Tintswalo Safari Lodge Hoedspruit

... and Cyprus.

This is our second night at a camp in a private nature reserve just outside of Kruger National Park. We'll go into Kruger for game drives tomorrow, including a night drive. Yesterday was a long day of driving to get here, but we made several stops at lookout points along a gorgeous scenic route across the mountains.

... and one with chicken, nuts and salsa. They're worth it!

From there we head to the Blyde River Canyon. Over the past 60 million
years (give or take a half a million years), the Blyde River has carved its
way to form a canyon 300-800 m. (984-2,624 ft.) deep. There are limited
places where we can stop in the canyon and our first stop is at Bourke’s
Luck potholes. Bourke was mining for gold in this area but he did not
have any luck finding gold. When he died ...

... as there are no roads. It's frustrating to find fresh tracks and broken branches but no ellies are in sight. When we have seen them, it's been pretty fantastic. Queeny's herd has surrounded us 2x now and they are all very busy eating. Only Madame M was perturbed our presence and when Mike said "calm down now", she shook her head and crossed the road. Good! I like that. When Plain Jane came into view, she approached us in the road and had a bit of a trot going there for ...

... one lasts 3-4 hours depending on what we find. basically, i'm rising at 4:45am and going to bed by 9:30pm. it's exhausting in this heat and humidity but i'm really loving it. we do have "visitors" at Twines from time to time. two warthogs (who i just love despite how ugly they are) spent about 30 min digging around some bones and eating the grass. Nyala are regular visitors and they are beautiful animals. there are vervet monkeys eating the fruit from the ...

... here which if you ingest its bark or even the smoke from a burning piece, you will have serious stomach problems!. As a result, nature has provided the Porcupine bush and Shepherd tree which if you chew the bark of either, act like imodium and stop the problem! In the land surrounding the farm we have seen giraffe, very graceful animals, got within 20 feet of one, buffalo, warthog, Impala, water buck, jakal and caracal. This is on top of many birds including the yellow billed ...

... to listen to wakie-talkie noise the whole time which is a little annoying. Also we have a tracker sitting at the front of the jeep that jumps off and runs into the bush to scare out animals (as he did with the leopard) and sometimes it feels that we are invading on the animals habitat. On this game drive we also saw lions stalking a buffalo herd. Then 3 old male buffalo noticed the lions and chased them away from behind. The buffalo and lions ...

... conservation work when we saw vultures circling. We went to investigate and found an impala carcass surrounded by prints that were identified as lions'! However, having got in through a hole in the fence, chances are they wouldn't be able to find their way out again, so there was a good chance they were still on the farm..... So, we were in an open land rover (that kept stalling because water had got in to the petrol), with no guns. Did we go back to the safety of the ...

... Lions, Buffalo, Elepants, White Rhino and a Leopard. I am so lucky - not many people get to see a leopard in the wild. It was beautiful. There was a large herd of elephants with tiny baby ones and they crossed right in front of our car. I had to hold my breath we were that close. The breeding cow elephants can be very agressive when they have young. Temperature today is 40 degrees in the shade. Don't do any work when its too hot either ...

... night is a wee bit disconcerning, especially last night when there was much excitment among the rangers because the wild lions were about, tracking a herd of buffalo, and they were expected to make a kill that night. The buffalos luckily decided to graze just next to our camp. Fantastic if you're looking for a gory show, a little disconcerning if you're heading to the loo in pitch darkness with a pretty high risk of hungry lions in the ...

... this could have been right out of a South Park episode, where Kenny jumps over for his battery and the hippo charges. We get back from Safari and Dad is extremely excited, tells us while we were gone he caught a snake. We ask if it's a dangerous one and he says not really, but it's responsible for the most snakebites in Africa. Hmmm...have you done this before Dad? No, I just wanted to. He is really excited to show us the snake; he has coiled up in a garbage can at the camp. He ...