about 4.30am like a couple of Zombies. Got ourselves ready and off we went. The entrance to the park was only a couple of hundred yards away from our sight, then it was a 36km drive once in the park. We were amazed to see a good 40 cars infront of us in the queue. There are more crazy people out there than I thought! At least we weren’t the only ones!
Gates opened at 5.00am and within 15 mins we were through. Horay! We got to the beach car park at about 6.30am and went and settled on the beach. We were the only ones without any sun shade at all. I did think that it might be a problem later on in the day but for now it was time to go back to sleep.
By 8.00am we had slept a bit and sweated a lot. Time for a swim. The water was so warm, really lovely, and I managed to not scream at all going in. That’s quite good for me, I’m not sure why, but I didn’t disgrace myself today. It was lovely. Just what the doctor ordered, really refreshing!
Back to the beach to start on the food we bought with us. Not sure that we were going to last until much later in the day in this heat. But my god we were going to give it our best shot and get our moneys worth for coming into the park and getting up so early!
And that’s pretty much it for Christmas Day. We slept, read, ate, and swam all day. We did see dolphins swim past at one point which was cool. And we went and ate pour main lunch back in the shade of the car for an hour or two. Then back down to the beach for another swim. It was really lovely and relaxing - marvelous! We managed to handle it until about 5.00pm which is really getting your monies worth I think.
As we drove out through the park we saw loads of Kudu and a couple of White Rhino who stopped and posed for pictures. It was Christmas Day after all!
Back at the tent we cracked open some of our alcohol - not having dared to on the beach in case of a minging hangover too early in the day! Had some more food and crashed out. Moving on again tomorrow. Hopefully do some diving at our next stop - who knows?
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Monday 24 December
24/12/2007 by admin.
Great sleep last night. Nice shady spot so not disturbed by the sun in the mornings - there was a point that I didn’t think we would ever have to worry about he sun in the mornings, but the time has come! We also didn’t have to worry about stupid neighbours making as much noise to get rid of us as early as possible!
We had to finish off a few bits in town and go back to the internet café to try for the second time to get my diaries sent. I also had to post the next hard drive full of pictures home. Hopefully they won’t take too long to arrive, I expect it to take Mark a while to go through them though. There are hundreds!
By the time we had finished in town it was well past lunchtime so we headed off to the Crocodile Breeding Center just outside of town. A really well thought out conservation center rather than a tourist attraction - which is great. The last one we went to at Addo was quite upsetting. The enclosures were so small with loads of crocodiles in them, whereas here the enclosures were huge with only a few crocs in each. We had lunch there too.
We left there at about 4.00pm and headed back into town to buy our food for tomorrow. It was still hot so we decided to go and have a beer and go shopping as late as possible. We had a polystyrene cool box that we planned to fill with ice for the day - keep all our food and drink cold etc. We wanted to hang onto the ice as long as possible so in theory the later we buy it the longer it will last!
I say in theory because after a couple of beers, when we arrived at the supermarket, the shelves were bare! Hardly anything left at all. Our Christmas Day lunch was going to consist of Parma Ham, Philadelphia, Tomatoes, Bread, Chocolate and Crisps. Not quite what we had in mind but never mind. Also by the time we were actually served most of the ice had melted anyway. Not quite true but nearly!
Early night tonight as not only have we got no proper food for tomorrow we have been advised to get to the gate of the National Park by 5.00am to ensure we get in. They are only letting the first 120 cars in through the gates. Arrggghh! I would have said lets not bother but really wanted to spend the day on the beach and if we didn’t get into the park we could still spend the day on another beach but we couldn’t swim and the thought of spending a day at the beach in the stinking hot and not being able to swim wasn’t a good one for me.
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Sunday 23 December
23/12/2007 by admin.
Our lovely neighbours and their friends were up at 5.00am this morning after going to bed at well gone 2.00am. I’m sure it was that we would move quicker. But guess what? We didn’t! We drifted in and out of sleep for a couple of hours. When we did eventually wake up they had moved the new caravan - right outside the entrance to the tent. I could have almost touched it from inside the tent! How rude? So we read for ages and ages. I finished my book infact! I was not going to get up until I had to and we didn’t have to be off sight until 10.00am! I’m a stubborn bugger when I want to be (incase some of you hadn’t noticed!)
Eventually we did emerge from the tent. None of the normal “mornings” being passed around as is the norm on a campsite. No eye contact, nothing. We packed the tent down and just when they thought it was safe and that we were at last leaving - we went and had a shower!
When we got back from the showers the lovely couple were on their way out. I’m surprised they had the nerve - imagine what we could of taken with their backs turned! Then we found out that the ‘friends’ weren’t actually waiting for us to vacate the spot we were in - they had their own pitch booked further into the park!! I could not believe it. I had gone to bed feeling guilty (not a lot) about being in their space, even if they hadn’t booked in until the next night and now I found out they didn’t need our space at all. They hadn’t paid for it either. Bloody cheek.
As we were driving out of the sight though we saw a fab sight! Loads of Mongoose had come out of the trees and were happily spreading our neighbors rubbish all over their awning! There must have been about 15 of them. They were really cute and doing a marvelous job in my eyes! If they had been nice people I would have picked it up and shooed them away but I always find that karma bites you on the ass! We even stopped for a while to take photos. Never seen a mongoose before!
We thought the best thing to do would be to find a place to stay first. We had a massive list of stuff to do - it was a proper town after all and we had two internet cafes to choose from. That makes it almost a city!
We went to the KZN National Parks office first as they own all the campsites on in the park - full! Ok next stop tourist information center. Not looking too promising, it is Christmas after all! Doesn’t feel like it I must say. I hope that everyone around here has more Christmas spirit than our neighbour last night. If he had said “its my pitch and I’ve paid for it” one more time I might have had to act like I obviously look capable of and head butted him!
The very lovely people in the information center found us a great campsite just out of town near the beach. A really nice and shady spot with no neighbours to annoy! Well chuft. We thought it would have been funny if we had been put on to the next door pitch from last night, but once we found our new sight we were glad not to have had to spend our Christmas avoiding him! He can have the pitch that “he has paid for”
Back into town to start some of the other millions jobs we had to do. Food shopping, internet café, booking some trips at the information center finding out about the St Lucia Wetlands National Park for Christmas Day. We had decided we were going to spend it on the beach, chillin’. Can’t wait.
Its been a real scorcher today. Really hot and I ‘m not really one for towns - couldn’t wait to do all that we needed to do and then go off on our Crocodile and Hippo river cruise.We eventually stopped at 3.00pm to have something to eat and then off to the river.The cruise was brilliant. Really great. I have seen a lot of Hippo backs - or the tops of them, but not any proper full blown ready to rumble hippos. We only saw one Crocodile out of the water but absolutely shed loads of Hippos Big ones, small ones, baby ones, daddy ones, mummy ones! Loads. I hope I’ve got some brilliant pictures.
The cruise lasted about 2 hours so at 6.00pm we decided to head down to the beach and watch the sunset with a beer. Sounded like a great idea but once we got there it was so so windy that we almost downed our beers and headed straight back to the tent, where we spent the rest of the evening sat in our chairs outside the tent not being disturbed by anyone. Truly marvelous! Good nights sleep coming up!
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Saturday 22 December
22/12/2007 by admin.
Dried off the last of our washing this morning. Didn’t take long with the sun out. Did I mention that the sun is shining - again! Might get that tan after all. Can pack away all the jumpers and waterproofs, for the time being, but lets not get too hasty eh?
Another funny thing that happened here is when we got up this morning we found our car had been cleaned - top to bottom! With the amount of rain we had seen over the last few weeks and the dirt roads we had been driving on meant that it was well dirty. Dirtier than dirty on national dirty day! This morning we woke up and it was spotless. How nice is that? I’m sure that the person who did it (the security guy we think) was after a tip but hey ho!
Managed to pack the tent up in record time this morning. People don’t stop what they are doing and laugh at us anymore, which is nice. Almost professional tent putter downers now! I was beginning to wonder. Now the sun has come out we can do it no problem, all the time it was raining we struggled for a lot longer then we should have done. Because its a pop out one we can’t throw it in the back of the car and go, it definitely needs to go in its bag every day.
Left site at about 10.00am, had done quite a bit in the morning. Now the sun is out we don’t want to lie in the tent for any longer than we have to as its too hot in there. Have to think about the positioning of it now the sun has come out and get the shadiest spot possible! Certainly not complaining though.
We picked up a few bits at the shop at the visitors center (not bread and cheese though), had ice cream for breakfast, naughty but yummy! Hey who says we can’t - we are on holiday!
Now we were heading to the coast again. Feeling on top of the world - holiday has started and we are heading towards the beach, hopefully get some diving in and spend at least a day chilling out on the beach. Feeling very optimistic.
We decided to go via some of the old battle fields in central Kwa-zulu Natal where the British fought the Zulu’s in the 19th century.
It was dirt roads once we got off the main road and for once they were pretty well maintained roads. You could go at least 60kms per hour on them - marvelous! We got to Rorkes Drift at about 1.30pm and decided to eat there. That’s the other problem with the sun being out and so hot - not actually wanting to do much for yourself, which I spose isn’t a bad thing really. We don’t treat ourselves often and we are travelling the hard way in a tent, everyone says so anyway, that’s our excuse and we are sticking to it! Steak sandwich - yummo! It really was delicious. Then we had a wander round the area itself.
The first site - Rorkes Drift was the site where a group of British veterans and sick successfully defended the field hospital against four advancing Zulu regiments. Despite the orders not to go attack Rorkes Drift, 3000-4000 hot-headed young Zulu men were so fired up by another victorious battle further east and so eager to “wash their spears” - they were part of a reserve force sand had not yet seen action- that just over a hundred British soldiers (many of whom were ill) repulsed repeated attacks by the Zulu’s and so earned the Victoria Cross - the largest ever awarded in one battle.
Then it was off to the next site Isandlwana. On the same day as the battle at Rorkes Drift- 22 January 1879, the British suffered the most humiliating defeat in their colonial history when virtually their entire force of 1200 men were obliterated by warriors armed with spears.
The monumental bungling and the scale of the Zulu victory over the British sent shock waves back to London. Following the British ultimatum to the Zulu’s, three colonial columns were sent to invade Zululand. King Cetshwayo responded by sending a force against each of these. On January 21 1879, Zulu troops encamped 6km from Isandlwana Hill, where one of the British columns had set up camp. Unaware of the Zulu’s over the brow, the British commander took a large detachment to support another British force, leaving the men at Isandlwana undefended and unfortified.
Meanwhile, a British scouting party rode to the brow of a hill and were stunned to find the valley filled with some 25,000 Zulu warriors sitting in utter silence. Because of superstition surrounding the phase of the moon, the Zulu’s were waiting for a more propitious moment to attack. On being discovered, they rose up and converged on the British encampment using the classic Zulu “horns of the bull” formation to out flank the unprotected British, whom they completely overran.
The British press at the time demonised the Zulu’s for disemboweling the dead. In fact, the practice had a religious significance for the Zulu’s, who believed that it released the spirit of the dead. The custom also had a less spiritual significance; a Zulu warrior was required to “wash his spear” (kill an enemy) before he was allowed to marry.
I didn’t realise that it had gotten so late so I was really surprised when the guy at the till said “sorry girls the battlefield is closed now” It was 4.00pm already! He did let us in in the end. I felt really bad as he was obviously putting himself out and the battlefield was about half a mile down the road and we couldn’t fit him in the car to take him with us - he had to walk. So much for keeping the back seat free, everyday it gets more and more full! Anyway we drove off and he walked to the battlefield by which time we had been in, taken our pictures and come back to the gate again. He wanted to show us round and we didn’t want to keep him any longer than was necessary so it was a bit awkward in the end. But we’d seen what we wanted to and left him a fairly generous tip top say thank you and off we went again.
We drove for ages it seemed. Through lots of man made forests which was very strange. It was a paper business and I spose they need to replant just the same as everywhere else, it just wasn’t what I expected to see.
It took us about 3 hours to get to St Lucia by which time it was 8.00pm and by the time we had found somewhere to stay 8.30pm. Now here’s a funny story!
We pulled up outside a campsite and asked about a pitch for the night to two security men on the gate. They showed us a pitch which was cool by us and told us to go down the road to pay. We got to the next gate and paid the guy then returned to our original spot.
As we were putting our tent up a guy came out of his caravan and asked what we were doing?
“Camping!”
‘Not here your not, this is my pitch “he said.
I replied “Oh sorry! We have just paid and this is where we were told to put our tent”.
“Who said” he came back with. “The guys on the gate”.
“But why are you putting the tent up here?”
“Because this is where we have been told to put it”
He just couldn’t get it into his head that we hadn’t chosen the pitch at all.
“We have just paid and been told to put our tent up here” I said again.
“But this is my pitch, I’ve paid for it” He repeated.
“I’m really sorry, but what do you want me to do, this is where I have been told to pitch my tent” How many times?
“By who”
“The guys on the security gate” Again how many times! Is it really that difficult,
“This is my pitch and I’ve paid for it”
“Look - we have just paid our money and been told to put our tent up here. We will be gone first thing in the morning”
“But this is my pitch and I’ve paid for it”
Do I really have to say it again?
Eventually he gave up and went back to his caravan only to appear 5 minutes later and marched off to the security guys who had let us in. The conversation was in Afrikaans so we couldn’t understand most of it but we got the gist of it.
We were ‘f***ing pomies’ who were going to steal all his things while he was asleep’. Can you Adam and eve it? What a cheek! I couldn’t believe he had said that but hey what would a couple of pomie chicks know? It was so funny, we couldn’t stop laughing at him. He ranted and raved at the two security guys for a good 20 mins. He even went and got his booking form to show them that he had paid. They knew he had paid and didn’t really care - so had we!
He kept going on about the fact that he had friends arriving later that evening and there was no space for them now. I must admit I didn’t expect anyone to arrive (apart from anything else, how can this guy have any friends?) but was on the verge of saying ‘if they arrive later we will move’ but I thought sod you, mister. If you’d spoken to us nicely to start with and explained that you had friends coming we could have put the tent in a different place, still in “his” spot but just in a different position, but after all the arsey things he had said to us and about us I thought no way am I moving. We didn’t see his wife all evening - she was probably too frightened to come out of the caravan incase she was mugged by the two pomies outside just waiting to pounce!
Eventually he disappeared back into his caravan and we settled down outside the tent for a while.
I did go and speak to the security guards. I suspected that our lovely neighbor would be round at the office first thing in the morning complaining and I didn’t want the security guards to get into trouble for us. They weren’t at all bothered and just laughed it off.
We got into the tent at about and 15 mins later another caravan turned up. Arrggghh!, his friends had arrived! Good job I hadn’t said anything. To start with the security guys were not going to let them into the park because guess what? They hadn’t booked till the next night! Can you believe it? He was creating all that fuss and the people he was expecting weren’t supposed to be there in the first place. I had started to feel guilty when I heard that they had arrived but when I found that out I couldn’t believe it What a cheek!
They sat around talking fairly loudly right outside our tent for a good few hours, but that’s cool, Angela and I were knackered and as soon as our heads hit the pillows we were out for the count.
I do hope we get to meet more of his sort on our travels - gives me loads to write about. I felt like leaving one of my business cards with him saying he should check the blogs out but hey, what’s the point. He would only have accused us of stealing something on the way to his tent! I must admit since we’ve been out here the place has had a funny affect on us and we are stating to look like the sort of people who mug grannies in the street!
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Friday 21 December
21/12/2007 by admin.
Feeling pretty refreshed this morning. Don’t ache too much, so that’s cool and the sun is still shining!
Got to the stables at 8.30am ready for our 9.00am ride. At about 9.15am we were asked if we could ride. Angela said yes, and I said “I can but its been a longtime” If you are asked that question back home it is normally followed by “to what level?” I would have then told exactly what I could and couldn’t do - basically I can sit on a horse and stay on, I can get it to go in the right direction and stop it if I need to. I can trot and canter but not to any great standard. I wouldn’t have been lying.
I wasn’t asked any other questions at all - we trotted out of the stables. Something told me that this wasn’t going to be a normal pony trek! We were with three other girls who could ride. This wasn’t going to be what I though it was.
The guide was fantastic - really helpful. I do know the principals but putting them straight into practice wasn’t expected. He let the others trot off into the distance and gave me a quick lesson while they weren’t around to see what I was doing. Never been great at rising in the saddle but picked it up better then I thought I would pretty quickly.
We were booked on the three hour ride - hopefully the others weren’t going to be too upset with me for holding them back. As it was I didn’t hold them back at all, in fact it worked out better for them as the guide let them go off at every opportunity so they probably got in more canters than they would have done if he had been with them all the time. That’s what they said afterwards anyway!
Just as I was getting the cantering, which I was really enjoying, I stood on my knee in a really funny position and I thought my knee cap was going to ping off across the hilltops. God it hurt. I was determined not to hold the others up any more than I already had done so I didn’t say anything bout it. It was a great three hours other then that. I really enjoyed it. No camera on my back, just chilling and enjoying the scenery. Truly stunning.
We got back to the stables at 12.30pm. Didn’t think I was going to be able to get off the horse, thought my knee would give way as I was stepping down. Towards the end I was raring to go and do more canters but the guide seemed to be holding me back, couldn’t understand why but again I didn’t say anything, but as we got closer to the stables he said top Angela “she has a problem with her knee” That’s obviously why he was holding me back, e knew best! A great morning though.
Cream crackered by the time we got back to camp. Pulled the blanket into the shade and slept for a good couple of hours. Gonna be aching later I’m sure Are legs supposed to feel like this? They don’t seem to want to close anymore!
Had some lunch and chilled out til bout 4.00pm. We had cheese rolls again. We seem to go through stages - chicken salad, chicken salad, chicken salad, salad rolls, salad rolls, salad rolls, cheese rolls, cheese rolls, cheese rolls! Nice balanced diet eh?
Later in the afternoon we did all our washing. Every last thing went in the wash. Then some of it came out again as we didn’t have enough tokens to do it all. It was the thought that counts though and at least what we did wash is nearly clean. We sat in the laundry room charging up all our stuff while we waited for the washing. Never gonna get it all dry by the time we leave tomorrow, but at least its clean. Another night sat on the blanket enjoying the warm evenings enjoying a beer or two.
Moving on again tomorrow. Wonder where we will end up tomorrow? I know that we left Madolos 10 days ago but this, for me is where the holiday has started. Really starting to relax now. Can’t wait to see where wee are tomorrow.
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Thursday 20 December
20/12/2007 by admin.
horay, horay, its a holi holiday! The sun has got his hat on, hip hip hip horay. Are you getting the gist here? Its still sunny. Bloody hot infact, but I am not going to complain at all in the slightest. Not yet anyway!
It was so hot we almost didn’t do the walk we had planned. Eventually we thought we’d try it anyway and if it was too much we could always turn back. It was billed as a 6 hour walk but we were expecting it to take us a lot longer then that. At Oribi we’d done a 7km walk in five hours (which also doesn’t seem right) and this was a 22km walk at 6 hours. Something was wrong somewhere!
We set off at about 10.00am up through the gorge. Really is stunning round here. I know I know I keep saying it but it is. It just gets better and better the further in you go. We knew there were some river crossings that had to be done but within 200 yards we were knew deep in water. We expected to have stepping stones to go over but either there weren’t any or they were covered by a particularly high river. It was quite a high river because of the unusual amount of rainfall in the last few days - no s*** Sherlock!
I thought that my shoes would start to rub after they got wet but they didn’t at all and as often as possible my feet went into the river to cool off. Couldn’t wait til we got to the gorge itself to jump straight in. We were allowed to swim it this time.
We walked with the river on our left just below us for a fair few miles getting further and further into the gorge. Just as it was starting to get into thicker forest we past a troop of Baboons, so we stopped and had a roll while watching them for a while. They really are very funny, but if one had come bounding up over the top of the rock we were sat on we would have dropped everything and run. They could have had our lunch no problem!
Onwards and upwards. The path got thicker the closer we got the gorge and we could hear the water flowing much faster. Couldn’t wait to get in, I was boiling!
Eventually after about 3 hours we did get to the gorge. It was cool. Where we wanted to get to was a bit further up so we just waded through the water, some of it getting to shorts level. Most of the places we could have rock hopped across but there didn’t seem any point -we were wet anyway. The water was flowing really fast and we nearly came a cropped on more than one occasion.
Another hour later and we were at the Amphitheater - wow! Water coming from everywhere. We found a nice little rock pool got changed and jumped straight in. Only joking! We did find a rock pool and we did slide in very slowly, very slowly. It was the coldest water I have ever been in! Oh my got it was cold I did sit in it for about five minutes and that was enough. But I can say that I went in, so can Angela. We sat on the rocks and had another roll as we were drying off and just taking it all in.
We did a bit of exploring afterwards and climbed a very dodgy ladder up the side of one of the gorge walls. I think they need to spend some money on fixing the ladder as some of the rungs were just not there. It was quite scary, I wasn’t looking forward to coming back down that’s for sure. But that was nothing! The next part of the journey was even harder. I had a big camera bag on my back and Angela had all the food and drink on hers so we weren’t travelling particularly light and we had to squeeze ourselves up this rock face using tree roots and pegs sticking out of rocks to haul ourselves and luggage over the top. I didn’t know my legs could stretch that far in places. Definitely wasn’t looking forward to coming back down that one.
We didn’t go much further after that, just to the view point to see the amphitheater from the other direction. By this time it was 4.00pm We did navigate the tree roots and the ladder without too many problems. It did worry us a bit that we were the last ones to leave the gorge and if something had happened would anyone have known about it? Didn’t matter anyway, cause we were fine!
It was a quick hot foot back down over the rocks and through the river. Don’t want to be struck on the path in the dark! We made it back down to the car by 6.20pm feeling very satisfied with ourselves. A really brilliant walk. Must get in touch with Brent to let him know that his recommendation was spot on. It wasn’t half as hard as the walk yesterday but had taken us about 7 hours with stops and swims and lunch. Not bad at all eh?
Absolutely shattered by the time we got back to the tent, and spent the evening sitting out side chilling sand drinking a well earned beer. Crashed out pretty early ready for our horse ride in the morning. Can’t wait
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Wednesday 19 December
19/12/2007 by admin.
What luxury - a bed! My back still hurt this morning but sleeping in a bed made it so much easier. We were dry and so was our stuff - Horay! Its still raining outside though!
Never mind after a good night sleep we were on form, nothing was going to stop us now - hey I know a song about that!
As we were about to leave the guy who had checked us in the night before gave us both a present - how cool is that? How many other places have you been to that give you a present when you leave (I’m not talking bout the soaps, towels and dressing gowns that sometimes get stolen) but a proper present. I did suggest we save opening them until Christmas but Angelas‘ face made me think not! So we opened them there and then - we had been given a pottery pen holder that had a Rondavel on it. Definitely recommend staying there if you are passing!
That brightened our morning up before we even left our over night stop. It didn’t take too long to get to our next stop - Royal Natal National Park and by 12.30pm we had set up our tent and were heading off on a walk.
It wasn’t raining when we left and we were feeling pretty positive about it all. Not positive enough to leave our waterproofs behind - we’re not stupid!
We were on the Cascades and Tiger Falls walk when we saw a very strange sight - the clouds parted, the sky turned a funny colour and low and behold the sun appeared out of nowhere! We couldn’t believe it! What is this strange thing in the sky. Didn’t want to make too much of a big thing about it at the time as we were afraid we might jinx it. So we kept quiet and kept walking.
It was a lovely walk but bloody hard work, in some places almost a vertical path. It was supposed to be a 45min journey there and a 1 hour journey back, not sure how that works out but we didn’t take too much notice as we had found out before the maps, in any shape or form are nonsense!
It took us until 5.00pm to get back to the campsite, and the sun was still shining. Sshhhh! Don’t tell anyone! The walk itself was great. It felt so good to be out of the car and in the fresh air. Tiger Falls were wicked, cut deep into he rocks, you could even walk behind them, which of course we had to do! Fabulous!
I was pretty crackered by the time we got back to the site. But satisfied. The site is great - its got a laundry and everything. Clean clothes, imagine that. Who ever heard of such a thing! Things always look so much better when its not raining.
We sat outside the tent on our blanket (first time we used it in ages) til 11.00pm how nice is that? Let me tell you - its bloody nice. Nicer than nice on national nice day infact! Now I feel like I’m on holiday. Big walk tomorrow, hope the weather lasts.
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Tuesday 18th December 2007
18/12/2007 by admin.
Tent is still standing, and we haven’t been swept down river. Probably not the best place to put a tent - on a river bank! But hey, we were still here!
There are supposed to be some fabulous walks in the area but they are all long ones, 6-7 hours. I like walking and would love to have done at least one of them but dreaded the thought of not being able to get warm and dry for days afterwards. Bloody weather! What is going on? I am not prepared for this weather.
In the end we decided to move on to the northern part of Drakensburgs, Royal Natal National Park. Maybe we’d have better luck there and if not there was a walk we had been recommended to do and if we were going to get wet and stay wet this was the walk that we were going to do it on. So everything was thrown into the back of the car and we were on our way again.
There was absolutely no let up in the weather, what so ever. This is getting too much for me. Never normally mind the rain but come on now, this is silly. Everything we own is damp, we are getting into a damp tent, with damp bedding and getting up in the morning in the same situation. Our tent isn’t big enough to be able to much else but sit in and I didn’t come all the way out here to sit in a tent!
We came across a conservation Center that had cosy Rondavel Houses/huts to rent for the night. That’s where we headed. The rondavels are the traditional homes of the Zulu people and looked pretty cool to me. They had beds and everything!
I don’t think they have many visitors turning up on their doorstep as its quite a way off the main road, and I think mainly used as a school trip, educational center, but hey. The hut we rented had four beds in it, they were off the floor, it was dry and warm - what more can you ask for eh?
I was so looking forward to sleeping in a bed. I have had a really bad back in the mornings since we left Madolos, not sure if that’s carrying a very heavy camera bag with me all day or sleeping on the floor but I was sure that sleeping in a bed was going to make all the difference.
We spent the evening charging up all our electrical stuff, camera batteries phones, etc and worked out what we were going to do next. Apart from sleep in a proper bed - Horay!
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Sunday 16 December
16/12/2007 by admin.
Packed the tent up in the rain again this morning! What a surprise! One day the sun will shine I’m sure! We are on holiday it has to at some point.
We went and paid for last nights stay and decided to go off for a walk before coming back for a shower. We were pretty filthy already so what’s another sweaty walk amongst friends. After our bout of food poisoning I think we should be able to handle most things!
So off we went in the rain to walk to
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Saturday 15 December
15/12/2007 by admin.
Up and out very early this morning. Left camp at 7.00am to go and do the Hoepoe Falls walk. It was listed in our leaflet as a 7km round trip taking approx. 5 hours. 5 hours! For 7kms! Can’t be right. Anyway it wasn’t raining so we were feeling pretty positive. Today is the day- the start of the sunshine that is going to last the rest of the holiday!
The walk took us along the river and through the forest. Really lovely. We were definitely the first people to have walked the path this morning as we had to break every cobweb we came across - they were everywhere. Could not escape them. I don’t mind spiders as a general rule but when you slide your hand from the top of your arm to the bottom and can feel all the webs grouping together at the bottom it really makes my skin crawl. We did manage to stop a couple of times when we saw a particularly colourful spider still sitting in the middle of its nest but not always. Then there would be a few squeals and a little dance going on while the other one made sure we were spider free!
There are supposed to be loads of animals around, Baboons, Vervet monkeys, Tree Dassies, Oribi antelope as well as all sorts of other wild things. Leopards are found in the area too, but, we didn’t see a thing. Not til the journey home when we found a baby Forest Shrew on the path infront of us It was very cute and immediately tried to climb into Angela’s shoe. When she picked it up it just clung to her. I think again, that she would have taken it with us as a pet if she could. Vanessa and I wanted to find a baby orphaned kangaroo in Oz that we could keep - Angela wants to keep everything!
Anyway back to the walk - not long after we started we thought we’d heard an otter, which is what we’d gotten up for so early to see, so we sat on the river bank waiting for it to appear - it didn’t. Hey ho, onwards and upwards!
It really was a stunning walk - the forest is so thick that even if we had heard something we wouldn’t have been able to see it! We had to cross the river at one point - the camera went away at this point! It was pretty slippery but we made it across with out falling in. We would have liked to paddle in it but were advised not to because of bilharzia! Great, now we were frightened of getting our feet wet!
We had to clamber over logs, under fallen trees and up cliffs. It was great. Once we’d arrived at the falls we decided that the view from our side wasn’t that hot so we’d find a way to get to the other side - easier said than done. It took ages to find the perfect spot and we had a few aborted attempts too but at long last we found what we were looking for and made our way across. It was so worth it - the falls were ones you just wanted to dive into, but obviously couldn’t. We were stinking hot at this point so it would have been a very welcome cool down but we resisted.
It had taken us three hours to find our spot from where we left the car - ok so maybe it would take us 5 hours! We sat for a while and ate our sandwiches - left over salad, and just enjoyed the view before we headed back down the way we came.
In total it took us 5 hours - fancy that! That was with the stop at the top and the 45 mins it took us to get top the spot we wanted to stop at! So they were right after all. Oh well, you can’t be right all the time!
By the time we’d gotten back to the car it was absolutely chucking it down - back to reality hey!
We did intend to do another walk but decided that we would wait til the afternoon and see if the weather changed at all - fat chance!
Instead we went up to Leopard Rock Café which has stunning view of the gorge apparently! It was thick cloud by the time we got up there but the post cards looked amazing. Leopard Rock itself is a piece of rock that jutted out over the gorge itself where you can have your picture taken (for a small fee) and it would have been worth the fee if we could see anything at all. They did serve lovely Irish Coffee and milk tarts, a South African dessert pretty similar to custard tarts but without the custard! Yummo!
After our refreshments we decided, as it was still raining, that we would go into Eland Nature Reserve to see the suspension bridge that you can do a bridge jump from. We didn’t really want to pay for it but we did as it was only 25rand (1.92 pounds) and there wasn’t much else on offer in the rain. What a good 25 Rand spent. It was great - loads of animals that we already had pictures of but we could drive ourselves round so could stop when ever we wanted to take pictures, and we saw black wildebeest - which are much more like the wildebeest that I was expecting to find in South Africa but hadn’t seen yet. Shamwari only had Blue Wildebeest (that are not blue at all!)
We had a quick walk down to the caves - which weren’t that exciting but as we were there we wanted to get our moneys worth! And then onto the suspension bridge. It was pretty rickety to say the least but good fun. We also went up to the two view points further down on in the reserve. All in all we spent three hours in the reserve. Not bad for the price eh?
We quite fancied a beer at the tent after all the exercise we’d had today so we went into the nearest town only to find that they were closed. Can you believe it - 6.00pm on a Saturday night and the bottle store was closed.
We did find one eventually but it was in an area that we definitely didn’t want to get out of the car in especially after dark - no way hosey! So we drove on a bit further and a bit further, then further still and eventually we came to a really happening little beachside town called Margate (of course)! There was all sorts going on so we cut our losses and went for dinner. We eventually got back to the tent at about after a thoroughly enjoyable day. It was still raining though! Maybe tomorrow!
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Friday 14 December
14/12/2007 by admin.
Guess what? Its raining again. I don’t think its stopped all day! What’s going on?
We put the tent down, wet again. One day it will dry out I’m sure. I hope its not going to be like this when we get to St Lucia, which is supposed to be smashing and great diving!
Once we’d showered in the oddest shower room ever, three doors to it and none of them locked in an out building of the backpackers. The toilet was pretty funny too. A very small shed that didn’t have any sides to it from the waist up. It was fine if you were sat down and it did have a curtain but now the nicest of places! Anyway, once we were clean again we hit the road.
We did want to go to Mkambati Game Reserve but as it had been raining lots it was advised not to be attempted in a two wheel drive, so sensibly, we didn’t! Instead we thought we’d go to Magwa Falls which was on our route, or so it said on the map. When were we going to learn? We either drove straight past it though I don’t know how as we didn’t cross a river once, and it was supposed to be a short walk from the main road at the bridge, or it just doesn’t exist any more! Not sure but we are spending a lot of time looking for things that are impossible to find, that are not sign posted or don’t exist!
After driving for a couple of hours we arrived in the Kwazulu-Natal area and left the Transkei behind us. I do wish that we had been braver while travelling through this area but the fact is we weren’t. I would love to go back at some point as the photographic opportunity in this area is amazing. Just not going to happen on this trip. When I win the lottery!
The difference between the two areas was apparent immediately. The Kwazulu-Natal is obviously richer and has a much bigger white South African population. Not that that is difficult as we haven’t seen any white South Africans for days. We definitely stood out like sore thumbs. And while we had a lot of things shouted at us as we drove through places , I don’t think they were all bad, some definitely were but certainly not all. And when we got lost a couple do days ago some of the kids were looking at us like they hadn’t seen a white person before. I’m sure they must have done but you just don’t know. To have been with someone who understood what people were saying would have been great.
We stopped just the otherside of the border at Port Edward to get some supplies. One day we’ll actually get to cook some of the food we bought on our first days travelling! We ate in a car park just outside the town. Couldn’t wait any longer we were starving.
It is definitely getting to look more tropical around here. Palm trees and that sort of thing. Very green too - wonder why that is? Bloody rain!
We arrived at Oribi Gorge Nature Reserve later in the day, probably bout 4.00pm. This is it - absolutely stunning. Gonna do lots of walking tomorrow and probably stay another night too. Its a very basic campsite. One toilet and one shower, a few beautiful cabins and four camping pitches. It also has a Braai area (BBQ) with a roof on a small section so at least we are not confined to the tent tonight and it also has an electric point. Hoary - lots to be charged up!
We did the Baboon Trail after we’d set up. Just a short 1.5km walk to the top of the escarpment and back down through the forest. Wow! Its amazing! I felt like Indiana Jones. Definitely the first people to have ever come across this place before - that’s what it felt like anyway. The trail through the woods was like a proper jungle. We didn’t actually see any baboons on the cliff tops but I expect that’s because it was, wait for it…raining, and they were probably somewhere nice and warm and dry. We did see some Vervets in the camp that scuttled off before we could get the cameras out. One thing is for sure I am definitely strengthening my back lugging all this stuff around with me everyday. I really like it here.
In the evening we set up under the shelter in the Braai area and ate. It wasn’t actually raining by then, surprise, surprise, but it was nice to know that if it did we didn’t have to throw everything into the car and dive into the tent. Pastrami and salad tonight! How healthy are we. We are going to be so skinny but by time we get home! If, that is, if we actually make it out f the car and do some exercise!
We were in bed by about - a late one. Making the most of the non-rain! Planning to get up early in the morning and do a 7km walk. Please don’t be raining!
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Thursday 13 December
13/12/2007 by admin.
Its still raining! The sun rise photo session just wasn’t happening. We packed the tent down in the rain and headed off to the Hole in the Wall. We nearly couldn’t find that either. What is wrong with a few road signs dotted here and there eh?
Luckily, or unluckily we were spotted by a young African lad who pointed us in the right direction and told us where to park. He ran up the hill behind us where we were met by a big group of lads all smoking something that smelt very suspicious. They all wanted to guide us and look after our car (for money of course) and the boy who had directed us almost faded into the back ground. We decided it was probably wise to have someone looking after our car, a bit worried about what would happen if we said ‘no thanks’.
We singled the lad out who directed us and told him that he was the only person we would be paying and that he was to look after our car. I think he was pretty pleased to have been singled out but hey who knows. They could be sharing the money anyway! Or even worse buying illegal substances to smoke!
Another of the bigger lads took it on himself to be our guide and to honest we were pretty grateful, we would have found it eventually but he definitely knew the better way. We were pleased that we went and pleased that we had the guts to get out of the car. It reall is quite intimidating. A lot of the kids don’t speak English and its quite difficult to understand and make ourselves understood. But it was definitely worth the 1km walk. Just to see cows on the beach, never seen that before! Kangaroos yes, cows no!
The hole itself was cool too - it wasn’t just the cows on the beach! And when we got to the car it was still there fully intact and our little lad was still looking after it for us. Horay! We paid him the equivalent of about 50p I don’t think he was that impressed but that was all we had in change and I am sure it will only go on drugs!
From there it was back up to the almost main road and onto Port St Johns. The road back down to the coast was stunning, really lovely. Cliff faces and forest views, really stunning. This is starting to get to the type of scenery I have been looking forward to. Not that the rest has been bad but this is just in a different league.
We pulled up on the beach and stopped for a very late lunch - mmm, chicken salad! We had hoped that this would have been a biggerish town and that we would be able to find an internet café and a post office. I need to send some emails, send Mark some photos and we also need to book up Christmas and New Year. Not sure where we are going to be, that’s the problem! And if we don’t pull our fingers out we might not have anywhere to stay at all. We also want to book a trip to Victoria Falls. We have decided to do an organised trip over the border as we are not sure that we want to drive it ourselves. It can be a pretty dodgy place. Don’t think any of that is going to happen here though - wishful thinking!
We did find a fab campsite though. Not sure they have many campers as it is a backpackers and I think we were camping in their back garden but hey we didn’t care. We set up and went for a stroll on the beach, right on our doorstep. Marvelous! Once we got back we got our blanket out and set about organising our next few days. We need to be heading up to Victoria Falls within three weeks and there is a lot of country to travel before that.
Our blanket was invaded fairly early by a dog who made himself right at home. I think Angela would adopt every animal we see on our way round if she could fit them in the car. We also had chickens and chicks running around all over the place and just as we were settling in some Vervet monkeys came to feed on the tree above the tent. How cool is that? Monkeys in our campsite!
It actually stayed dry all night while we were sat outside. It was really nice to make the most of the outdoors, it seems that we have either been in the car or in the tent for the last few days!
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Wednesday 12 December
12/12/2007 by admin.
Up bright and early the today. Places to go, people to see! Had our breakfast - an apple, and packed up the tent. Well we tried to anyway. Yes it unpacks as easy it said it would on the packet but… It certainly doesn’t pack down in the 45 seconds advertised. A family were stood watching us and laughing their heads off, until they came to help and couldn’t work it out either! Eventually we did manage to get it to almost resemble the way it came out of the bag, not bad between 5 of us eh?
We eventually left the site at about 10.30am, so much for an early start!! Never mind it can only get easier. We only have to remember what we did today and manage it on our own tomorrow! Easy as that!
We were heading into the Transkei area. Jacu had warned us that this was a particularly dodgy area and that we should keep all belongings out of sight while driving through. In my book it describes the area as‘a desperately poor region that during the apartheid was disenfranchised and turned into a dumping ground for Africans too old or too young for South African industry to make use of.
Few whites live in the Wild Coast region; nearly everyone is Xhosa, and those in rural areas live mostly in traditional rondavels dotting the landscape for as far as the eye can see. This neglect lives on in the negative image most white South Africans still have of the Transkei. Unless they have visited the area and come to appreciate it, most people have an exaggerated image of its dangers (and wildly overstated) tales of crime, hostile locals (quite untrue) and shocking roads (these are being upgraded).’
So, yes we appreciated Jacu’s warning, and had taken notice of what he said about our belongings we still wanted to travel through the area and see for ourselves.
It was immediately apparent that we had entered a different area - the huts dotted all over the place, the dodgy roads (that part was true), and the hundreds of kids that just appeared out of nowhere asking for money and sweets or just giving us a friendly wave. It might not have been friendly but that’s how we took it! Also the towns that we drove through were heaving, absolutely heaving. Very lively, busy, bustling towns and we were the only white people anywhere. While I nor Angela has a problem with race at all in the slightest, I have to admit I felt very intimidated by it all. Not by the people, the whole thing. I would have loved to have taken loads of pictures but didn’t feel able to just lean out of the car and take them. I didn’t really want my camera on show. I’m not sure if that’s me being silly for not taking the opportunity to take the pictures and for thinking something bad would happen to it if I did or sensible for not taking the risk. It would have been different I think and hate to say if we have been travelling with a guy, but two girls on their own, I’m sad to say, it just wasn’t worth the risk to find out.
We were looking for Dwesa Nature Reserve, one of the best places to stay on the coast, boasting rare animals such as tree dassies and samango monkeys. Sounded lovely so we turned off the main road through the Transkei and headed towards the coast. We knew it was about 80 kms off the main N2, which is a good thing to know, what we failed to take note of was what the mileage was at the time!
We drove on a tarred, but very badly pot holed road til we came to a town called Willowvale. That was good news as it meant we were on the right road. I have to say that the road signs out here are diabolical. The roads either aren’t on the map at all, or may be but are not named when you get to them, or are named but are nowhere to be found anywhere!
After the town we drove and drove and drove and the roads got smaller and smaller and more track like every step of the way. After last nights rainfall they were quite muddy and slippery too. Marvelous! There were kids everywhere, they just appear out of thin air, to ask for sweets and money and anything else they think they can get. Some of them are so young. There were also lots of goats, horses, sheep, chickens, pigs and cows running about all over the place, so between the kids and the animals and the pot holes driving was like an obstacle course.
We were just deciding on weather to turnaround or not when a Ute went past and stopped “are you lost?” came a voice from inside the truck. “We’re not sure, we are looking for Dwesa”. “yep, definitely lost! Follow me I’ll take you back to the town” So we turned round and followed our new friend back to the town we had just come from - where he pointed out the road to Dwesa. We had been driving for about an hour on the wrong road. At the speed we were going it was very difficult to keep track of how far we had gone - it felt like we had done miles and miles but probably was only about 35 kms. By the time we got into town it seemed that the whole place knew about the crazy girls that had to be escorted out of wherever we were, there were a lot of people smiling at us anyway!
We decided to give Dwesa a miss after that as it was quite late in the day and there was no guarantee that we would have anywhere to stay once we got there and we didn’t fancy the journey back in the dark if we were out of luck. So Dwesa will always be the place we remember for not actually making it. I wonder how many more times we will hear “are you lost?” on this trip?
Instead we headed off to Coffee Bay - dramatic high cliffs dropping to sandy beaches speckled with black pebbles, contrasts with the grasslands, forest sand dunes and lagoons.
We arrived safely and with no other detours and as we left the main road we actually took note of the amount of kms we had to travel before we knew if we were lost or not! Hey that’s a clever lesson learnt eh? Don’t call us brains of Britain for nothing!
We set up camp at a very small place just west along the coast from Coffee Bay called Hole in the Wall. The description in our books made it sound just like another hole the wall at home, so it was as good a place as any to stop for the night.
As we pulled up to the site there were loads of dolphins playing in the surf off the coast. They weren’t close enough to take pictures but I felt sure that by the time it got dark they would have come much closer to the land and I would get some stunning shots - they were jumping out all over the place! That settled it for us - this was the place to stay and if I didn’t get those shots today I could get up with the sun and get them in the morning, the site is well known for its dolphin sightings.
We had just about got the tent up when the rain started again - God I hope this isn’t going to keep up. I’ve got a suntan to maintain! We had stopped earlier in the day and very bravely braved one of the local supermarkets for some dinner as we knew that we wouldn’t be able to cook at where we were staying, and bought a cooked chicken and salad - how healthy is that. It wasn’t hot enough to worry about it going off in the car and we could have chicken salad tomorrow for dinner too. So we got into he tent early again and had a very healthy, yummy dinner.
Afterwards we headed up to the site bar for a beer. We were good though and only had two before we headed back to bed. Going on a walk tomorrow I hope!
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Friday 28 December
11/12/2007 by admin.
Not feeling too clever this morning! Up and ready to go by 7.15am and although I definitely didn’t have a hang over I knew that I’d had a drink the night before. Never mind as I said before - if we’re not comfortable we’ll not go down. Got out to five mile, rippon’s reef by about 8.30am and as before no time to think - we were going. This time though Angela didn’t feel cool at all. Just couldn’t seem to get a good enough breath. Arrggghh! What shall I do? Stay or go down with the others. Ben had gone down already as had everyone else. Angela seemed ok and Archie had come to pick her up so I decided to go down and catch up with the rest. If we had been at the bottom when Angela was unhappy I would have come up with her but as we hadn’t left the boat almost I wanted to go and do it.
It was cool, and I found Ben and stuck with him (not right up his arse though). Once he realised that I was cool he went back up for Angela who re appeared about 10 mins later. Horay! Again it was fantastic. Saw loads and one day I might be able to tell you all what we actually saw but not at the moment. I might even, one day, be able to sign what we saw! But again not at the moment. Almost before we knew it we were going back up again. Its all over too soon. Back on shore we really wanted to stay longer. They were all going out on a second dive and then off to another lake for the afternoon with another sundowner. But we had to head to Swaziland - so much to see and do. They again tried really hard to persuade us and I think we would have caved if we’d stayed any longer. But we were strong! Not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing but we were!
Back at the hut we couldn’t help but put our heads down for a few minutes, two hours later, it was time to get a wriggle on! Showered and loaded up we left at about 1.30pm - latest yet I think, but we had been diving too and had a sleep so not too bad at all. And we were off! Country number two coming up. We entered Swaziland at about 3.30pm. The border control was pretty confusing to leave South Africa. The people were very friendly and helpful but confusing none the less and just when we thought it was all over we had to do it all again to enter Swaziland!
Swaziland is stunning, incredibly beautiful. Just as I imagined. Mountainous, green and very African. Lots of rondavels dotted around the countryside, all over the place infact. We stop for a few photographs but the clouds coming across spelt wetness. And boy when it came, it came big time. Driving was a nightmare. We weren’t really sure what to expect from the country as to camping etc and we hadn’t seen anywhere at all since we entered the country. We headed for the main town of Mbabane (or menbrain to us).
Swaziland is ruled by a King - the present king is on wife 11 with 19 children. His father, the previous king had 78 wives with 219 children. This King is the last born son of the previous. 219 kids - is he crazy? Swazi monarchs are always men of the Dlamini family, and over the course of their reign marry a number of women who are carefully selected from different clans to cement national unity. In theory, the King marries women from increasingly important families as he goes along, which means that the son of the last wife is always a strong contender for the succession. In practice however, other wives with older sons are also in with a chance, resulting in unrest and power struggles every time the king dies. After his death, the royal council, or liqoqo, selects the new Queen Mother who rules as regent until her son is old enough to take charge. She usually has to work hard to ensure her position against ambitious uncles. The main advantage of this awkward process is that by the time the new King is old enough to rule, he and his mother have generally garnered enough support for him to do so effectively. We pulled into a backpackers at Ezulwini valley and checked straight into a room. This is getting a bit much - three nights in a row that we have slept in a bed! Absolutely drenched outside. Hopefully will clear up for tomorrow - we are off to a cultural village. Pretty wiped out tonight, been a busy and exciting couple of days. Wonder if the guys at the backpackers in Sodwana had a nice time at the lake?
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Tuesday 11 December
11/12/2007 by admin.
Horay, horay, its a holi, holiday!! Anyone heard that before any where? Sorry am I boring you? Guess what I’m very excited!!
Got up and had breakfast with everyone else - it would have been rude not too! Could be our last breakfast, you never know! Definitely my last cup of tea - Arrggghh! How am I going to cope? Angela and her bloody water eh! She doesn’t drink tea or coffee - weirdo!
Once we’d said goodbye to everyone it was time to pack. Anyone that knows me will know that packing is one of my many, many forte’s! Everything has a place and everything goes in its place! I love packing!
Angela did all the lugging down to the car pretty much, I packed it in the car. Our plan to have nothing on the back seat failed miserably. We can’t fit the tent in the boot - no way. Or the rest of the bedding come to that. At least its the stuff that will bed taken straight out everytime we stop for the night.
It has been an absolutely scorching day - should have waited to have my shower I think. Hey ho. All packed. Had the last of yesterdays pictures downloaded onto the hard drive by 10.00am and were ready to go. Will be posting the hard drive back to Mark as soon as we come across somewhere that we can post it.
Last minute pictures taken of the place and our car, coming out the gates, the roads to and from Madolos and our room, usual stuff, left to the last minute, and hit the road (Jack) by 10.10am.
First stop was Grahamstown. We’d only been there once so I could see the doctor for my abscess and I didn’t really pay much attention to it on that day but it really is a lovely little town. Very pretty. Loads of Jacaranda Trees around. I love Jacaranda’s, they are so colourful. I have been waiting to find a pretty one to take a picture of but I noticed today that the blossom had started to fall so I’m probably out of luck there. Never mind!
We needed food in Grahamstown, so we didn’t stop long oh and one other thing that we had forgotten. You wouldn’t believe that we could have forgotten anything if you’d seen the car loaded as it was, but amazingly we had. Nothing major - only plates! How could we have forgotten plates of al things. So we picked up the food and some plates and headed off up the coast.
We took he coast road from Grahamstown - R67 heading towards Port Alfred. Its nice to be on the coast road - we could do the whole journey on motorways but we wouldn’t get to see much. Not sure what we will find on the coast but we will never know if we don’t go there.
We got to Port Alfred at 12.30pm and decided to stop on the beach for lunch. It was stunning. Gloriously hot, with massive sand dunes leading down to the sea. Absolutely stunning. We climbed to the top of the biggest sand dune and collapsed ready for lunch.
While we were sat there three kids on the opposite sand dune started playing and doing all sorts of summersaults. I got some wicked pictures - they were really good, not my pics but the kids! (Pics weren’t bad either).
It was really lovely. Could have quite happily jumped into he sea to cool down. But having only traveled an hour down the road we thought we’d get going.
We drove for probably about 300kms before we pulled into a camping site at Gonubie for the night. We didn’t want to chance having to put up our tent in the dark for the first time and this seemed like a great place to stay. It said on the packet that the tent would take 2 seconds to put up and 45 seconds to take down. I wasn’t s o sure. It can’t be that difficult but 2 seconds! Can’t be.
The site was lovely, right on the estuary and sea front just a few miles north of East London. We had a great spot right on the river bank. And it did only take a couple of minutes to put the tent up - we’ll see about the taking down in the morning. The site cost 105 Rand which is 8 pounds for the two of us. Bargain! And we thought that was expensive!
One of the things I love about campsites is the fact that everyone is so friendly. They all spoke to us about where we were going and what we were doing.
We put the tent up and decided to go for a swim in the river. Went and got changed and the weather changed!! Typical. We still went for a paddle up to our shorts, we walked out quite a way before it started getting deep actually. Had a wander round the beachfront and took loads of pictures. It looked kind of tropical and was really lovely. Couldn’t believe we’d found such a great first stop.
We had the obligatory pics taken with the tent and the car and the beers and the chairs etc. Marvelous! Then I went and deleted the whole days worth of pictures - everything! Gutted!! Madolos, Port Alfred, the kids doing acrobatics, the car - everything! How peeved was I!?
After a dinner of ready made, ready to eat chicken burgers we just chilled out, trying to work out where to go next? Who knows? The it started raining - into the tent for us. It is a lovely tent. Quite big, which is a good thing if he weather is going to be so changeable.
We put our heads down at about 9.00pm. Wiped out. Will be changing my sleep patterns again now. Probably tonight was quite a late one in comparison to what time we go to bed in the future. But up bright and early in the morning - I hope!
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Monday 10 December
10/12/2007 by admin.
Our last day today - wow, I can’t believe it. Its just flown by! I am really sad to be leaving but am so excited bout the next stage. I may have said that already but just incase you misunderstood I am very excited!!
We were woken up again at 4.00am this morning, I say again as this is the forth morning in a row we have been woken up at some ungodly hour by piss heads coming home late and continuing the party in the corridor. On Saturday night Angela got out of bed to tell them to “shut the beep up”! At 4.20am only to be told by a 17 year old “Keep your hair on Sweetheart”! If I hadn’t been so sleepy at the time I might have died laughing - she was fuming, as I would have been.
Anyway, I think Jacu and Tanya had had just about enough to as it was to be a day of very hard labour. It was hot and sunny and all those with hang overs didn’t feel very clever!
We went to the south of the reserve to fill in the craters in the road. We had to load the trailer up with rocks, stones and boulders, then drive to the holes, empty the water out of them and refill them with rubble. It was knackering but I didn’t have a hangover!! It was a job well done though. We did two trailer loads of rubble, surrounded by a group of elephants - how cool is that? We had come to a bit of an understanding - we won’t disturb them and they wouldn’t take the rocks out of the holes…at least until we had driven away!! Very considerate we thought. It was funny, on the second trip we found a couple of boulders that had already been taken out. I wasn’t going to argue with them that’s for sure!
We were on our way back to collect our third load of rocks when Leanne had the most amazing spot ever - the four lions that we had left behind the day we darted the male to be taken out. How she spotted them I don’t know. But when Uyen asked last night what we wanted to do on our last day I said “see more lions and go on a night drive” The night drive was coming later and now we’d seen the lions. Amazing. They were so close - the mum, a three year old and her two year old cubs. They were played with a rock monitor right infront of us, it was brilliant. Thanks Leanne! We stayed and watched for a long while before they headed off into he distance. Hopefully one day they will meet up with the male lion we introduced a few weeks ago and live happily ever after!!
Its a shame but once we’d finished watching it was too late to go back and get some more rocks - as you can imagine we were all very disappointed! Instead we went off to the place that we went to on our first night for dinner, and had lunch. It was the spot where we had out meals on the first and the last day. Must be a sign - we’d not been there any other time.
After lunch we drove back to Madolos - to look forward to the night drive later. Angela, Brent and I popped into Alicedale to pick up a few bits and take some pictures the freedom of having a car!
At 6.00pm we left top go on our night drive. As night drives go it probably wasn’t the most exciting but as we got to the gate to go into the south part of the reserve we came face to face with a herd of elephants. They used to be able to wander backwards and forwards but since the fences went up they can’t and it seemed that they definitely wanted to be in the side that they weren’t. Grass is always greener etc.
They were so close to the truck that at one point I would have been able to reach out and stoke a trunk or two. I had the wrong bloody lens on my camera, not expecting to see anything that close. I couldn’t change it on time so I have a lot of very close up pictures of Elephants. Typical.
We went up onto the hillside then and watched the sun disappear into clouds. A really lovely evening. We got back to Madolos at 9.30pm and spent the rest of the night exchanging email addresses and chilling out. A really lovely last night.
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Sunday 9 December
09/12/2007 by admin.
We had to go back into Port Elizabeth this morning. When Angela and I were camping, Angela took a video clip of the Elephant that raided our camp - then deleted it! We had taken the SD card to a photo shop and they said they would unscramble it if they could - great, but it wouldn’t be ready til this morning. It would be worth it if they could retrieve that clip but a three hour wasted trip if not!!
There were a few other bits we hadn’t managed to get the day before so we picked those up to had some lunch and left - quick as we could! We were losing out on valuable packing time!! I love packing!
We were back at Madolos at 3.00ish. Its so nice to have a car to do what we want when we want to, and ok it was a long round trip but we could decide that that was what we wanted to do and then go and do it! How civilised is that!
It turned out to be a much longer trip than anticipated but I guess we knew deep down that that was going to happen!! And they couldn’t unscramble the video that Angela had deleted. Pictures no problem but video, no. Hey ho at least we know for next time!
We did manage to pick up some chairs at an absolute bargain price of 10 pounds for two, with built in drinks holders - how handy is that. Not that I expect to be drinking much. Beer or wine that has boiled a couple of times in the car is not my favorite!!
We got back to Madolos at about 3.00pm - see what I mean!! And set about packing our stuff. Tanya had kindly let us use a washing machine on site so that we were sure our stuff would be done in time to go on Tuesday. It was really nice to be able to wash our own things - we definitely need to get out more!
The others arrived back from Jefferies Bay at about 6.00pm and we spent the evening catching up and having a few beers around the pool. We missed out on a leaving meal as they were all away for Friday and Saturday and Loui’s is closed on Sunday and Mondays. It was a really nice evening and I wasn’t too disappointed to be missing out at all.
Just one more day before we set out on our own. So many places to see and go to - just hope we have enough time to do it all. I just want to have my cake and eat it!! Hopefully I will be able to keep sending these diaries on while we are travelling but it will rely entirely on the services provided in the backpackers and campgrounds we will be using. They will come but they just might be a bit more sporadic than the last few weeks.
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Saturday 8 December
08/12/2007 by admin.
Really excited today! Transfer was booked for 8.00am. We decided that we would make use of the free transfer to Port Elizabeth to pick up our car. So exciting - just wish I could think what I’ve done with my driving license. I’m sure I bought it with me - hey ho!! Juts have to get used to being driven around by my chauffeur!! We got to PE airport at bout 9.00am and went straight to pick up the car - got lots to do today. We have decided that hiring a car and buying a tent will save us the most money and be the more economical way of doing things. I have to say that I love the freedom that that way of travelling allows us. I hate being tied to time schedules and plans. If we turn up somewhere and decide to go for a walk or to stay for a bit or even over night I want to be able to.
So after picking up our car a Nissan Tiida 1.6 with only 1000kms on the clock when we got in it. Wow. After the last couple of cars I didn’t know what to expect. The first was a Voltswagon Chico and the second which was better but not by much was a Corsa. We have paid for the upgrade as we need all the boot space we can get, we don’t really want anything to be on the back seat (all good intentions eh Vanessa!) - the boot is huge, still going to be tight but better than it would have been. Next stop was a camping shop - ooh my favorite! I could spend a fortune in a camp shop!! All the gadgets - marvelous! We had a quick look round but didn’t buy. I had spotted another shop o the way out of town previously so we headed there next.
What a shop! What you couldn’t get there was not worth having. We got a tent, a very nice one, with lots of air vents, which are going to come in very handy, a lamp, water container, petrol container, a drinks container mozzie cream and repellant and all sorts of other very exciting things. Time to hit the town now. We went to The boardwalk which we had heard was a great place for shopping - it wasn’t! It was very nice and they had a great African market but no proper shops. In a few months time we will be saying ‘no not proper shops - where are the markets‘! But this time we wanted cheap supermarkets etc. So it was back into town and Greenacers shopping Mall for us.
We managed to pick up all the other bits we needed at Greenacers. It was a bit of a nightmare. We have not gotten used to the fact that it is actually Christmas, certainly doesn’t feel like it, until you go shopping - Arrggghh! People everywhere! We didn’t actually get done until about 6.00pm. It had been a very long day and we were knackered. I think we must have walked more today than we have for the rest of the week! It was also really hot!
Anyway, you guessed it - it was time for a beer. We thought we’d let the traffic die down before we attempted to find our way home!! That was our excuse anyway. Found a nice quite (not) bar on the seafront and just chilled for an hour or so. We had already filled the boot of our car up with stuff and we hadn’t even started yet! We eventually arrived back at Madolos at about 10.00pm, ready to jump straight into bed pretty much.
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Friday 7 December
07/12/2007 by admin.
Out tracking this morning - I can’t believe we only have one more day left on the reserve, its all gone so quickly. We went out this morning with Vuyu another ranger who has come to help out and relieve Tanya of her driving duties - at 7.5 months pregnant it is time for her to stop bouncing around in a truck everyday!
It was interesting going out with Vuyu - you think you know a place then you go out with someone lese and you realise that you don’t really have any idea! We were looking for the lion who posed so beautifully for us when the Germans were with us. I really hoped to find him as we were able to get quite close to him without bothering him at and I wanted more pictures! I’m so greedy!!
It was a really nice chilled morning out. I think I got a couple of good pics of two different types of Buzzard - just have to wait and see I spose! In the afternoon most people were going off to Jefferies Bay for the weekend. Angela and I had decided not to as we were picking up a hire car on Saturday. Can’t wait to pick it up!
Anyway, so in the afternoon we went out on a very quiet game drive. We had had three new people arrive the night before so it was just an orienteer really. Did manager to see a fair bit though including a couple of Impala having a good old fight in the distance. Not that I condone that sort of thing at all!! Jacu also took us to the top of the hill behind Madolos which was cool to see it from the top. We were both wiped out later that day and had our transfer booked for 8.00am the next morning so we were pretty early into bed. Lovely!
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Thursday 6 December
06/12/2007 by admin.
Out early this morning, left at 7.30am. Took about an hour to get to where we saw the Cheetah yesterday. It is in the south of the reserve and when the whole reserve covers 27,000 hectares , you sometimes have a long way to go to get to where you want to be.
Hoping to be able to dart the Cheetah and take it back to change its batteries - sounds like a toy, doesn’t it! I can assure you its not!!
Once in the right area it didn’t take long to find the Cheetah, he hadn’t moved far but…he had killed over night and had a full stomach. They don’t like to dart on a full stomach - just as they don’t want you to eat before an operation. It was decided that it was not a good idea to dart him - have to come back another day. Bloody inconsiderate I think, we probably won’t get to see the operation now. Cheetahs only kill and eat probably 2 or 3 times a week so we had been pretty unlucky.
We took a slow drive back through the park. We were going back to the fences to work. Didn’t really see much part from an area full of Baboons, think I may have got some good pics of them this time - horay!
Again, very inconsiderate! I’m sure I wrote a memo to all the wildlife explaining that we were leaving early next week and would appreciate a showing before we go. Obviously I gave it to the wrong person to post! Typical! Who do you trust eh?
Had a very satisfying days working though. Angela and I teamed up with Brent and Uyen (Wen) and took a whole section of fences down. It was great to see some real progress, knowing that we had done a bloody marvelous job (even if I do say so myself) and could look back and see what we had done. Sad isn’t it, maybe I should get out more!
We had lunch while we worked - Mmm sandwiches again! The food here has been great, and I really can’t remember the last time I had three meals a day at set times, which has been great. I will say thought hat I am getting a bit bored of sandwiches at lunchtime. Not complaining - much!!
Most people went off to the pub this evening, but I am here catching up on the diaries and just having a quiet evening in. I’m not used to living with all these people so its quite nice to have the place to myself.
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Wednesday 5th December 2007
05/12/2007 by admin.
Lie in this morning again - didn’t leave til 8.30am, how civilised!
We spent the morning pulling out fences. I don’t know how long these fences have been in but there seems to be no rhyme or reason to them at all. Hey ho, kept us busy for a few hours.
We ate lunch at Madolos and headed back out into the reserve.
This afternoon we had to track a Cheetah - not one of the brothers, but the one we saw on the cliff tops last week. The battery in his tracker system are fading so the idea was that we would track him, call the vet out to dart him and then take him back to the Wildlife Hospital to have a new internal system fitted.
It took a while to find him as the signal on him was so weak but eventually we did. Hoary! Then the vet called to say that he had been called out on another job and wouldn’t be able to coma and dart him. I know he’s pretty calm in our presence but asking him nicely to hop into the back of the truck while we take him to the animal hospital for an operation was probably asking a bit too much! He didn’t look keen anyway!
We did stay and watch him for a while - it would have been rude not too really. I keep reminding myself that we are not here for much longer and who knows when we will get these opportunities again?
We then went in search of the Leopard and her cub. This one was not so difficult to find. We followed her down to the watering hole where she stopped and posed for some pictures. Beautiful, absolutely stunning. To be as close as we are to such amazing creatures is just a dream come true Once she’d finished drinking she walked straight towards us and under the truck before she headed off into thicker bush. As she was coming towards us we all just held our breath, I was thinking ‘Oh my God I need to change my lens, too late for that she’s so close. Just keep clicking’! Then she was under the truck, out the otherside and gone. Wow!
Then it was just a slow drive back to Madolos, stopping to photography anything and everything on our way inc. White Rhino.
After the Elephant, he White Rhino is the world’s largest land mammal. A mature bull can weigh more than 2300kg and stand 1.8m at the shoulder. Its alternative name, square lipped Rhino is more helpful, since this animal is certainly not white: the word derives from the Afrikaans weid, meaning wide, which describes the broad shape of its muzzle. The White Rhino is exclusively a grazer and crops grass with its tough lips like a giant lawnmower. The White Rhino is much bigger then the Black Rhino, carries its head close to the ground, and has a distinct hump on the neck and a fin like ridge on the spine. It is also a more sociable animal and generally held to be more even tempered than its notoriously irascible relative.
The White Rhino represents one of the world’s greatest conservation success stories. Having been reduced to a single population of about 100 animals at the turn of the century, careful protection and reintroduction have seen it recolonise many former haunts. The species now thrives in South Africa, with a total population of over 8000. How cool is that eh?
We ended up seeing a group of three males and then further down the track a group made up of a male, a female and a calf. Apparently the male was rather amorous but the female was having none of it in protection of her calf.
We didn’t get back to Madolos til about 6.00pm which is quite late for recent standards and I have spent all night catching up with diaries and photos. I can’t believe we only have three more days out on the park. Hopefully we will get to do a night drive before we go. One where it isn’t raining! Who knows?
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Tuesday 4th December 2007
04/12/2007 by admin.
Back to being scorching today! Not sure what this morning was like - didn’t see much of it! After my extraordinarily late night last night I slept in until 10.30am this morning! Bliss! First time since arriving that I haven’t woken up to an alarm clock (excluding the food poisoning episode, but that was for entirely different reasons), and it was lovely. Having to start thinking about what we are doing next as it gets closer to us leaving so spent a long time on the internet finding out about car hire. Didn’t look at too many companies, its just that the internet here is so slow. I will never complain about the speed of my computer again, this one takes slow to a whole nother level. Not complaining though as I couldn’t do without it! Ok I am a little bit!
Car hire does seem to be our best option - there are so many places we want to go and it works out quite reasonably if look at it as a daily charge - seven weeks though, strewth!! Hey ho being in a tent should cut the cost down with a bit of luck. Had lunch at 12ish and then sat around the pool reading. Lovely! Had to keep having a dip to cool down, it really is a tough life!
At about 3.30pm we decided that enough was enough - lets go to the pub! So off we went into Alicedale. Loui’s doesn’t open til 6pm so we rubbed shoulders with the hob knobs at Bushman Sands Golf Resort bar for a couple of hours. I always thought it was a funny place to have a golf club but I guess there are a lot of people, with a lot of money that come to the area to go on Safari that may want to play golf too. While we were there a helicopter flew some big wig out and there are rumours that Tom Cruise has stayed at Shamwari so who knows. Once Loui’s had opened we made our way into more comfortable surroundings and ordered some dinner. Yummo!
Later on the rest of the Madolos crew arrived for a few beers and surprise, surprise, a few games of pool. We left them to it at 10.00pm and headed home. A lovely relaxing day. Wonder what we are doing tomorrow?
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Monday 3rd December 2007
03/12/2007 by admin.
In complete contrast to yesterday, today was bloody cold. Never forget your jumper and waterproofs is my advice! Yacu had a meeting this morning at 8.30am, at the Conservation offices, so we were out at 7.30am this morning. All wrapped up nice and warm.
Yacu had the tracker switched on as we took our normal route to the offices and picked up a signal, on the two Cheetah brothers, fairly quickly. As he turned the tracker to what he thought was the right direction one of them was walking towards us. How lucky was that? He was a fair way off, but coming in our direction. The other one couldn’t be too far away. As Yacu changed the channel on the tracker the brother lifted his head up. He was about 10m away from us with his head buried in breakfast! They had killed a Blesbok the night before and obviously not going to move until he had finished his meal. It really does amaze me that they are so not bothered by us. We had time to sit and watch him for a while before we went on our way and called the sighting into the other rangers, with proper paying guests aboard.
There are only two tracker aerials on the reserve - we have one and the other belongs to the Conservation team. If we successfully track an animal we call it in for the rangers to come and see. We can’t go the sights that are called in by the rangers as there are often too many people trying to get into the one position. Not loads and loads obviously, don’t want to stress the animals out at all but those people are paying to see these animals in a very short period of time. I am positive we see the best of the best and get a bit of inside knowledge at the same time. Yacu’s meeting only lasted about an hour before we were on our way again. We were off to feed the Wild Dogs.
The African Wild Dog is one of Africa’s most endangered mammals. For years this fascinating carnivore was labeled a wanton killer and eliminated as vermin - even in parks such as Kruger. Today this ignorance has largely been defeated and Wild Dogs are winning back friends among tourists and conservationists alike. Unfortunately the damage had been done, and today fewer than 4000 remain. Wild Dogs are highly efficient predators, hunting in packs they have a higher success rate than any other of Africa’s large carnivores. The preferred prey is medium sized antelope, such as impala, or the young of a larger species such as Kudu. With impressive speed and stamina, wild dogs persue their quarry over a distance, singling out an individual and worrying at it until, often by sheer weight of numbers they bring it down.
Kills are shared amicably, and when one is made some distance from the den, adults return with meat to regurgitate to the pups. Their cooperative behaviour gives Wild Dogs an edge over competitors and they will readily put hyenas or Leopards to flight. Shamwari did have a pack of Wild Dogs on the reserve to roam free but unfortunately they got too clever! They worked out that the perimeter fencing is electric and that if they chased their prey into the fence it would bring them down. Some of the prey that should have been dinner came down on the actual wires so they couldn’t be eaten without giving the dogs a shock so they would move onto the next victim! Some nights killing upto 15 antelope. On a regular basis this cost a lot of money. The other thing that was found was that the people paying to visit weren’t actually that interested in seeing what they classed as a couple of dogs that had gone wild “Great - now can we see the Lions”! They didn’t understand that this was something to be seen and that going the way it was they wouldn’t actually be able to see this species of mammal for much longer unfortunately making it a non-viable animal to keep on the reserve.
Most of the dogs have now been moved to other parks but there are three left at Shamwari waiting to be re-homed. They are kept in a fairly large boma and fed three times a week - that was our job today. They are quite an impressive sight, especially when you hear someone like Yacu talking about them. It was a slow drive back to Madolos when on the way Yacu heard that there were Buffalo about.
Buffalo has always been a top contender for the ultimate safari accolade of ‘most dangerous animal in Africa’ and chilling campfire tales recount its alleged ferocity, cunning and sheer malevolence. Such tales generally hail from a bygone hunting era and today’s visitor is unlikely to see anything very fearsome in this big black cow - though it is certainly an impressive beast. A large bull may weigh over 800kg and stand over 1.4m at the shoulder. Both sexes have formidable curved horns: those of a bull are set in a massive horny ‘boss’ on the crown and may each measure over a meter along the curve. In the herd we saw there were probably 15 Buffalo but the herds can get as big as 100 in one herd. There were all ages there too. The small babies were very cute. Quite rare to see them during the day and this was our second time so we have been very lucky. Wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of one though.
This afternoon we had another new arrival so we waited in for Louise to arrive then went out again at 3.30pm. Just as it started raining! Out come the waterproofs - I wonder if this is normal day to day weather. Angela and I are planning to camp when we leave here, might be a wet few months, but in the next breath it might not be, depends which side of the road you are standing! We went out and tracked the two brother Cheetahs. We found them sheltering from the rain in the bushes on the hillside. We had trekked on foot to find them, in the rain, so it was great to actually find them. We were stood within 3-4m of them and again - not bothered at all. I guess that they are safe in the knowledge that they are the fastest creature in the world and if they wanted to go they would, in a flash. It would give me a bit of comfort too I think! No work tomorrow so we all stayed up doing our own thing til pretty late tonight - it was nearly midnight when I got into bed. Wow!! Gonna have a lie in in the morning. Yippy!
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Sunday 2nd December 2007
02/12/2007 by admin.
Sunday 2 December What a scorcher! Blinkin’ Nora its been bloody hot today!
Left Madolos at 8.30am. Don’t normally go out on a Sunday but as Tanya has a hospital appointment on Tuesday and can’t go out then we are going out today instead. As its a Sunday though we are not going to do any proper work - apart from that its too hot! Brilliant day though. Have seen loads. Not really sure what to write about when we just do a game drive, but I’m sure I’ll think of something!
First stop was a watering hole in the south of the reserve. There were loads of Baboons around, which normally disappear when they see us coming - I haven’t yet managed to get a decent photo of one, but today after scattering when we first arrived they slowly came back into view once we’d settles down and stopped moving. Baboons are the largest primates in the region - adult males can weigh up to 40kg, twice the size of females. Like us, Baboons rely on a social skills for survival, so much of their time is spent negotiating the delicate politics of the troop. Alliances are formed by currying favour, including strategic use of childcare and hours of devoted grooming, but rowdy squabbles erupt when rules and rank is broken.
They feed on anything from fruit and seed pods to birds’ eggs and invertebrates, and will kill and eat animals as large as hares or newborn antelope. I love primates of any kind and always love to see the Baboons running off into the distance - just wish they weren’t so shy and stopped for a while. I have been assured that in Cape Town I will be wishing they were more shy as they can be a bit of a menace there.
Then it was off again to track a male Cheetah. Another animal that I have fallen in love with out here is the Warthog. We see them everywhere and I think they are great. Really funny. Again very shy and normally run at the first sound of anything or one but if you do catch them hey are great. Not long after we arrived I remember seeing one come running over the open fields to stir up trouble with the Springbok and Blesbok that were just calmly minding their own business infront of us. It has a name for itself as the world’s ugliest animal, which I think is totally undeserved! A male stands up to 70cm at the shoulder and weighs 60-100kg. Its delicate hindquarters are dwarfed by an enormous head, adorned with warty protrusions and an impressive set of tusks. They have an endearing habit of running with their tails held erect, like a line of moving radio antennae, enabling them to stick together in long grass.
We also stopped to photograph a family of Zebra. The baby was about 8 months old and stuck pretty close to its mum, dad wasn’t too far away either. We assumed it was dad but hey, who knows! We did eventually track the Cheetah we were looking for. They seem so chilled out and not bothered by us at all. We stopped and watched him for ages as he lounged around waiting for something exciting to happen. Got some fab photos. Can’t wait to get home and see them all - or get them back home so Mark can get them sorted and up on the net!
Off again, getting hotter as the day goes on! We were stopped watching some Giraffe when an elephant popped out of the bushes and into the photos. How cool is that. How the hell do you not hear an elephant coming? To another watering hole this time. Wallowing in the shallows were a male, a female and an 8 month old White Rhino. They made a beautiful little family cooling down in the mud. Looked quite inviting actually!
Then round the corner and almost face to face with a female and a six month old Black Rhino. Blimey all out to play today! Probably the closest I’ll ever get to a Black Rhino and although she wasn’t too happy about us being there she didn’t attack us either! Horay! Probably cause we were actually close enough for her to see and its too hot to be doing silly things today! All before lunch! We stopped for lunch at the side of the river and those brave enough cooled down with a quick dip. I was hot but not that hot. Reminded me of the waterhole Vanessa and I swam in in Oz and that took three days of being hot hot to even contemplating getting in. This wasn’t quite as bad but still not inviting enough.
After lunch we spent time tracking the female Leopard and her cub. We did find them eventually but they weren’t as accommodating as last time we saw them. Made me realise how lucky we were when we saw them last. As we were nearing yet another waterhole Yacu shouted “Hippo out of water”! That could only mean one thing…the hippo was out of the water, hold on to your hats (and everything else) we were going to get there before he made it back into the water. We have driven past this watering hole many, many times and I have quite a few pictures of some nostrils or a small part of a back (though you wouldn’t know it if I didn’t tell you) and not once has this hippo been anywhere near out of the water. Today of all days - the hottest so far he was out and about.
Not for long though - he spotted us as Yacu spotted him and it really was a race to get o him before he disappeared back into his normal position. We managed it, just. He was at knee height as wee arrived and the click of camera’s (mainly mine) followed him till he was no more, just a back under the water. But at least I can now say I’ve seen a Hippo! The Hippo is the fattest of Africa’s giants. A mature bull can weigh more than 2,000kg. The extraordinary shape reflects an amphibious lifestyle of lounging all day in water, where the bulk provides buoyancy, then feeding on land at night. The cavernous mouth houses enormous teeth, with forward pointing incisors and curved canines up to 50cm long. These are useless for feeding (a Hippo only eats grass) but are lethal fighting weapons - indicating why the aggressive Hippo has gained a reputation as the most dangerous mammal in Africa.
By immersing themselves in water, Hippos can keep cool and protect their vulnerable skin from the sun. They can stay underwater for up to six minutes, and the tiny eyes, ears and nostrils perched on top of the head enable them to breathe, see and hear whilst almost completely submerged. After dark Hippos emerge from the water to graze, consuming 40kg of grass a night! Blimey!! After he had disappeared Yacu decided it was a good time to get out of the truck and do some footprint detecting! Not sure about this one - especially as there is a male Whit Rhino not too far away too, but of course we trust Yacu, he knows what he is doing, umm, can’t see that rifle though! Wonder if he is available for the next seven weeks - I’m sure we’d see more if he was around!
Unfortunately as it was so dry there weren’t too many tracks to be seen, other than the Hippo and a Zebra print. Back to the truck it was. And back to Madolos. Gonna sleep like a log tonight, its been a very exciting day. We should go out on Sundays more often, its obviously when it all happens! Umm lovely shower me thinks! Written quite a bit considering I didn’t know what to say to start with eh?
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Saturday 1st December 2007
01/12/2007 by admin.
What a thoroughly civilised day! I was up bright and early to say goodbye to Paula. She was pretty good and didn’t shed half as many tears as I expected. I am awful when other people start crying, sets me right off. Anyway I’m sure I will see her again back home. I came back to my room for a while and read my book. I haven’t read so much in a long time and am really enjoying having the time to do it.
At 11.00am Tanya took most of us off to Sidbury to watch the rangers and Shamwari staff play cricket. We sat in the sunshine, chatting and drinking beers till about 4.00pm. Just what the 1 December should always be like don’t you think?
I’ve never really watched cricket before, I’ve worked a few games but not been to watch ever and I spose I can’t really say I watched this one either but a very pleasant afternoon had by all. Had a BBQ when we got back to Madolos and finished what beers I had left before I curled up nice and early and went to bed. Lovely!
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Friday 30th November 2007
30/11/2007 by admin.
I can’t believe we are at the end of November already. Where does it all go? Angela and I only have just over a week to go at Madolos. Then its us against the world. I probably should say us with the world…umm, not sure which is worse! Out at 8.30am this morning. Horay a lie in! That’s the latest we’ve been out in a long time. Never thought I’d hear myself call 8.30am a lie in!
We should have known their would be a reason for it! We worked bloody hard this morning - filling in pot holes in the road. One hole took two trailer loads of soil, sand and rocks to fill it. It was so deep I’m surprised we didn’t lose anyone in it! Apparently they start off as little puddles then the Warthogs come along and make them bigger by sliding about in them. This one looked like it had been made bigger by a bloody Hippo!
It was a relief when it was time to go back to Madolos for lunch. Then a disappointment to find that it was windmill dismantling in the afternoon. What more work!!
We didn’t actually complete the windmill dismantling - I think their were a few sore heads about and I don’t think everyone’s heart was in it! That’s being very diplomatic! We made a good start though. We went off to tract the two Cheetah brothers that we had seen last week. We had a good signal but just couldn’t work out where they were. In a last ditch attempt to find them we went on foot. Eventually as we came across a few bushes we saw them nicely nestled in the shade. Unlike last time though, when they let us walk almost right up to them, this time they just turned and ran. We saw their tails as they disappeared over the next hill. On the way back to the truck we found what had been feeding them for the last two days. They had killed a Impala the previous day and had pretty much demolished it. In a very organised fashion I would say. Starting with the back end and finishing at the neck. It was all very organised and neat - I wonder if they were saving the best bits to last or whether they eat what they can before something else comes and takes it away from them!?
We didn’t manage to catch up with them again today, despite Yacu’s’ best efforts. We all had to get home and put our faces on - it was Paula’s leaving party tonight! Dinner at Loui’s. It turned out to be a really good night out. Dinner was lovely. Two courses, wine, drinks, Irish Coffee’s - you name it, all for nine pound 20 pence. I love it here! A fair few drinks were consumed and a good night had by all. I’m going to miss Paula and hope to keep in contact once we get home. Had a really good laugh with her. I’m not very good at good-byes so I hope she doesn’t cry too much tomorrow morning when she goes. Pretty likely though!
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Thursday 29th November 2007
29/11/2007 by admin.
Thursday 29 November Out to do some proper work this morning - its a tough job but someone has to do it!
More fence clearing. This time made easier in the fact that it was done on fairly flat land and Yacu pulled nearly a whole line out with the truck. All we had to do was roll it up and put it on the trailer. Marvelous! It was much better weather than the last time we were doing this job. Hallelujah! Infact it was actually pretty bloody hot. I think that is one thing that has really surprised me - the weather. I only bought two pairs of trousers with me thinking it was going to be sunny, hot, hot and sunny. It is sometimes and then in a flash its not again. Sometimes in the truck I am frozen especially at night. When we did the night drive I was wearing my thermal top, a vest top, a fleece, a scarf and my waterproof and still couldn’t say I was warm. Other days you go out and it is sweltering. The best advice is to take your whole wardrobe out with you everywhere! When ever I don’t take my waterproof on the truck it rains!
We did about three hours of fence clearing before heading back to Madolos for lunch. In the afternoon we practiced our rifle shooting and had a chance to use Yacu’s crossbow. I think, given the opportunity I would be a pretty good shot. Probably not going to happen back home though. Might be a good way to clear the bar out at 11pm though!
Then Yacu and Tanya took us out to Bushman Sands, another reserve, quite close to us, for a drive and a few beers overlooking the dam. A good example of me not taking my waterproof when I needed to! Didn’t last long, but what came down, came down by the bucket load! It was a really pleasant afternoon, finished by a few drinks at Loui’s bar in Alicedale. Absolutely cream crackered by the time we got back to Madolos - and probably feeling the affects of an afternoons and evenings drinking!
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Wednesday 28th November 2007
28/11/2007 by admin.
Another brilliant day today. This afternoon was absolutely magical, but first I’ll start with this morning, a very good place to start - I know a song about that. Don’t worry, after my last attempts at Karioke, I won’t sing it to you! We left Madolos at 8.00am this morning and headed straight over to the Conservation Offices, where the wildlife hospital is. The German group had a talk and demonstration lined up with “snake man”. Not sure all of them wanted to be there - one of them was definitely afraid of the snakes. As we had already seen the talk Paula and I decided to go with Tanya to do a few bits before heading off into Patterson for tea and cakes. Something we had talked a lot about, especially after a hard days working in the heat. It was very civilised and appreciated. A proper Latte - my first since arriving. Hard to believe I know.
Then it was back to meet up with the group at the South Born Free Center, for lunch. I must admit after all that cake I wasn’t very hungry at all, still it would have been rude not to have eaten anything! After lunch we split up into two groups - one went with Tanya to hear a talk at Born Free (mainly for the German visitors) and the rest of us went off on a drive. We saw a Black Rhino - they are seriously endangered. No more than 3600 are thought to remain, of which over 3000 of them are in Southern Africa. By contrast with the White Rhino, this animal was common across Africa for much of the 20th century, and white hunters slaughtered thousands with impunity. But since the 1960’s, its accelerated decline, mainly due to the lucrative eastern market for Rhino horn, has been among the most catastrophic of any mammal. Although the situation has since stabilsed and South Africa now has a slowly growing population, many Black Rhinos remain only in secure, fenced areas, which does not bode well for the free-ranging future of this animal. Black Rhinos are smaller than the White Rhinos, weighing ‘only’ 900-1200kg and standing about 1.6m at the shoulder. They are no more Black than White Rhinos are white, but diagnostic features include the hooked upper lip, smaller head - generally held up - and an altogether slighter build, with a distinct saddle to the back. This massive creature can reach speeds of up to 55km per hour at full tilt. Black Rhinos have a reputation for bad tempered aggression, infact they are timid but curious. With acute smell and hearing, but poor eyesight, they are quick to perceive a threat but slow to identify it, so sometimes opt for a blind charge as the best form of defense.
The preferred habitat of Black Rhinos is dense thicket, not far from water, where they can browse on a variety of plants and trees . The tough, prehensile upper lip pulls twigs into the mouth, where they are neatly sheared off by the slanted cheek teeth Black Rhino droppings are full of small twigs, all clipped at the same 45 degree angle - now theres a bit of useful information. One that I bet you won’t forget in a hurry. You will easily be able to identify those droppings on your wanders around Dorset! We also saw some more giraffe and had our first sighting of Jackal (wild dogs). They were howling and wining away like you wouldn’t believe. We were trying to track Leopard at the time and thought we must be pretty close, maybe the Jackal were after a recent kill of the Leopards? Maybe they just didn’t like us! We heard the Leopard growling at one point and it certainly seemed pretty close, probably a bit too close for comfort, without being able to see it anyway. Yacu did eventually find it but in telling us where it was and going back to it it had disappeared. Looks like it was back to the tracker. We turned the truck round and started down the hill. When we got the bottom we stopped again to see if we could still pick up the signal - we could. A Leopard was lying under the tree right in front of us. Absolutely stunning. Not bothered by us at all.
She did call out, making some funny noises in her throat. Yacu explained that she was calling for her cub and within seconds her year old cub was coming down the hillside to join her mum. Doubly amazing! Fandabbydozey infact! They stayed and played together, watered themselves and rolled around. Then wandered up the hill we had just come down together. Stopping at the top to pose for some more photos. Truly, truly amazing! They are such beautiful, graceful creatures. An adult Leopard stands up to 80cm at the shoulder and weighs anything from 50-90kg. The male is much larger than the female, with a heavier head and prominent jowls. Leopards hunt by stealth and use any available cover to creep as close as possible to their prey, before the final charge. Larger prey is usually strangled, while a bite to the skull does for smaller prey, but the chase is quickly abandoned if the fist attempt fails. Being solitary hunters, leopards will not risk injury by defending a kill against Lions or Hyenas. In areas where these rivals occur, a kill is often hauled up into a tree to be consumed at leisure. Adult Leopards are solitary except during courtship. Mating is brief and secretive, by comparison with the noisy, public couplings of Lions. The female gives birth to an average litter of three cubs, which she hides from danger, including male Leopards. Cubs stay with their mother for up to 18 months before they venture out on their own. It was an amazing experience to be within such close proximity and for us not to be bothering the two Leopards at all. Unfortunately though in the end we had to turn round and come home. Can’t wait to see the photos from today - I hope they are what I think they are!
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Tuesday 27th November 2007
27/11/2007 by admin.
Had a great day today, despite the weather. It has absolutely bucketed down on and off all day. It was undecided what we were going to do this morning, because it had been raining all night but at the last minute it was a mad dash for the trucks to go out and do some fence taking down. It had brightened up and we thought we’d go for it.
The road down to the fence in question was very slippery. It is a newly bull dozed road so there is no substance to it. Half way down Yacu decided that it was probably not a good idea - we were all over the place. Good fun for those of us sat in the back but poor Tanya, Yacu’s wife at seven months pregnant, and our driver was not finding it quite so funny. We’d had to be pulled out of the mud twice then it was Yacu’s turn! All very civilised, taking it in turns, we were not going to get very far today. What shall we do instead? We were out and about now. In the end it was decided that we would walk the last 100 meters to get to the fence, so off we went. It had brightened up by then, so jumpers off, and we all got stuck in.
We had just about finished when the heavens opened again, quick dash back to the truck. We were soaked from the tips of our toes to the tops of our heads. Not a dry patch in sight! Next the fun part - getting the trucks out of where we were. In the end, thanks to some very skilful driving we made it to the top without loosing anyone or anything!
It was then back to Madolos for lunch - the plan was to eat out, from our cool box, but it was just too wet to even consider it. Again it had brightened up after lunch - still too wet to do any proper work so we did a game drive, to show the new comers what we see on a regular basis.
Yaku had the tracker with him and had heard that the Lion we had watched have a transmitter fitted a few weeks ago was about, so it was off to see if the tracking system worked. It did, and I got the most stunning pictures of the most beautiful Lion. I was so pleased - he just sat and posed for us. Did a few yawns, stretched, looked down the lens - perfect! These are the types of pictures I have been waiting for - just didn’t expect them to be so long in coming. Well pleased, with a capital
From there it just didn’t stop. Got some great pic’s (not in the same league as the Lion) of Red Hartebeest, Impala fighting, Zebra, Springbok, Wildebeest and some Elephants. The Elephant pic’s are pretty good too. There were three of them just quietly munching on the trees right in front of us. At first we could only see the tops of their heads. Yacu did try to cajole them out of the bushes but they weren’t having any of it - all in their own time! Eventually they obliged. Marvelous.
On the way back to Madolos Yacu caught a Rock Monitor, a very big, spitting one, who wasn’t too pleased to be pulled from his hiding place and ran as soon as possible. Who can blame him? Then just as we were nearing Madolos we saw another herd of Elephants. There was a very small baby with them - could be the same herd that crossed the road infront of us in the rain last week. Very, very cute.
I can’t remember how much I’ve already said about Elephants but I’ve just been doing a bit of reading - The African Elephant is the largest land animal in the world. A bull Elephant can weigh a massive 6 tonnes and stand up to 4 meters high at the shoulder - four meters! Bloody hell! Having just consulted with Angela we reckon the one at our camp the other night was about 3 meters - that was big enough. The Elephant ears not only provide acute hearing, but also help keep the Elephant cool by circulating its entire blood supply through a fine network of blood vessels. When we were doing our safari, my guide told me that the elephant was spraying behind his ears, not because he thought it was funny to see us get wet but it was his natural air conditioning. Pretty cool eh?
Elephant society is matriarchal. A breeding herd is led by a dominant female (as all good house holds should be!), together with her offspring and related cows with their youngsters. Adult bulls join the herd when the cows are ready to breed, but otherwise hang out in smaller bachelor groups. Pretty amazing really. Don’t think I will ever tire of seeing Elephants. Then it really was back to Madolos. Most people went off to the pub after dinner last night but I stayed in and had some me time. Not used to having all these people round me all the time and while I get on with everyone, I just needed some time to catch up with my diaries and pictures - so I hope you are enjoying them and its all worth forsaking a night in the pub! Ah (more) sleep!
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Monday 26th November 2007
26/11/2007 by admin.
We were going to go out and work this morning but first thing Yacu had a phone call to say that a wild Leopard had been caught on farmers land and was going to be medicated and sent to Addo today. So off we went to Shamwari Wildlife Hospital. When we got there we watched as Yaohan, the vet, darted him. He was very wild, and not too happy about the whole situation, least of all the onlookers! He was hissing and spitting like there was no tomorrow.
It took a couple of goes to get him sedated, awake but unable to do anything, before they could move him out of his pen and into the surgery. Once the sedative had taken effect they just picked him up and carried him across. He was quite a young male which had been caught in a clamp grip around his leg. The farmer, instead of just killing him had called Shamwari to see if they wanted him. That’s quite a break through for Shamwari as most farmers would have killed him on the spot. They kill thousands of rands worth of live stock each year. The wound from the clamp had healed and he had eaten for the first time in a week the previous evening, a good sign.
He was going to be collared and moved to Addo National Park which is where we did the elephant safari on our first weekend. It was decided, in the end not to put the collar on him as he was so young and they couldn’t guarantee that the collar would expand or break with growth (as it said it would do on the manufacturers guidelines).
We had a quick chat with the ecologist John, who filled us in a bit more on the politics surrounding private game reserves. Very interesting guy, with a great job - which he works very hard at. Then we went off to see the orphans that we saw a few weeks ago. The caracals and the gemsbok. Angela got to feed the gemsbok and you would have thought it had never been fed before. The strength in his sucking was amazing Very strong.
Then it was off on a game drive to let the new people see Shamwari and the layout of the land. We were really lucky to see a Black Rhino. We have seen quite a few White Rhino’s but no Black ones until now. The black ones are generally more aggressive than the white and not seen as often. The white ones graze, eating grass while the black ones eat from the trees. You can tell which one is which by the shape of their mouths and if you can remember what they eat you will be able to tell which is which from the mouths.
We also saw a hippo’s nose poking out of a water hole. Just his nose though, he didn’t get out for a photo shoot - most inconsiderate really. On the way back to Madolos we also saw a family of White Rhino - mum, dad and baby. How cute. Not as in cutchie coo - you wouldn’t want to blow raspberries on its belly but cute none the less!
It got quite wet later in the day so it was an early return home, spotting all sorts on the way. Getting a bit blasé about it all now - we actually saw loads. Giraffe, Hartebeest, Secretary Bird, Kudu, Zebra, and and elephant! Not bad for an afternoons road trip eh? Spent most of the evening downloading pictures to the many places I need to put them before sending them home to my photography assistant back in sunny, sunny Dorset.
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Sunday 25th November 2007
25/11/2007 by admin.
Some of us were not looking too good this morning, naming no names - Angela! No sore head as still feeling the effects! That’s sure to come later!
We headed straight off after breakfast. We wanted to spend an hour or two on the beach and have a swim but weren’t going to do it in Plet. Apart form the sea being a very dodgy colour, the beach had been washed away. We thought we’d stop at Jeffrey’s Bay instead. Much nearer to Port Elizabeth and somewhere we missed out on by doing the scenic route last weekend.
It took about two hours to get there, by which time we were hungry again. Angela definitely needed to soak up some alcohol. So the first stop - restaurant. Guess what - no power. The whole town was out. Marvelous! Eventually we managed to find somewhere that was doing pizza’s in an outside oven, suits us.
If I tell you that I ordered a vegetarian pizza would you believe me? Well I did! Can you believe it? Should have gotten a picture really shouldn’t I - there are many people out there that wouldn’t believe that at all. It was scrummy!
It was then time to hit the beach. Not for long though, it was so windy. It is nice to have a breeze on the beach but this was blowing a hooley. If we’d stayed longer than the 30 mins we did we might have been buried, never to be seen again! So much for a relaxing siesta on the beach. The sand had gotten everywhere. Will be digging it out of my belly button for months to come I reckon!
Back to the car and on to Port Elizabeth. We dropped the car off at about 4.30pm and waited for the taxi. I don’t know how we do it but again we looked like we had just gotten off an international flight. We had been to an African market the day before in Plet, just along the side of the road and they had some fabulous stuff. I was good and didn’t get anything but Angela and Paula had - it can’t just have been that that filled the space up though.
Taxi arrived at 5.00pm, we all clambered in, in amongst our stuff and went to sleep. Not quite the comfort of the beach but I’m getting used to my siestas and will take them just about anywhere now!
No travel sickness or food poisoning this time. We all arrived safely back at Madolos and spent the evening catching up with everyone else.
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Sunday 25th November 2007
25/11/2007 by admin.
Some of us were not looking too good this morning, naming no names - Angela! No sore head as still feeling the effects! That’s sure to come later! We headed straight off after breakfast. We wanted to spend an hour or two on the beach and have a swim but weren’t going to do it in Plet. Apart form the sea being a very dodgy colour, the beach had been washed away. We thought we’d stop at Jeffrey’s Bay instead. Much nearer to Port Elizabeth and somewhere we missed out on by doing the scenic route last weekend. It took about two hours to get there, by which time we were hungry again. Angela definitely needed to soak up some alcohol. So the first stop - restaurant. Guess what - no power. The whole town was out. Marvelous! Eventually we managed to find somewhere that was doing pizza’s in an outside oven, suits us. If I tell you that I ordered a vegetarian pizza would you believe me? Well I did! Can you believe it? Should have gotten a picture really shouldn’t I - there are many people out there that wouldn’t believe that at all. It was scrummy! It was then time to hit the beach. Not for long though, it was so windy. It is nice to have a breeze on the beach but this was blowing a hooley. If we’d stayed longer than the 30 mins we did we might have been buried, never to be seen again! So much for a relaxing siesta on the beach. The sand had gotten everywhere. Will be digging it out of my belly button for months to come I reckon! Back to the car and on to Port Elizabeth. We dropped the car off at about 4.30pm and waited for the taxi. I don’t know how we do it but again we looked like we had just gotten off an international flight. We had been to an African market the day before in Plet, just along the side of the road and they had some fabulous stuff. I was good and didn’t get anything but Angela and Paula had - it can’t just have been that that filled the space up though. Taxi arrived at 5.00pm, we all clambered in, in amongst our stuff and went to sleep. Not quite the comfort of the beach but I’m getting used to my siestas and will take them just about anywhere now! No travel sickness or food poisoning this time. We all arrived safely back at Madolos and spent the evening catching up with everyone else.
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Saturday 24th November 2007
24/11/2007 by admin.
Saturday 24 November Umm, yummo breakfast! One of these days I’m gonna get a shock and actually have to provide for myself! That will be a shock to the system! There are no boats going into the ocean today, no whale watching ones anyway. Long way to come for dinner last night - what shall we do instead? Shop! Last week was the last week of term for all the schools, colleges and Uni.’s apparently, and Plet is the place to be for the week. Great! They reckon 50,000 students arrive in the town for this week every year Arrggghh!
Paula and Angela decided that we were going to hit the town later and needed some clothes to do it in. I must say I wasn’t quite sure about the whole thing but hey - you only live once. So we hit the shops. I picked up a skirt (which I didn’t wear and took back the next day), Paula got a really nice top and Angela got a whole new outfit - bag and belt included! It was an exhausting morning! We had lunch at a place on the sea front. There were loads of people taking pictures and just looking - we thought there was something going on, a whale or dolphins in the sea, but we couldn’t spot any. It took us a while to realise that they were locals just looking at flood damage. The sea is normally very blue in this area but today was very, very brown. A real shame. No sealife to be seen anywhere! Then it was back to our weekend palace to get ready for our big night out on the town!
We left our place at about 8.30pm and headed into the nearest bar to see what the night was going to bring. It was pretty quiet to start with. We were interviewed by the Herald Newspaper - obviously we had heard about the weekend and decided to head down to the Plet to see what it was all about! About 10.00pm the place started to fill up - with students. I have to say as night out goes, it is my worst nightmare! The music was crap - Angela loved it, and the people walking in the door didn’t look old enough to shave! No Wham! Or Abba to save the day! Not even a handbag to dance round! What kind of place is this? You could tell who wasn’t old enough to be in there as soon as they walked through the door. It was the “Yes, I’m in”, that gave it away! It was a great place to people watch but the talent was non-existent, in my eyes. Far more Angela’s scene, I keep forgetting she is only just out of Uni.! We left there at about midnight, they just kept getting younger and younger, and moved onto the only other bar in town. This was a much better age group, most of them were of shaving age, but still not my sort of place. I wish I did enjoy the music but I don’t. I just don’t get it and I don’t care if that makes me sound old - its just the way it is. We left there at about 1.00am, went and bought some tea bags and milk and went back to watch another movie in bed. Ok now I do sound old, but hey, I don’t care. It was an interesting evening but not one I want to repeat in the too near future!
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Friday 23rd November 2007
23/11/2007 by admin.
Up and out, after a great nights sleep, at 8.00am this morning. Today was going to be fences day. The new part of the reserve, as I think I’ve already said, used to be farm land and had fences running throughout. Today it was our job to pick a fence line and destroy it. Rolling it up as we went ready to be taken to the dump (which will eventually be buried).
I quite enjoy doing the work we have done so far and especially this. It is a job you can start and complete and see the effects you are having on the area. Obviously for the wildlife to roam free the fences have to go and so much of it is very old rusty barbed wire which could cause an animal considerable damage. It felt like something worthwhile. On the way to the site we spotted a Blesbok (small antelope) tangled in some wire so we could all see the benefits of what we were doing.
I felt pretty bad for this particular Blesbok, the wire was looped round its neck and under its belly, hooked on a foot. We wondered what would happen to this particular Blesbok and were told that as there are hundreds of them roaming in the reserve that it was probably not viable for the vets to do anything about it. They would monitor it and if it got really bad they would probably put it down. It would then become food for another animal on the reserve. Harsh but, I guess that’s life. So off we went to clear the fences so we could prevent it happening again. After a good couple of hours the ecologist radioed in to say that he was prepared to dart it and untangle the wire would we like to go and watch what he was doing?
There is a documentary series being made here at the moment, due to be shown in Oct 2009 and I’m pretty sure that the willingness to do something was in aid of the cameras. Not a bad thing at all, they can’t possibly save every animal on the reserve but we were all pleased that they wanted to save this one, so off we went to help (more like hinder but hey)! John the ecologist is a great guy, really helpful and informative. The Blesbok in question was an old female that probably won’t last another season and very close to giving birth, another good reason to rescue her.
It took about 30 mins to actually catch up with her and get close enough to use the darting gun - she gave us a really good run for our money, but eventually we managed to get the dart to work its way into her system. The drug won’t effect the baby inside her at all. Once the wire was free and she had been checked over for any wounds, she was given the antidote and sent on her way. You could se the antidote working its way into her system - to start with we had to hold her head up, then slowly she managed to do that for herself, you could see her looking around, not sure what to make of it all, a “How did I get here”? look on her face (if you can believe that of and antelope)!, then all of a sudden her legs started to work and she was off to catch up with the rest of her herd. Another job well done!
Must be lunchtime! - Back to Madolos. After lunch myself, Angela and Paula headed off to
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Thursday 22nd November 2007
22/11/2007 by admin.
Up very early this morning. I would say bright and early but there wasn’t much brightness going on this morning! Certainly a few sore heads and a few people wondering if there really was an elephant wandering round camp or whether it was the alcohol playing tricks - it was the fresh dung that gave it away (ours, not theirs)!
We left camp at 8.00am and drove back to Madolos for a scrummy fried breakfast. Really appreciated that this morning.
Mike, Susy, Chris, Stefano and Syliva were all leaving this morning so it was a bit of a mad dash to get their stuff ready. Probably a great thing to do before you get on a flight - they are gonna sleep like babies. I would anyway, but there’s a surprise!
Once they’d all said their goodbyes and headed off their separate ways it was time for us to catch up on some sleep. How have I ever managed at home - when am I going to be able to sleep this much?
We had four more people arrive in the afternoon so we just spent the afternoon doing a game drive with them.
We did catch up with the Leopard that we released last week and he had been reunited with his brother which was cool. They weren’t bothered by us at all and we all actually got out of the truck and walked up to within about 15 meters of them both. They just lied there without a care in the world.
It started to absolutely chuck it down with rain later in the afternoon so we started to head back to Madolos. On the way we saw a herd of about 15 elephants. From the very small to the very tall. They just strolled across in front of us - not that we were going to say anything to stop them. Amazing and not quite as scary as having one walk through our campsite! It was dark by the time we got back to Madolos and we were all soaking wet but very satisfied. It really is an amazing place.
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Wednesday 21st November
21/11/2007 by admin.
Got up feeling really bright and breezy today - not surprising with all the sleep I’ve had in last couple of days, hey? Out to do some manual work this morning, taking more windmills and other farm equipment down. This one was proving to be a little more difficult than the others and just wouldn’t budge out of the ground. So Yacu decided to pull it down with the truck. Good idea, until he ran out of reversing space and the windmill still hadn’t landed! When it did land it was within 10cm of hitting the front of the truck. I know I’m not great at distance (I’m a woman) but it certainly wasn’t any more than that. His face was a picture - imagine explaining that one away!Anyway a couple of hours later and we were done. Not a windmill in sight.
Back to Madolos for lunch and to get packed for our adventure tonight - camping out in the bush. Horay! We left Madolos at about 2.30pm and drove for what seemed like hours and hours. We were going somewhere in the south of the park and it really is a huge place. We arrived at 4.00ish and set about getting our camp ready. We had to collect fire wood, enough to last the whole night. It was noted as we were wandering around collecting firewood that there was a lot of very big, no extremely big, piles of animal pooh that definitely hadn’t come out of something small and cute looking. We were right next to the river so it was obviously a watering hole for something big, we just assumed that the big things did other things on Wednesday’s! Bingo or something similar! Anyway we carried on getting set up - putting up our canopy (I wasn’t expecting that, I thought we’d be in the bush, but I wasn’t going to complain as the clouds coming towards us were getting darker by the minute), then we settled down with a beer or two to watch the fishing. We were catching mostly Bass which are not native to this area. There were quite a few of them actually. Most of the time if I go fishing they all run the other way but today they seemed to want to commit suicide! Had a nice stash by the time the sun went down. Also caught an eel. This is the royal we you understand. I didn’t actually pick up a rod at all, I was just there for moral support!
We didn’t eat the fish - Yacu prepared us a lovely meat stew. Delicious! By the time the sun had gone down, the fire was roaring the clouds were even blacker than black! Just as it started raining we heard what had dropped those giant poohs we had found earlier - a hippo. A not too happy hippo was swimming in the river within a about 15 meters. He was making the loudest snorting noises I’ve ever heard - not that I’ve ever heard a hippo snort before but he certainly didn’t seem that happy to have us sharing his water. He needn’t have worried that much, I don’t think any of us were brave enough to go any closer than we were. Always wanted to see a hippo, just though it would have been from the comfort of a very fast truck, still in gear, with engine running! We all kept our eye on it but it didn’t seem to want to come and get to know us any better! Anyway with that the heavens opened and we all ran for cover. Yacu said “Wake me up if you see a lion or leopard but if its any bigger don’t bother as I’ve only got my pistol with me and that won’t do a thing to anything any bigger”! That’s cool we thought - he’s in charge, he obviously knows what he is doing, and we settled in for the night. We had to do two hour watches all the way through the night to keep the fire going which in turn should theoretically send any animals in a different direction. All sounded pretty good to me. Then, just as we had begun to settle in Lucy shouted from the truck “Yacu, theres and elephant here and its big one”! It crossed my mind for a split second that she was being funny but then I replayed the tone in her voice again and I think the 9 of us under the canopy all collectively jumped up and ran in different directions - calm as you like, not! At the same time Yacu flew out of his tent, tripping up over the guy ropes as he went muttering under his breath about it not being a very funny joke (a bit more colorfully than that, but that was the gist of it). We all got to the truck at more or less the same time to be confronted with a huge, bigger than huge on national huge day, elephant, who was obviously on his way down to get a drink and was a bit confused by the blockage in his way.
Yacu was great. He turned the lights on of the truck and calmly told it to go away. As you do! His pistol was in his hand, but we all now knew that that wasn’t going to do anything to this beast of a boy! It really was quite scary - if he had wanted to come our way he could have done with minimal effort. The truck would have been moved with ease and our camp destroyed, but he didn’t. After a bit of gentle persuasion he turned and went back through the bushes and took a different route down to the river. It was an amazing experience, and took us all a while to settle back down again - understandably, I think. Its not every day you come that close to being in the way of a huge elephant! At 1.00am it was mine and Angela’s turn to do night watch - everything that moved was another elephant, every ripple of water was another hippo and we ran out of wood and had to scrounge around in the bushes collecting a sawing more to go on the fire. We were very aware that it was not a good idea to let it go out and we both breathed a sigh of relieve when it was 3.00am and our shift was over. Back to bed for us - let someone else have the responsibility! Not much sleep was had by most people that night but it was well worth the experience. Don’t think I will be camping Oz style in South Africa. In Australia we just pulled up in layby’s on the side of the road and camped - not such a good idea here. Who knows what will walk round the corner?
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Tuesday 20 November
20/11/2007 by admin.
Felt pretty good this morning. By that I mean that I’d managed to keep the cup of tea I’d had the night before inside me. That’s definite progress! We were out and about by 8.00am pulling down more farm equipment - windmills. I realised not long after we started that it was probably not such a good idea to be doing. Angela was struggling too but managing to keep a lid on it. Not sure how - we hadn’t eaten since Sunday and that was only a few crisps and it was a really hot day. I am ashamed to say that I gave in and when the opportunity came for me to go back to Madolos I grabbed it and left the others to it. I slept until 5.00ish when they came back from their hard days work. Felt pretty guilty but actually a lot better. Even managed to keep some Lasagne down later in the evening. I was, by this time really hungry - got to be a good sign, don’t you think? Still managed to tumble into bed and get a good nights sleep so I must have needed it. Tomorrow it’s all going to be a long ago memory.
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Monday 19th November
19/11/2007 by admin.
Not much to report today. Spent most of the night fighting Angela for the bathroom and desperately needed to sleep - so that’s what we both attempted to do. By about 4.00pm we had actually managed to get about 2 hours sleep and were beginning to feel a bit better. Great way to lose weight! Did get up in the evening and have a cup of tea but that about it for the day! Hope people don’t think we’d just had a hard weekend drinking - it really has been pretty bad. Not in the grand scheme of things but not particularly great. I haven’t had a sick day off work for years - I’ve been here for two weeks and I’ve had two days off for different things! Oh well, can’t be helped. Hopefully be fighting fit tomorrow.
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Sunday 18th November 2007
18/11/2007 by admin.
Up bright and early last night - didn’t sleep well at all. Probably because we were in bed far too early, that and the fact that the water boiler kept me awake for the outside toilets and Angela could hear dogs barking all night - guess that’s what happens when you sleep in a tent - on stilts! Cool eh.
We were planning to spend the morning back in the National Park but having slept on it decided to find the mountain pass road that we could see from the main coast road. What we thought we could see was marked on the map as Scenic Route 62 - sounded great. So instead of heading into the National Park we went a bit further down the coast to pick up the link road to the mountain pass. On the way we stopped at a beautiful beach called Natures Valley - really stunning. We were going to stop for a bit but decided that we would prefer to spend the time exploring the scenic route later. We hadn’t had any breakfast but thought we’d find a lovely spot to eat on the scenic route. We hadn’t built this route up at all. But in my mind it was going to be absolutely…scenic!! Anyway, the route to actually get on to route 62 was beautiful, with waterfalls and rivers running alongside the road. Again we wanted to stop but thought better of it. If we weren’t even on the scenic route yet imagine what that was going to be like. We were on unsealed roads for about 100km, winding up and down and round, just the sort of roads I love. The unsealed roads here are really surprisingly good - not like the ones in Oz where we drove for miles without getting out of 2nd gear, or maybe that was just the state of our car - probably! No, these ones you are able to comfortably drive at about 60km per hour. Not bad!
We still hadn’t passed anywhere to eat or drink - anywhere that was open anyway. Lesson learnt - most places closed on Sunday. If you want to eat, be a bit more organised! Eventually we hit the scenic route - horay! Now I’ve built it up, you probably all know what is coming - where was the scenery? Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t the most unattractive journey I’ve ever taken but, also not what we were expecting. We should have stopped when we had the opportunity, earlier in the day. Hey ho! There wasn’t really anywhere to stop so we just drove and drove - maybe round the next corner there will be something worth stopping for? But no, not really - not what we were expecting anyway! Not even anywhere to pick up some food - we were starving. Ok, we weren’t exactly wasting away but it felt like it! We did actually stop at one point - very briefly. A car had over taken us at one point - as they went past all four of them were waving wildly at us. We figured that we had probably, unknowingly done something wrong - hadn’t moved over in time, or let them overtake on a rail crossing - you know that sort of thing. Either way we didn’t think much of it.
Anyway about 2 or 3 km’s further down the road this same car was parked up on the side of the road and as we came into view two of the people almost jumped into the road to flag us down. We thought that there was obviously something wrong with the car - what else could it be? They were waving so wildly that we thought it must have been something quite major, so we pulled up alongside them. We did leave the engine going, just in case, but yes, we did stop! Can you guess what they wanted? … To offer us a drink. A nice, cold glass of what looked like wine, with ice in. I have to say it did look really nice and refreshing and we were really thirsty and it was tempting…but not that tempting! How bazaar though? Think Angela is beginning to understand that I am a “strange person magnet” (sorry Angela’s mum and dad - didn’t explain that before we left). Suffice to say we didn’t stop, we just drove on to Port Elizabeth to drop the car off and meet up with the guys coming back from Cape Town. We got into the taxi at 5.00pm and promptly put my head down and went to sleep - its really knackering being the passenger (I forgot my driving license)! Numpty!! With the amount of stuff we’d bought we looked like the ones that had just done an international flight. Ah well, its all stuff we need for our travels.
We got back to Madolos at about 6.45pm. Angela was looking a bit green and having had a conversation about travel sickness earlier in the day I just assumed she was suffering with car sickness. By the time we got back to our room she was really suffering. Me being the sensitive, sympathetic person that I am left her in peace. By the time bed time had come round she still wasn’t over her bout of car sickness and we started to think it might have been something else. Then a few hours later when I was fighting her for the bathroom and we were both having trouble blocking both ends we realised it must have been food poisoning. The only thing we could put it down to was the chicken mayonnaise sandwich we had been given as part of our canopy tour on Saturday. It was the only thing we’d both eaten. Trust us - trying to do things cheaply, we book the tour with a meal included and it makes us both poorly! It was a great way for us to get to know each others in’s and out’s that’s for sure. And I would rather be fighting anyone else for the use of the bathroom - we kept it all very civilized! I think its probably best if I leave it there for today!!
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Saturday 17th November 2007
17/11/2007 by admin.
Saturday 17 November
Arrggghh! (Said Tarzan Style) Had a really fab day today - starting with the zip wire tour. I know Tarzan didn’t use harnesses or wire for that matter but it’s probably the closest way I’m going to be Tarzan.
I was cool. A really great way to start the day. There were 10 slide in total - the highest was 30 meters off the ground and the longest was 91 meters. Some were really fast and others not so fast that you could stop and enjoy the scenery around you. Brilliant. That took about two hours to go round - then it was back to base for dinner It was only 11.00am when we got back to the based but we hadn’t eaten this morning (rare , since we arrived here) and were starving. Met some lovely people too, who advised us of what to do and not to do .
After that it was a short journey to Tsisikamma National Park (will always be known to us as Titimamma). Wow! What a fabulous place. Absolutely stunning. Not long after getting out of the car we spotted some Southern Right Whales swimming just off shore. Brilliant!
We decided to do the 6.5km waterfall walk along the coast. It was just so stunning. The waves were crashing to the left of us and the cliff face was to our right. We saw loads of wildlife on the way. It was quite a difficult walk - but my favorite type. Hopping across the rocks for the most part. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! Shall I say that again - it was fab!
At the end of our walk was a stunning waterfall - one with water in it! Horay! It really was stunning. We lazed around for a while, just taking it all in before we headed back towards the car, feeling very satisfied and pleased with ourselves. Going to ache in the morning me thinks - first bit of walking we have done on holiday, so really going to feel it.
Once back at the car park we ate in the restaurant on the seafront. The books were right when they said the food didn’t match the location - but we were hungry so that settled it for us.
That night we checked into a a tent - on stilts. How cool is that! Is was really cool. You will see how cool once the pictures get sent on to you. And by 8.00pm we were tucked up in bed away with the fairies.
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Friday 16th November
16/11/2007 by admin.
Not feeling too clever this morning! What is wrong with the world that it needed discussing til 3.00am this morning? Had to be out of the backpackers by 10.00am and had booked a taxi for 9.30am the night before - thought it was a good idea at the time. Mind you anything would have seemed like a good idea last night!
This time the taxi took us straight to the shopping mall - no dilly dallying on the way. First things first - breakfast. Omelette - Yummo! Haven’t had Omelette for ages, and a proper latte coffee. The first since arriving in South Africa! I know its hard to believe but its true. Then we were ready to face the world - as ready as we were gonna be anyway! Did some shopping - bought a new bag, some new trousers and a few bits and pieces to make our lives a bit easier then booked a taxi to the airport where we were going to hire a car. Just as we had finished the shopping the whole towns power went off - the shopping mall was in complete darkness. It didn’t seem to bother anyone though, they just carried on shopping, writing receipts out by hand, still serving the coffees and beers in the bars and coffee shops - again no Health and Safety laws! Everything grinds to a halt back home.
It took a while for our taxi to arrive, as the radios were down in the cabs too but it did eventually turn up. All the traffics lights were down too so the journey was a bit of a nightmare. They don’t call them Traffic Lights, by the way, they are called Robots. How odd is that - they look nothing like robots! Anyway we did eventually arrive at the airport and pick up our car. We had hired a Voltswagon Chico - not the most glamorous car in the world but not bad either. We managed to fill the boot up - how we managed to carry all our stuff around with us all day , I just don’t know Ah yes, I remember - it was called a shopping trolley!
Then we were off. I have very stupidly forgotten my driver license and can’t actually drive the hire car - which for me is not good. I like being the driver. Angela hadn’t ever driven me anywhere before today and she is a good driver but its not he same - I want to be able to drive - big time. Or at least share it, as I’m also pretty good at sleeping behind the wheel too!! Minor details!! We drove (Angela did) to Storms River Village where we checked into another backpackers for the night. Again it was very clean ad tidy. We didn’t arrive there until quite late so we went off to the local petrol station and got some munchies and settled in for the night. We are booked to go on a zip wire canopy tour tomorrow which should be quite cool. 8.30am good reason to get out of bed eh.
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Thursday 15th November
15/11/2007 by admin.
Today is going to be a good day - we are off on an adventure this afternoon!
We were on the road by 9.00am this morning trying to find the Cheetah we were looking for last week - to no avail. Not surprising really it was absolutely bucketing down Would you be out on the hillside in the rain waiting to be spotted? Or would you be sheltering from the rain and the being spotted? I know which I would do!
There wasn’t much of anything around to be honest - we did see some baby Eland but it was far too wet for me to get the camera out. So it was back home, a bit wet, by 11.00am.
Taxi came and picked us up 12.30pm to drop Mike, Suzy, Stephano, Sylvia and Paula at the airport. They were off to Cape Town for the weekend to do Shark Cage Diving - we will do it ourselves but, we fly out of Cape Town so we’d prefer to do it then. Once they were safely dropped at the airport it was our turn to be dropped at a backpackers in Port Elizabeth.
Although the taxi driver wasn’t so keen on the area, we found the hostel to be really nice and clean - two words that I wouldn’t expect to be in the same sentence together, when talking about backpackers!
We had a big long list of things to do in town and thought we’d try and get most of them out of the way on the Thursday afternoon so we could just do the minimal on Friday, hire a car and be gone. Would have been a great plan, flawed at the start by the fact we forgot the list! Never mind, we’ll head off into town and do what we can remember.
We asked the directions into town and off we went. There doesn’t seem to be any Health and Safety laws here in SA - we walked straight through a building site where they digging up the path. Didn’t seem to bother anyone - we were only following the people infront of us. I guess that would mean that people don’t tend to sue others as easily as it would seem at home. Nice really I spose!
Anyway town wasn’t quite what we were expecting. I knew I had to get some more shorts as the two pairs I had bought with me were not going to be enough and we found those pretty quickly - it was everything else that proved to be more difficult.
We didn’t think we were in the town that had been described to us - where were the nice places to eat and drink? Or the waterfront? Or the shopping mall? Never mind we’ll head off to the Information Center - always a good place to start, and see what they said. Good in theory - they had moved premises. Right ok out come the (very basic) map books. And off we went. We were looking for the seafront - pretty easy to find, you would have thought. And it was - just which part? If we had realised how far it was we may have caught a taxi but we didn’t. And even if we had wanted to catch a taxi how would we go about getting one? There were hundreds of them going up and down the street touting for business but we didn’t think it a very good idea to get into one of those taxis - we had heard all sorts of horror stories! So we walked and we walked and we walked.
Eventually we came to what seemed to be a nicer part of town. The beach was on our left and there were restaurants and bars on the right. This seemed better! Lets stop for a nice cold beer. I don’t normally drink lager but on this occasion I thought I quite fancied a cold one. The bar seemed nice enough, we’ll have a beer here then head off to find somewhere to eat - having accomplished nothing on our list yet! Oh well there always tomorrow!
It was Angela’s turn to get the next beers in - she was gone for sometime. When she did come back she said “think I’ve made a boo boo” and disappeared again. She was back within a minute with another two beers, it was happy hour, buy one get one free. So there we were lined up with two more beers each. It had cost 1.87 pounds for four beers - crazy. That kind of sealed it really - we were settled in for the night.
We ate there later - Fillet Steak, Yummo! Almost as cheap as the beer. Then a pub quiz started so we joined in from our table outside. We didn’t join in properly, it was the taking part that mattered. Our score was about 31 out of 100. Not bad considering that a lot of the questions were on specifically South African stuff We were pretty pleased with ourselves anyway.
After the quiz we nearly started world war three from our table - not bad eh? We were joined by a guy who sat with us just having a laugh about things in general. He was taking the pissed out of our accents etc. But that’s cool, I can handle that. Then a guy from Uganda came and sat down. Initially I thought that they must know each other but as the conversation got more and more confrontational we realised that they didn’t know each other and didn’t particularly like each other either. Why? Because their families had fought against each other for years. What? We were just having a good evening down the pub - we didn’t want any of this political bull rammed down our throats. We knew so little anyway that it would have been a nightmare to have even tried to sort them out. And we didn’t want to, as I said we were just having a good evening down the pub.
Not sure how many times we said “Stop! If you want to stay and talk - great. But if you are not going to talk about lovely things - where to go in your country and what to see then you can go and sit somewhere else. We are on holiday” It didn’t work very well - but in the end we were all laughing - not sure what or who at but hey. We thought it was funny.
Made our getaway while things were still funny and headed back to the backpackers. We sat in the garden there until about 3.00am in the morning putting the world to rights - did a pretty good job at the time. Couldn’t remember most of it the next morning though! Anyway day one of our adventures had started. Wonder what tomorrow has in store?
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Wednesday 14th November 2007
14/11/2007 by admin.
Up and out nice and early today. On the road by 8.00am to do some manual labour! Horay, a chance to get out of the truck and face the dangers of the reserve head on! Ok not really - the biggest danger was Angela with a spade! The new part of the reserve used to be used as farm land so there are quite a few animals troughs dotted around the place. They are not the nicest things to look at so our task was to cover them in lose soil and mud and anything else we could find to disguise what they really were. As you will (eventually) see by the photos, we did a marvelous job of it. No one would ever know that anything but a huge mound (that quite honestly could be mistaken for a burial mound) was ever there.
It was bloody hard work - especially by the time we finished the second one it was getting very warm too. Must be time for tea and cakes? Not! We can all dream, and do on a regular basis! Felt pretty good though to be out of the truck and to be doing something that needed a bit of energy. Was dreading having to do a third one though. Had a bit of a drive through the park, on the look out for the Cheetah we released last week. Didn’t find it but came across a few other animals who were more than happy to stop and pose for photographs for me! Think the Cheetah must be camera shy!
We had lunch at the BBQ area of Longlee Manor which is great, right next to the river in amongst the trees - a really lovely area. After lunch it was off to the shooting range which was brilliant - loved every minute of it. Those that know me will already know that I am a bit of a daub hand with air soft guns (when I’m not too busy letting the opposition know where I am by giggling and throwing my arms up in the air screaming “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot”)! But I haven’t ever shot a proper gun before.
The first gun was a 223 Rifle. Out of four shots I got three of them on target - not bad eh? The second gun however was a 12 gauge shot gun. I was quite nervous about the first shot, expecting to be thrown acquires the field with the force of it but Yaku was right - if you do it properly it doesn’t hurt at all. Unless your name is Paula and after firing the first shot realised that she didn’t have her ear defenders on! Ouch! Made her talk even louder for the rest of the day - only joking. Anyway of five shots I knocked down four coke cans. I was well chuft with myself. Angela did really well too - getting 6 shots out of a possible 9. Cool eh! And a big pat on the back for me as I managed not too break the gun!
On the way back through the park after our sharp shooting session we stopped to take pictures of some Springbok and Blesbok. Think I caught a baby suckling on his mum. Then a warthog came out to play , making the others run all over the place. He seemed on a real mission to scatter them as far and wide as possible. Really funny. I also got pictures of the Secretary Bird. I like them, they are very funny creatures. The legend goes that they are called Secretary Birds because when they were first noticed it was mentioned that all secretaries should have legs as long as they have.
That was it for the day. Time to go back to Madolos - I’m just about ready for another kip. Will probably sleep pretty well bouncing around in the back of the truck though eh! Wonder if my mum used to take me out in the car to get me to sleep as a baby? Had a few games of pool when we got back and I don’t quite know what whapped but I played the best pool I have ever played in my life. I beat Angela to start with - almost iunheard of, even whenshe is playing badly. Then Stephano and Lucy joined in and we played doubles, which we won and then Gwyn and Silvia played and we won gain. It was a really close one on the third ganmebut we did actually lose.Itts the first time I’ve played at MNadoilos and now everong thinks I’m a hustler. Wish we played for money now eh! Next time! Maybe not!
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Tuesday 13th November 2007
13/11/2007 by admin.
A very early start this morning - out the door at 6.00am but it as so, so worth it. We were on a mission to find a particular male lion of about 11 years old. It was being sold to another reserve and to be replaced with another male lion. There are two prides of lions in Shamwari and the reason they are taking the most dominant male out is to change the blood line and control the interbreeding. I was expecting it to take most of the mooning to find this lion as we had looked for it previously and had no luck but within an hour we had it in sight. Such big beautiful animals - definitely king of the jungle. This was the first time I had seen Lions in the wild - I had only seen them in Bomas (enclosures) or ones that had been darted ready to be transferred on our first morning. Its not the same as when you see them prowling around the countryside.
He was with another younger male, an adult female and her two cubs of about five months old. The cubs were absolutely gorgeous - really special. We sat for about 30 minutes, waiting for the vet with the darting gun to arrive, just watching as they strolled around without a care in the world. The cubs playing and competing with each other for mum’s attention - it really was the best way to start a day. Not gong to happen like that back home though is it eh?
The vet arrived and spent some time getting into the best position to dart him and load into the truck. As the gun went off I expected the other lions to run away but they - didn’t, they flinched and carried on doing as they were doing. The dart hit the Male on his backside and we waited for it to take affect. After about 10 minuets he still hadn’t dropped off to sleep so he was darted again. This time after a few minutes he lay down, put his head on his paws and went to sleep.
After a very short time the female lioness got up and went to the sleeping lion. I imagine she would normally have gotten some response from him -not this time It was really quite sad, you could see the confusion written all over her face (I know its a lion but..) that’s how it seemed anyway! She then reached down and pulled the dart out of his bum with her teeth. She knew that was what was wrong. She went and sat down with it and chewed it to pieces. It was time then for her and the cubs to move on, we needed to get the Male Lion into the truck before the anesthetic began to wear off, and I certainly didn’t fancy doing that under her watchful eye - she might think it was me that made her mate fall into a deep, deep sleep! I was just taking the pictures!
It took 7 or 8 people to load him into the back of the truck - they are so heavy. I know I’ve said that before but the fact is they are!! It’s probably not the last time I will say it either - repeating myself in my old age. We took him to Shamwari Wildlife Hospital and loaded him into a big cage ready to be transported to his new home. Just hope that at least some of the pictures come out.
It was lunch time by then, so it was back off to Madolos - so much for losing weight - all I seem to do is eat and sleep and sit on the truck. Hey ho, its a hard life but someone’s got to do it!! Later on, at 4.00pm we left to go back to Shamwari Wildlife Hospital to watch the resident vet perform an operation on the Male Lion that is going into replace the one we took out this morning. He was inserting a tracking device into his lower belly.
I was expecting it to be similar watching my cats being microchipped - but no! The tracking device was huge. About the size of a coke can but half the length again. The lion was in a position on his back on an operating theatre table - he just didn’t seem real. At all in the slightest. I think that concludes Tuesday, I am trying to keep pretty up to date with this but there is so much going on that sometimes its a bit difficult to do it daily. Still have to pinch myself sometimes, it just doesn’t seem real. Fabulous but unreal! Come Sunday we will only have three weeks left at Madolos, it’s going so quickly, I just can’t believe it!
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Monday 12th November
12/11/2007 by admin.
Late start today and horay…a cooked breakfast!! Great way to start a week if you ask me! At 9.00am ‘Snake Man’ arrived. Snake Man does have a name - Darren, but he is better known to us as Snake Man, so that’s what we will call him.
He bought with him all sorts of snakes - funnily enough! Ranging from the very small - Baby Brown House Snake, to the extremely large - Albino Burmese Python at 2.5 meters! We touched or held them all apart from the Puff Adder (Dad - when the photos arrive you might want to look away now!) Snake Man calmly laid out these snakes in our hands and then told us how dangerous they are and when they last bit him!!! Reassuring!!! Mind you he did tend to do all sorts of crazy things with them. As you can see by the photos he even put a Rinkhals snake of about a foot long (don’t do metric!) into his mouth! Down to the tip of its tail - crazy fool. What if it decided it liked it in there and wanted to explore further?
Apart from the few mentioned already he had with him a Spotted Skaapsteker, an Egyptian Cobra, a Cape Cobra, a Boomslang, a Baby King Snake, a Coral Snake, and an Anaconda. He was a really interesting guy - just very crazy. Just as he had started passing the Burmese Python around someone spotted a Rock Monitor in the undergrowth on the bank behind us so off he went diving into the bush to bring him back to us. Like I said - crazy! But very funny.
He gave this poor Rock Monitor a bit of a clean up and a grooming - pulled the ticks out of its nose and off its back anyway, and set him free again. All this time the Python was going from person to person at will. I say at will because we were all too frightened to argue with it! If we were stood next to it and it decided it was going to slide its way round our necks we just stood still - we are not so crazy! Maybe! It was really heavy and quite cold to touch but for the majority of the time I was quite fine with it , until…it started to look me in the eye and go towards my mouth. I had visions of it trying to crawl into my mouth as the Rinkhals had done with Snake Man. I swear that for a second our tongues touched and I knew that it was time for Python to go and torment someone else - my mum will tell you ‘I don’t kiss on the first date’!
Once all the snakes were away and the Rock Monitor, who was quietly minding his own business till we disturbed him, was released back to the rock he was sun bathing on, he bought out a four week old Falcon for feeding time. He was pretty tame and couldn’t yet fly so was allowed to just hop from one person to the next biting the ears of most people as he went. It was a very enjoyable and informative morning. I learnt a lot - if you come across a snake in the wild, its ok to pick him up and pop him in your mouth, pass him on to the next person, kiss him and pretty much whatever else you feel like - as long as you are not allergic to snake venom and can get medical attention within a very short period of time. Easy eh! Perhaps I will just avoid them at all cost. Might be wiser don’t you think?
After lunch we had a pretty lazy afternoon - one of the trucks was out of action so we spent the afternoon doing a quiz on what we have learnt (or should have learnt) during the time at Shamwari. It turned out to be very useful as all of the other people here have been here a lot longer than Angelo and I so we learnt quite a bit. After a very strenuous day we were cream crackered so we spent a lazy evening playing cards and catching up with these diary’s. Wonder what tomorrow will bring.
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Sunday 11th November
11/11/2007 by admin.
What a thoroughly relaxing day. Breakfast at 9.00am - a late start, taxi picked us up at 10.00am. A few sore heads were to be found that’s for sure - but we all settled down to an hours journey to Kenton on Sea - sounds so British doesn’t it? It’s really nice and friendly here. There are 11 of us at the moment and everyone seems to get on with everyone. Obviously that’s not true all the time but mostly its cool. No major dramas! By late November there will be 17 of us so I hope it stays the same. The majority of us went off to the beach and for an hours journey give or take and the return journey was about 10 pounds each. Bargain! However British Kenton on Sea sounds I can assure you it doesn’t look it. Absolutely beautiful. Very fine white sand and the bluest of seas. Stunning. Its the mouth of a river at which point the current is really strong. You can get in the water at one point near the sea and float round to the inlet to get out. Lovely. Pretty bloody cold to start with but once your in, your in! To top it off there was a beach bar set into the hillside that served cold beers and great pizzas all day. We did manage to drag ourselves away from the bar to have a dip or two and catch a few rays on the beach - both being very sensible and topping up on the sun block regularly. It was a really windy beach so we didn’t want to get caught out at all. Very sensible eh!! Got picked up at 4.00pm and slept most of the way back to base, feeling very sun kissed and relaxed after a lovely day. Got to go now. Catch up tomorrow.
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Saturday 10th November 2007
10/11/2007 by admin.
Elephant Safari Day! We were picked up at 8.00am at Madolos in two very nice mini busses and given an Addo Elephant Safari T-shirt each, printed with our names on - mine wasn’t spelt right but that’s to be expected and Angela turned out to be Angelo which will probably stick now for the rest of the holiday!! They are really nice ones too, I’ve never had a T-shirt with my name on before - might frame it when I get home. Anyway it was straight off to our first stop - The South African Crocodile and Lion Center. A funny combination we thought! A guide came and took us round the center explaining what was what and where etc. There were loads of Nile Crocodiles (funnily enough, at a crocodile center - who would have thought?), I was surprised at how small they are in comparison to the ones I have previously seen in Australia. They are not, in any way, shape or form, nice animals, so the smaller the better I say! I was just surprised. Apart from the lions they also had two Tigers and some Wild Pigs. There was a five week old lion cub - which was so, so, so cute and very tame but… I’m not really sure about how they were keeping all the animals. There are a lot of people on this placement that know alot about the conservation of animals and what happens where in the world, and there are a lot of very strong, often conflicting, opinions thrown around. I have to say that I really don’t know a huge amount about it all. Probably more through ignorance than a lack of caring - I’m sure by the end of this trip I will know a lot more but it’s really only other peoples opinions! The lions all looked healthy, the lion cub was also healthy but it was on its own, and until they find another cub to put in with it, it will stay on its own with the only interaction being with the tourists that go round. Not sure about that one. Its a long debate!
From there it was a short journey to the Danielle Cheetah Breeding Camp. In front of the main center there was an area set aside for orphaned animals. The Kudu was especially cute and its pretty rare to see them in the wild as they are so shy. Inside there was a field for a group of Cheetah’s of about 7 months old - all resting and getting out of the sun. They didn’t pay much attention to us at all as walked over there enclosure, on what seemed like a bridge made of apple crates - it didn’t seem like the safest thing in the world, especially over a Cheetah enclosure but hey! Once off the bridge it was round through another gate to see the cutest Cheetah cub ever in the world. He was only two months old and was just adorable - I can understand why people want to take them home as pets - they are so cute. He just wanted to play with us. In the next pen were two adult Cheetah’s who we were also allowed in to pet. They had stared in the movie Duma a few years ago so were fully tame. They weren’t bothered by us at all - beautiful creatures, just chillin’ out in the shady part of their enclosure - not a care in the world.
And last but not least at the Cheetah Center were two gorgeous two month old lion cubs. They had been rescued from the wild as they were in a big pride where the more dominant of the males had killed two of their brother or sisters. If they had been left they would have been killed too. They again were hiding in the shade but were so playful when we got to them. Playing with each other and us. Just like two very playful, overgrown kittens would play together. Spent a long time taking pictures of them together. One of them really liked Angela - lying on his back, both paws wrapped around her arm chewing on her fingers. Great pictures!! Really didn’t want to leave there - could have stayed playing all day but that’s not what we had come out for!! Elephant Safari was calling! Because we’d spent so long at the Cheetah Breeding Center we had lunch delivered to us in the car - Burger and chips - not quite what we were expecting but hey ho after the mornings excitement we were all very hungry. The roads over here aren’t every often sealed ones unless you are on the main roads from city to city and although the unsealed roads are pretty good in my book, it was a very bumpy burger and chips!! It was a fairly long drive out to the Elephant Safari place and I think they were in a hurry as we found out when we got there at 2.00pm that there was a wedding party due in at 3.00pm. Bride arriving on Elephant back. How cool is that!
There are three elephants used for the safari’s, and they are magnificent! They were rescued from The Kruger National Park in 2000. They were due to be culled as the park had too many elephants but Addo took them on and trained them to do the safari’s. There is obviously the argument that they are not living a natural, wild life but… they were going to be killed - they are healthy and well looked after and the money that they bring in, that goes toward maintaining the park for the other 250 Addo Elephants, is astronomical. And I don’t believe that you can make anything of that size do something he/she doesn’t want to do. They are huge! The one I rode was 2.1 Meters tall at 16 years old. They can get as tall as 4.2 meters - twice the size! Not sure I’d want to ride on the back of one of those big boys!! It was just a short 30 minute jaunt into the bush and back, with a photo shoot at the end, but worth every penny. I have to say though that one of the funniest things happened after the safari. I think again that they wanted us out of the way for the wedding party so they decided to take us on a walk up into the hills to the spring that is the supply of water to the whole park. We were told it was a natural spring that we could walk up to and fill our water bottles up. I was expecting a beautiful waterhole, and to be able to sit down when we got there to appreciated its beauty and maybe if we were lucky we might spot a few animals drinking from it as well. Sounds pretty idyllic doesn’t it? It was a really lovely slog up the hill - for some more of a slog than others but definitely something I really enjoy doing, especially with the promise of blah blah blah at the top! After about an hour of walking at a fairly steady pace up hill most of the way, water bottles almost empty if not fully empty, we came to a stop - in a long line. There was no room for us all to stand together and we all stood expectantly for a few minutes. Then it filtered back down the line from the guide that had taken us up there that the spring was dry!!! DRY!!! So were we!!! I thought it was absolutely hilarious but I don’t I was definitely in the minority on that one! So we all turned round and traipsed all the way back down again. Very funny.
After filling our water bottles up from the tap at the bottom of the hill we all got back in the mini busses again! It was nice to have a bit of exercise though. It was a short journey from there to a really lovely lodge up on the hillside over looking the park for dinner. It was a very simple, but yummy buffet, with the best fresh fruit salad I have ever tasted and all the booze we could drink! Horay! We made full use of that. Then it was back in the mini busses for the journey home. Or nearly home anyway - Louis’ bar in the local town of Alicedale, where we partied until midnight when the taxi came to pick us up. A thoroughly enjoyable day had by most! Beach tomorrow - so that’s what this Monday to Friday lark is all about! Marvelous!
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Friday 9th November 2007
09/11/2007 by admin.
What a brilliant day today has been. We were out at 7.30am to see a Cheetah being released. Shamwari has just developed a new area to their reserve and are introducing Cheetah’s in the hope they will breed. The Cheetah had been transported in a wooden cage and we were told to expect it to dart out the back of the cage and off the truck as soon as the door was lifted. We were poised, ready, when the cage door came up - and we waited, and we waited. In short bursts they are the fastest mammal in the world, reaching speeds of up to 100km per hour with a 5 meter stride. We were expecting a blur to emerge and be gone within seconds. Anyway after about what seemed like 10 mins (but may have only been a couple of mins - the camera is very heavy), he hopped out the back and had a good old sniff around cool as you like, before he headed off down the hill towards the water hole. He was an incredible animal. So sleek. He even stayed long enough to pose for a few pictures - very obliging of him I thought. Can’t wait to see what they come out like. He was wearing a collar that will be used to track his movements and they hope that it won’t be too long til they find a female to keep him company - though they are mainly solitary creatures, but I have a feeling it will help with the whole breeding thing!
We tracked it for some time while it explored his new home. Amazing. What could top that I thought as we drove away. But you just never know what is round the corner. From there it was a game drive out to some water holes where the wildlife was in every corner and as far as the eye could see. As we pulled up to the first waterhole the Springbok and Impala (deer like creatures all over the reserve) disappeared into the greenery. No one seems to want to stop for these types of animals as they are everywhere and there seems to be hundreds of different species - one day, maybe by the time I come home I might know half of them! I would like to stop and take pictures one day though - plenty of time for that I’m sure. The funniest thing to watch scurrying away were the Warthogs. They were hilarious. Their tails pointing straight up like radio antenna’s! This is so that in long grass they can stick together - sensible really, but very funny. Off in the distance was a Bull Elephant, slowly and methodically making its way towards the watering hole. Around the water were all numbers of birds - Blacksmith Plovers, Egyptian Geese (obviously lost), ducks (African ones) and a tortoise - southern Africa has the largest variety of land tortoise, and 12 of the 14 species are endemic to the region. The largest of which is the leopard tortoise which has been known to reach an impressive 40kg in weight (That’s twice my luggage allowance!) and can live to 50 years old.
We hung around for a while waiting for the elephant to get a bit closer then we were off - not to get away from the elephant but trying to get closer. They are huge. Its the first one I’ve seen since I’ve been here - I am assured it won’t be the last but they are so impressive. Absolutely massive. They don’t seem to be able to move very fast at all but I’m sure in the right/wrong circumstances you would know that he was having a bad day! Then it was a short journey to another watering hole which was surrounded by Giraffe’s and more Warthogs. Still couldn’t help laughing at the Warthogs. Think I got some pretty cool pictures of them too. We also tasted the sap of an Aloe Vera plant, which does alsorts of wonderful things, but for your information it tastes like ear wax - not recommended. I can hear you asking “how do you know”? I just do! Its not something I feed on regularly but… That’s what Aloe Vera tastes like So when you come across it next I suggest you put it togood use and don’t stuff it in your mouth! After lunch we were supposed to go to the school in the local town of Alicedale. Something that Angela was not looking forward to at all, in the slightest! We were told not to expect any nice, cute kids but instead kids that would have the shirt off your back given the opportunity which I was really disappointed by. Surely they were just kids - they can’t be that bad. But we were told to take off all our jewelry, don’t take sunglasses or baseball caps and certainly no cameras! No camera! What’s that all about? I was pretty gutted to be going to the school and not be going with my camera but I thought if I go this week then next week I’d know more about it and have a better idea what to expect - can they be any worse than the summer lot at Durdle Door? Anyway we set off into town only to find the school was closed - something that never happens apparently. So instead we went to the local football pitch where we found three boys to play against our seven Shamwari team. They were bound to win! By the end of an hours playing there were probably 30 kids playing with us all having a great time - wish I’d bought the camera. How gutted was I. Would have got some absolutely fabulous pic’s. Think its called sod’s law! Next time I will take the camera and the school will be open and I’ll be mobbed - we’ll see. They haven’t seen me defending the camera yet - its more than my life’s worth! Anyway tomorrow we are off to Addo Elephant Park for the day. Gonna do an Elephant safari and all sorts of other bits. Will let you know all about that at some point over the weekend.
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Thursday 8th November 2007
08/11/2007 by admin.
Woke up this morning feeling really bright and breezy - full of the joys of spring. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the crickets are cricketing and there are baboons outside the back door to our room - how exciting is that? It really is Africa! It is so mad seeing some of the animals, birds, flowers and things that I just dreamt of seeing one day - its all here. Quite surreal really!
Had a pretty good day today. The only disappointment was breakfast - get this - yesterday when I couldn’t even think of eating anything, we had bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs and tomatoes served up for breaky. This morning when I feel like I could eat a horse we are served up cereal and toast! Where’s the justice in that? We were on the road by 8.00am. Plan for the morning was to cut down all the overhanging branches on one of the drives through the reserve. And a very satisfying job it was too. First time we had done any manual labour since arriving and Angela and I were loving it. Great team work.
On route back to Madolos we came across a small herd of Water Buffalo with babies so we sat and watched them for a while. I have seen so much in the first few days - imagine what the list will be like by the time we leave! Anyway it was back to Madolos for lunch - guess what I haven’t fallen asleep in the truck yet today! A first for me! Food here is pretty good - and I’m constantly starving, maybe that’s why it’s always good!
This afternoon after a brief trip into Alicedale, our nearest town for supplies, we have done some rifle shooting in the garden. This was in preparation for next week when we will be using a 12 gage rifle. I did wonder what an earth we would be shooting but I am assured that it is just on a shooting range with still targets - no live bait. Great. I really enjoyed the shooting, but think the bigger guns will probably be alot harder to use and will probably knock me over in the process- we shall see. Just have to wait for next weeks installment to find out eh! Tomorrow I think we are off to the local school for the day which I am really looking forward to. Gonna go for dinner now - catch you soon.
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Wednesday 7th November 2007
07/11/2007 by admin.
Arrgggh!
What a day! First I’ll start with last night - which was a very pleasant evening spent down the pub. One of the girls is leaving on Thursday morning so we all went out for dinner. There were a few alcoholic beverages consumed (I know its unlike me but…its Angela’s bad influence!) I was drinkling double Amarula (like Baileys) and Angela was drinking double vodka and lemonade - costing us the grand total of 2.73 - bargain! That is pounds by the way, I just can’t get the pound sign to work on my keyboard!
We got back to Madolos at about midnight and after watching a few shooting stars came in and got ready for bed. I never, ever, ever clean my teeth before going to bed but on this occasion, don’t know what possessed me but, wait for it - I cleaned my teeth! What’s so amazing about that I hear you say. Well it turned a perfectly good evening into the longest night of my life. It triggered off an absess that I had first felt while on the plane, and oh my god did it hit with a vengence.
Angela went off to sleep and I just didn’t!! All these things were going through my head - do they have anesthetic in town? Am I going to have to have my tooth out with out it? It was just the most awful night. And all Angela did was sleep!! How’s that for friendship - I will remember that.
The alarm went off at 7.00am on wednesday morning - I thought it would never happen. When Angela turned over and said “morning, how are you?” I think she was pretty shocked when I burst into tears and said “not good, I don’t know what to do with myself” Ok so I was being a bit of a drama queen but I was allowed to be - I was in pain!!
Angela then went into full rescue mode - speaking to Tanya, the girl who is running the place at the moment, phoning the dentist, no appointment - even in an emergency, til 27 November. No way I could wait that long! The thought of sitting in the back of the truck bouncing around just made me want to cry. So on to plan B - the doctors.
By 11am we were back in the taxi heading home from Grahamstown, about 40 minutes away for Madolos. I was armed with two lots of antibiotics, painkillers and something to stop the dioreah that the antibiotics might bring on! Lovely! The pain had already started to die down by the time we got back to base - thank god.
Everyone had long left by the time we got back to Madolos so we spent the day relaxing in the sun and catching upon some well needed sleep that I hadn’t managed to get the night before. Although it was a shame we missed the day out - having spoken to them since I don’t think it was a bad thing after all. I certainly needed to catch up on the sleep - maybe tomorrow I won’t sleep so much in the back of the truck. It did make me smile when the doctor said that the tablets might make me drowsie!! How much more drowsie can you get?
Anyway by the time everyone else got home I was feeling a lot better and ready to face the world again.
And after a few games of cards we both put our heads down and amazingly, after sleeping most of the day we both were flat out in minutes.
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Tuesday 6th November 2007
06/11/2007 by admin.
Tuesday 6
Up bright and early today. It would have been 3.30am your time, 5.30am our time. We were told to be ready between 6.15 am and 6.30am so in Angela and my mind that meant by 6.30am we needed to be ready to go. We left our room (very nice by the way - twin bedded with ensuite - and Angela broke the toilet!) at 6.10am to go for breakfast. Plenty of time or so we thought! Wrong!
We wandered across the courtyard in a bit of a daze it has to be said: ) The breakfast room was empty - they were all ready, waiting down at the truck. We drove out at 6.14am - a good lesson learnt. If someone says between A and B we will be ready earlier than A! Maybe one day anyway! All good intentions!!
It was just as cold on the truck this morning as it was yesterday but this time we were prepared. I had my thermal top on under my ranger top and a fleece over the top of that and my waterproof on over the top of that!! Its not a fashion show you know!
We were out so early to see five lions being loaded into an airplane to be transferred to Pretoria. Shamwari has a lot of lions so in order to keep the balance of predators level they sell what they don’t need onto other reserves and parks. There were three female and two males in a deep, deep, deep sleep. They looked incredibly peaceful, just like my Barney (pet Cat) lying in front of the fireplace at home, even their eyes were open. It was amazing, such magnificent creatures, so extremely heavy - it took 8 men to lift the bigger of the males off the back of the ute into the plane. Thank god none of them woke up. The journey will probably take about three hours and they will have to be darted every hour or so to keep them asleep. Though having said that one of them was starting to come round as they were leaving so he was darted again before they left.
From the air strip we went to the South Born Free Site (there are two in Shamwari - North and South) On the way we saw a Cheetah sleeping off his last kill. Loads of Impala and Wildebeest grazing in the morning sunshine. We went off into the bush to clear a camp for some walkers tonight and set up a campfire ready for them when they arrive after their long walk today. Then it was time for an early lunch - long side the river. Food here seems to be pretty good I must say. Bread, burgers, eggs, cheese, salad etc. Yummo! So much for me loosing weight - I was starving again!
After lunch we did a game drive to the North Born Free Site. I seem to have developed a disease - its one from a long while ago back in Australia. Vanessa and I did a two day off road, four wheel drive tour through the Bungle Bungle National Park, which was pretty cool - but every time we sat down in this truck and I mean truck (if your brave enough ask to see the oz photos and you’ll see what I mean) was huge, the wheels were towering over my head - the ruts in the road could have been described as mountains to very short people, anyway every time we sat down we fell asleep - bouncing around all over the place most people were hanging on for dear life and enjoying the scenery but no not us, absolutely sparko. Guess what its happening again. Luckily Angela is here on hand to wake me up whenever the need arises like when you are on a game drive and a giraffe pops his head over the roof of your truck or you come round a copartner and are face to face with 5 white rhinos! I’d miss it all otherwise. Hopefully over the next few days I’ll get used to it. Everyone else thinks its pretty impressive that I can actually sleep in those conditions - I keep having to explain, its just one of my many talents.
Anyway at the North Born Free we watched as they fed a Leopard and three lions. They are game that have been rescued from all over the world but can not be realeased into the wild.
Back on the truck - ooh must be time to go back to sleep! And back to Malodos. Which is where I am now writing this before I go out for dinner tonight. One of the girls is leaving in the morning so this is her leaving party - if we can stay awake long enough!!
Catch you tomorrow
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Monday 5th
05/11/2007 by admin.
Well after alot of talking bout it, it has finally arrived. Angela and I are off to South Africa!! Horay, horah!
I will attempt to write this regularly and keep you up to date with all that’s happening but we haven’t even been here for 24 hours yet and its already running away with me! The next biggest step will be finding out how to download this to the computer and send it off in an email. Technology eh!
The flight here was pretty non-eventful. I expected to sleep all the way but even that managed to elude me! Which is probably why we were conned by the porters in Johannesburg Airport. Hey ho we were in a hurry and we did get there much quicker then we would have otherwise (don’t worry Mark - the camera was with me at all times!) It was only an hour and a half from there to Port Elizabeth so no time to sleep on that flight either.
We were picked up without any problems at Port Elizabeth Airport and shown to a lovely, very clean, air conditioned Mercedes Krompressor (our taxi) the driver assured us not to get too used to it - it would be the only time we were gonna travel in a vehicle with sides to it let alone anything else!
An hour and a half later we arrived at Malodos Retreat in the Shamwari Game Reserve.
We were introduced to a few people, shown our room and rushed into the back of a safari vehicle. It was all in a bit of a whirl wind. We were absolutely cream crackered. We’d left home at 12 lunchtime on the Sunday and it was now 4pm on the Monday - we just didn’t know what had hit us!!
We had been told to bring something warm to wear and maybe a waterproof as it might rain later, but obviously we knew best and opted for just the rain coat. Big Mistake. Bouncing around in the back of the truck at 70km ph it was bloody freezing. Bitter! That was made all the better for seeing our first safari animals - black and white rhino, impala, kudu, zebra and giraffe - wow all in our first drive out. It is gonna be an amazing trip.
We were off to have a bush barby - great! We were also starving hungry, having had nothing to eat since about 9am that morning - but sure no worries we could wait for the dinner to be cooked, after we’d found the fire wood and attempted to start a fire for the hundredth time(that’s how it seemed anyway). Dinner was great in the end and it was a good introduction into who was who. I did keep my eye out for uninvited hungry guests, though I did seem to be the only one bothered by the fact that we were in the African bush, cooking our dinner and open to all sorts of animals to come and feed (on our dinner not us…or maybe we would have been more tasty.)
Anyway once back at Malodos it was time for a well deserved shower, quick tidy up and off to bed. Gonna sleep like the dead. Catch up soon.
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