Arathusa Safari Lodge Sabi Sands Game Reserve

... His backpack was litterally twice the size of mine, weighing in at around 32kg's. Thats like carrying a fat child on your back around the world. One of his own sayings and i couldnt possibly comment on how much truth there is to it is "all the gear, no idea". He has practicly half of millets strapped to him, but fair play, if we get stranded on a desert island or high up on a mountain somewhere he will certainly last a lot longer than me a ...

... walking out into the middle of the road and we thought ok so they just want to get over to the other side of the road (as the joke goes... why else would the buffalo cross the road?). Yet we noticed these two started circling around each other, eyeing each other up.. by now we were only parked 40m away so I was getting nervous but Paul had a huge grin on his face! That then changed to an 'oh **** quick!' look where as Paul was getting so excited he was thrashing around our bags in the ...

... game about, even though the weather was cooler and cloudy. Of course we did see the ever-present impala. Even at the water's edge there was very little to see, although at one point we did get some nice photos and video of waterbuck.

Olifants Restcamp is still under re-construction and pretty much looked like it did last year – a complete building site and as if a bomb has descended on it. Still the view from the ...

... but of course the gates do not open until 6am at this time of year. Kruger National Park has strict rules and they do keep to them. Not too far from camp we saw some very large elephants, last year too we saw large elephants around Mopani camp. We drove towards Letaba Restcamp doing the loops around the rivers, as it is not too far a drive from Mopani to Letaba. As we took one short loop we came across two very large male ...

... of countries]. For the next day and a half, we explored the nearby, and very scenic, Blyde River Canyon area. This included such gems as God's Window, the weird Bourke's Luck Potholes, the Pinnacle, and the Berlin and Lisbon Falls. The beautiful scenery was enhanced by the early morning mists that would drift through, often below our vantage point. And speaking of early mornings, we need to fess up about another little indiscretion. Consider the ...

... delighted in touring us around what was a beautiful camp with a very personal touch. There were hammocks, chill out rooms, a jeep in the bar! And a large open fire around which people could gather to eat. We were soon picked up for our first activity here which was an evening sunset game drive in a nearby private game reserve called, Thornybush. It was a nice drive, we had great fun and saw huge amounts of buffalo. They are thought to be ...

... mention how adorable the babies are??? one came about 5 feet from our car, lifted its trunk and walked right by. as a baby, that's cute but if it were a 6 ton adult, i might feel differently... (yes mom, i have a whole new respect for their size when there are no sides, roof and windows to the vehicle). our game drives are about 3 hours long and we were maybe 30 minutes into it when the skies were getting crazy dark and we could hear thunder ...

... how awesome it was to be camping out in our state-of-the-art 4x4 camper. We had hired this monster of a 4x4.... a beefy diesel Toyota Hilux double cab with a roof top pop-up tent. Tucked away in the back was an ample fridge, a 60 litre water container and a bunch of storage boxes with everything from utensils and plates and cups to breakdown equipment and first aid kits. I must give special mention to the company that hired the car to us ...

... giving up and setting off for the day, and immediately got a response from a Palm Thrush when he imitated their call. However the bird calling back was obviously 2-300 metres distant in a heavily wooded area. CC was able to imitate the call and get a reply, but the bird seemed to be moving further away. After another 15 minutes of trying, attempting the call from several locations on the perimeter of the camp we realised that the birds were not going to show, so we set ...