Sabi Sabi Bush Lodge Kruger National Park

... at a country pub. After half an hour in their, I wished I was at home being looked after by my mother who would have got me a giant bottle of lucozade on one of her eight daily social trips up to ASDA. We set out again when I felt a little better and finally made it to the gate into national park only to be told by the jobsworth, nasty old ***** at reception that we were five minutes too late to enter and would have to stump up 80 quid ...

... at easy and passed close along the car. The little baboons were playing and being like little children. The older ones were more cautious and some kept a wary eye on the jeep. The whole group passing that close along the jeep gave a lot of good photo opportunities and I was happily shooting away all around me again until the troop has passed and Lucky started the car again to drive onward.<br><br> After the drinks and before lunch, we drove ...

Maorola Restcamp, Kruger, 18th September 2009<br><br>Letaba Restcamp as usual was very busy; it is a big camp and one of the main ones so it can be expected. This meant there was quite a queue the next morning before the gates opened at 6am. There was quite a bit of jostling for position when the gates opened and the vehicles hit the road. We drove along the river towards Olifants Restcamp. Surprisingly along this road there was very ...

... menu. Some kids from the village across the road came over to dance to a drumbeat, and it was fun to watch, although many in the group had already gone to their room to escape the cold. I couldn&#8217;t believe how cold it was at night.<br><br>The day had been a good one, and the wildlife viewing in Kruger was the trip highlight for many people in the group.

... a bunch of cars stopped looking at something. We stopped as well and saw them. There were what looked like 3 lions chilling out not 50 meters from the road! Unfortunately they sat in the worst place to actually see them because they were right behind a huge bush. We waited. And waited. And waited. Finally we gave up because the gate to our campsite was going to close in 30 minutes and we would get a huge fine if we showed up late. We drove off to turn around ...

... moment, if slightly gruesome, was seeing a lion kill an impala (small deer type creature whose population overwhelms the park) - it was unusually the male lion that caught the poor creature. We saw him streak across the road ahead and our guide Bobby (the greatest guide of all - he knew so much, even more than the people who work at the park!) put his foot down to get us up the road to have a look. The dad lion was showing his two cubs ...

... ended up waiting over a week for them to turn up!  Luckily, I got my bag even though I had to switch flights at Jo'burg. There are quite a few people on this project including Jeanette, Catriona (she's not really part of our group as she wanted to work with children for a month), Georgina, Becca, Melissa, Hannah, Gerald and Grace. We arrived to the Lodge, it was better than I expected and there were quite a lot of people there who had ...

... our own. An uneventful day thank heaven. No hijacking, no blown tires or driver exhaustion. All in all it was a good day. We arrived at the airport just an hour before Dave and Lynn's plane arrived.... so we greeted them upon arrival and hoped in their transport to the hotel. Now the next journey begins. A two week bus tour of South Africa. What will it be like?

At 5 a.m. we were back on the ranger's truck for a morning game drive. Yesterday's cloud had become a thick grey blanket and the wind was keeping the temperature well down so we wrapped up well before setting off. A few minutes into the drive, the guide found a pair of White-faced Scops Owls sitting in a tree, looking a lot bigger than most Scops Owl species. Shortly after this it began to rain and the hoped for feast of early morning wildlife didn't materialise. Only the ...

... including a few babies. It was an amazing sight, and a bit scary too being to close to them especially knowing how protective they are of their young. Well after this our luck seemed to run out as we didn't see too much else save for a few more impala and some other antelope. Later on we saw some buffalo bringing our count up to 4 of the Big 5, leaving just the rhino (an alive one anyway). Pretoriuskop was meant to be where to find rhino so we were sure ...