And we're off!

At last night's meeting, we met our leader, Rene, our driver, Ernest, and our cook, Ivan, along with our 8 fellow travellers. They seem like a good bunch. After the meeting, we went straight back to our room to get ready for our 4am start this morning!

Thunder during the night kept waking me up, so I wasn't feeling particularly refreshed when the alarm went off!

We were the first ones down to meet Rene so we were able to load our bags 🎒 and get the first pick of the seats. There are only 10 of us on a 24-seater truck 🚚, so it's not really an issue, but we did choose seats near the biggest windows, thinking ahead to safari days 😂. (Unlike Dragoman, there doesn't seem to be a rule that we have to change seats every day.)

Our big bags 🎒 were stowed underneath the truck 🚚, and we have lockers on board to store our small stuff and valuables.

The truck 🚚 is quite different to a Dragoman truck. For a start, it's white, not orange! The seats are like coach seats and are fitted with seat belts which we have to wear whenever we are moving. There are cool boxes for us to use and there are charging points above our heads.

Because of our early start, the hotel gave us food bags to cover breakfast and lunch.

It was raining 🌧 and dark, but everyone was on time so we were able to leave ahead of schedule. Just down the road, however, we realised that we had left our water bottles in the fridge in the hotel room! We had to go back. They were our expensive filter bottles. So we turned round and Mark went to retrieve them!

After our false start, we were finally on the road. Our much-anticipated trip had finally begun! The first leg was from Johannesburg to Kruger National Park, so we had a 12-hour drive ahead!Read more