It was freezing cold this morning as can be evidenced by the photo at 8:11am. It was our last day in the Kgalagadi and so we thought we would give it one last chance and do a loop down to the nearest waterhole from Mata Mata. Going down we saw nothing of note. At the waterhole a bird of prey flew into the tree above our car and by the time we had positioned ourselves to...
Continue Reading
I am typing this knowing that I won’t be able to post it tonight. We are now at Mata Mata Rest Camp in the Kgalagadi. We have no cellphone signal and the camp electricity will be switched off at 10pm. It is now 9:50pm and so I am expecting to finish typing the blog by the light of my laptop only. I can hear the generator in the distance so I am glad they will turn...
Continue Reading
Today was our first full day in the Kgalagadi and we all agreed that we were underwhelmed. The landscape is very stark and dry but the game is very sparse and there is very little variety. We were up today to leave when the gates opened at 7:30am (as the sun rose). It was 3 degrees outside and it took about 2 hours to warm up to about 20 degrees. The animals were clearly also cold...
Continue Reading
Yes, it is my birthday today. And the best place for me to spend my birthday is in a National Park somewhere in Africa. This year we managed to cover 2 national parks in one day. We started off in the Augrabies National Park and end up in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. I warned you that we might not have mobile phone coverage to be able to post a blog but as you can see we...
Continue Reading
Last night at 1:30am we were woken up by party revelers returning to their rooms at the Blue Nartjie (www.nartjie.co.za/). Besides that interruption to our sleep we had a good nights rest. When we woke up this morning at 7:30am it was 6 degrees outside but it felt much colder. We had booked breakfast for 8am and enjoyed the simple breakfast of coffee & bacon and eggs. While having breakfast our friends who are traveling with...
Continue Reading
Today we left for a 2 week and 2 day road trip from Cape Town heading North and into Namibia and back again. We did one of these trips in 2008. It was one of our top 5 holidays and so it is only appropriate that 5 years later we are repeating it with a few slight differences. It was also the trip that I first started writing trip updates (in those dark days it was...
Continue Reading
We are back home in cold, raining Cape Town. Our flight out of London was slightly delayed. I was concerned because as I sat in my First Class seat (yes I love BA they upgraded me on route to the plane), I could see the engineer's ladder with a whole lot of oil cans underneath it. Last time I saw that out of the window we ended up leaving 5 hours later and on an entirely...
Continue Reading
LA airport (at least the International terminal) has to be the worst international terminal I have been in since (let me think ...) I went through the same terminal last year May. There are absolutely no duty free shops at all (or at least none to speak of). They have one place selling chocolates (See's Candies) and another general store selling magazines, some sweets, the odd mug, a T-shirt and that was all. Unfortunately our flight...
Continue Reading
I think I have an internal clock that no matter what goes off at 6:15am. This morning I was again awake at 6:15am. I did some emails, wrote the Reception blog and tried to see whether Stephen was awake (he was staying with my parents). Nothing I did raised him so at just before 9am I gave up and went to breakfast. Most the rest of my family were there including my parents who had somehow...
Continue Reading
This being LA, the reception was 35 minutes away from the Church. It was back near the hotel (which is also closer to where Rachel/Josh will live, I believe). The reception was at an Italian restaurant. Never did get the name of the place. Something & Something (two names). Could have been Alfredo & Tony Antonio & Giuseppe. Who knows, who cares. Found the place and probably won't ever go back there again anyway (not because...
Continue Reading