We left Bourton-on-the-Water yesterday to travel down to my parents. As we were in no rush we had a late breakfast (9am). Helen had wanted to go to a wool shop in the village but they were closed on Wednesday (randomly). Everything only opens at 10am in most UK villages and so we had to wait for 10am anyway. Helen discovered that the owners had friends with them and so decided to shut the store for...
Continue Reading
As we were spending the day in the Cotswolds there was no pressure to get up earlier. Most of the museums and shops only open at 10am. After having breakfast we headed to the model railway in the village. While the shop opened at 9:30am, the railway only opened at 11am so that plan was thwarted. The Woolen Mill shop was fortunately open and so we headed in there and did some shopping - well I...
Continue Reading
We left last night from Cape Town for the UK. It is my Mom's 80th birthday on Sunday and we decided to come over and celebrate that with my parents. It is actually the first time for a while that just the family is traveling together. The flight over was pretty uneventful except for Chloe being asked for her ID to prove she is of drinking age when she asked for champagne before take off. That...
Continue Reading
We had one last full day in Lower Sabie. It had rained on and off throughout the night and it was still heavily overcast. It was also the coolest morning we have had (21 degrees at 6am). Unfortunately game wise the morning drive was unproductive except for the standard things we had already seen. The bird life though was incredible. It seems all the birds were out to play after the rain. And they were pretty...
Continue Reading
The kids were heading home today and so we drove with them down to Skukuza before heading to Lower Sabie where Helen and I will spend our last 2 nights. It was really good having the kids with us for the 3 days even though the game viewing while they were here was not as good as we would have liked. Unfortunately this morning was no exception to that. We left around 6:15am and drove down...
Continue Reading
Today was a significant day in our family's life - 25 years of marriage. And Helen managed to do something she has not done in the 26 years I have known her until today. We went on our usual morning drive. We went to the Sweni Bird Hide. On route we saw 3 separate sightings of hyena and a variety of other game. While sitting at the hide and watching crocodile (out of the water) and...
Continue Reading
I was pretty tired last night (entertaining the kids took it out of me it seems) and so that is why no blog last night. Just didn't have the energy to do it last night. Not that it was a particularly busy day. We did our usual morning drive (though it took some effort to get the 4 young ones up so we could leave at 5:30am). We went down to the N'wanetsi picnic & viewing...
Continue Reading
Another long drive today from Shingwedzi down to Satara (about 170kms). We decided to set out earlier rather than later so that we could get the majority of the drive done in the cooler part of the day. We woke up at 5am and were on the road at around 5:45am. At the junction of the road running from the camp with the north/south road were a clan of hyena (or a cackle of hyena). They...
Continue Reading
We didn't have high expectations after yesterday as we could not possibly see how we could have had another day like yesterday. As far as game & bird viewing were concerned we were right. It was very much a low-key day but then we also didn't spend much time out game viewing today but spent more time in the camp. Helen wanted to get another run in and she did that before we headed out this...
Continue Reading
We have a book called Kruger Park Drives (recently published) and it rates each of the roads in the KNP. The road we planned to take this AM was rated 5-stars. And they were spot on. We headed north toward Punda Maria and then took the dirt road (S56) that runs along the river (though only patches of water). The game was consistently spread over the course of the travel north. It started with the usual...
Continue Reading