SA Day Fifteen

Throughout this whole trip, we kept coming across a young couple from Kent. In fact, two young couples from Kent. They’d booked through Trailfinders too, but were self driving, and followed more or less the same route (as everybody does). And they’re all here at the same time as us, which has been fun.

Last night, one of the couples had a special birthday dinner in the smaller tented bit, and once we’d finished in the big dining room (all the staff had gone) we went to join them. We went to the main building to ask for another bottle of bubbly (it hasn’t been the 5 Star service here that we’ve become accustomed to…) and we had a jolly extended evening.

Funnily enough, I didn’t hear the bullfrogs last night… and I found out that there are only two or three of them, not the 100s that it sounds like!

Out this morning with clouds - yesterday was over 30°! The weather has changed back to windy and possibly rain this afternoon. So driving in an open vehicle should really be fun! Though they do supply us with big lined waterproof ponchos.

We had a very close encounter with a mum and young rhino. And a herd of the beautiful elands, also close. Both within half an hour of setting off. We then spent the rest of the trip driving round, watching elephants across the gorge in the trees, and the lioness and young ones away up on a hill. I could only see them if I used the zoom on my phone. And just about every herd of every animal was miles away across the plains. We do keep seeing warthogs running away (with their skinny tails up). We all love them. They have a hard life - we see more warthog skulls lying around than any other animal. They’re a nice snack for the big predators.

Moving down nearer the coast tomorrow for our last couple of days. I’m going to post this now, as I doubt there will be any sightings of the cheetah or the male lion in the rain this afternoon. But if there is…