On Safari - Kruger National Park

Our home for three nights - Honeyguide's Khoka Moya Camp.

Giraffes are always great to stumble across. Tall, and graceful with colouring that makes them stand out (not good for avoiding predators).

Philip, our tracker (left) and Lyton, our guide and driver(centre), prepare 'sundowner' drinks as we watch the spectacular sunset. You can see the colour of the light here. Not only very capable and engaging, they were great guys and made our visit to the game reserve adacent Kruger National Park such a great one.

We were lucky to see Rhino's on at least three occasions - I believe it's pretty rare to see them at all.

We (or more to the point Philip) tracked this Leopard for some time before we finally sighted it. Definitely worth the wait.

These are the remaining vultures tucking into an unfortunate buffalo. There were more than three times as many as we approached - but they didn't hang around.

Lyton shares lunch with us - as he did with all the meals here - in the outdoor dining room. The food was quite gourmet, and plentiful.

Scrabble was out mid morning game, followed by soccer, a swim and then lunch before the afternoon safari. Life's tough...

The first photos are in

The Zebra was very patient with me photographing it - and I'd been very keen to get up close and personal with one for a while. I still love their patterns, each unique.
It's the A Team, from left to right Me, Dennis, SYlvain & David. This is durign sundowner drinks in a meadow in Kruger National Park. We were actually watching sunset - hence the orange hue to the photo.
If you're gonna stay in a tent, THIS is the tent to stay in. We walked in and felt right at home. The bathroom was almost as big as the room you see here. Decadence in Canvas.
A pair of cavorting baby elephants entertained us for quite some time. They were like young teenagers in love.

More photos to come.

Knysna Decadence

Tired of wearing mud and changing tyres in godforsaken backwaters, we take to the luxurious side of life. Knysna (pronounced nize-na) is the town at the centre of our oppulence and after a day of extremely shitty weather (sea-side towns are not the best in fog and rain) we land upon the oasis that is The Alexander. As we approach, the coastline plunges beneath us to a rocky headland complete with crashing waves and storming rain. We're upgraded to the Captain's suite, which seems a prerequisite given the weather, and we navigate through it's decadence with ease, and more than a few laughs. The hosts here are a very cool gay couple - not that we knew this when we booked, but we're instantly at home and we forget our plans of exploring in the afternoon, opting to shelter in this haven until dinner which Martin has booked for us at Lush, appropriately named and certainly keeping the decadent theme we've established for the evening. A cute waitperson serves us a stunning dinner and it is quickly established that the food in South Africa is sensatiolicious, unbelievably inexpensive and the chocolate desserts are uniformly the best I've had ever - and there is some stiff competition there. The SA wines have been popular with the Frenchman and I drive home with our brand new Pirelli tyre and watch a surprisingly good movie, appropriately titled Head in the Clouds, in the lap of luxury.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring...

Travel Hiccups

So we're driving from Capetown to 'The Garden Route' where there have been floods in the region a week or so ago. The road is closed but the helpful roads authority guy there tells us there's a really long detour on tarred roads, or a shorter one on dirt road that's quite good - and a lot shorter. So we do the short detour and for the first 30km it's great and we manage 80km/hr or so but then the good road disappears and a crapulent one appears out of nowhere. It seems doable, but after the second river crossing we wonder what the story is - of course that's also when we realise we have a flat tyre. Middle of nowhere in Africa, small, front wheel drive car, flat tyre. Thank god the rental company have a REAL tyre as a spare and we're up and running again in no time - but a 4WD owner coming the other way warns we're about half way, and the road doesn't get any better... Damned either direction... So we travel onward with extreme caution, especially when we discover the two German girls who passed us earlier with their stalled golf on the next river crossing; some other drivers are already helping restart them. Finally we all get going again , traverse the crossing and manage to make it to the good road. The Frenchman is stressed but I'm enjoying the problem solving and the knowledge that this is something we'll remember long after the beautiful landscapes have faded from memory.

South Africa

Okay so we're beginning a little late. It's now our second week in South Africa, but Internet access has been limited til now - and when we've had it - we've been too busy anyway. So I've had a chance to write a little so I'm starting from now and working back when I get a chance... So watch this space. Pics are limited as I've not been able to edited them down in size yet...