Black rhino

We had a VERY long day.  Having been unable to book onto the morning drive yesterday, we decided to book onto today's.  Due to start at 0430, we were asked to be there by 0415, so we were out of bed by just before 4, threw on some clothes, and trotted down to reception.  The bus was there, lots of passengers, but no driver.  By 0445, one of our fellow passengers was making irate phone calls to the duty manager.

Eventually, a driver did arrive, apologising for "the confusion", which presumably was a  synonym for "cock up", though it was unclear on whose part the mistake was made.

Anyway, we got underway a little late, but still had an enjoyable ride.  The highlight was seeing a black rhino.  The image posted above is straight out of the camera.  My first, and totally unintentional, "panning" photo.  It was still quite dark, the rhino was running, and had no intention of stopping.

In addition, we saw lots of lion, bucks of various types, and birds.  We didn't get back to the camp until about 0830, when we had to pack up and leave.

There is a cute photo of mum and lion cub in extras.

Then we drove back to Johannesburg - some 600km - dropped one of W's sisters back at her home, drove out to the airport.  We were there by 1800, to drop off the hire car, and get checked in for our 2000 flight.

Except that our flight turned out to be delayed, and we didn't leave until almost 4hrs later, and didn't get in to our base in Cape Town (W's other sister's home) until about 0245 the following morning.  By the time we'd done a couple of loads of washing (on a very quick cycle), we had been up for almost 24hrs!