Today was our last day of our short holiday. It was up at 5am again for another final morning game drive. It was also the coldest and least productive drive of the whole trip. Our ranger and tracker were trying to find a large herd of buffalo. They found their tracks and their droppings but despite searching for them we couldn't find them.  What was very ironic was that when we left the Timbavati Reserve on...

Wake up call at 5am this morning. Helen had decided that the early mornings were no longer for her and so she stayed in bed. Everyone else was up and ready to have coffee & crunchies at 5:30am and then onto the game vehicle for the early morning drive.  Given we had seen leopard and lion last night it meant we were tracking down the other 3 of the Big Five. Rhino was spotted almost immediately...

This morning we left Talamiti and headed out of the Kruger Park.  While Talamiti was a nice bushcamp, there is not a lot of game in the area and there are only dirt roads (which are in poor shape) to get to and from the camp (and it is about 20 kms to the nearest tar road). So we never went on a morning game drive and rather just left the camp at around 8am. We...

It cooled off considerably overnight as it became cloudy and started raining the early morning. It was an interrupted night of sleep not only because of the rain but because the honey badger came back and try to raid the cupboards and did raid the dirtbin. It has about 2am when I heard crunching and figured it had somehow managed to get some of the chicken bones from our meal last night. We got up for...

If yesterday was a day for seeing Rhino, then today was a day for seeing Lion.  We surpassed our Rhino count with 14 Lion today. In fact we did so well with Lion that in the afternoon when we were at one of the watering holes someone said they had seen a lion in the bush and we weren't bothered even to stay and look for it. We had a long drive today from Pretoriuskop to...

We have 2 nights accommodation at Pretoriuskop and so we decided today we would take it easy.  We still got up for an early morning game drive and left at sunrise (6am). To start with the drive did not yield much but then suddenly we started to see Rhino and ended up seeing 10 Rhino in about 30 minutes. At that point we had seen more Rhino than we had seen Impala!  It included a sighting...

We got up at 5:40am this morning so that we be out of the camp for an early morning sunrise drive.  We went to a bird hide called the Lake Panic Hide. I am not sure if it is the birdlife or the viewers who should be panicking.  There was only one car when we arrived and 8 when we left. We definitely got the most peaceful viewing for about 10 minutes before the hordes arrived. ...

We have been silent for a few months but we are back on the road again.  We are back in the Kruger Park.  It was quite a logistical challenge to get this trip organised as I had to be in London and Cologne before this.  I left Cologne, Germany yesterday afternoon.  My trip did involve plains, trains & automobiles just as the heading says but not in that order.  First, I had to take a train...