An early game drive with nothing to see!

Back at the campsite, Mark went to sit in the bar as his legs were playing up. Timo, Kristina, and I went to the viewpoint on site, but there was nothing to see except a group of smoking South Africans and a pile of cigarette butts they’d left behind! We weren’t impressed!

We joined Mark for a drink and then went for dinner. Ivan had cooked a really spicy chicken curry with rice. All of us except Mark had streaming eyes and noses!

While we were eating, there was a fantastic lightning show! To start with, there was no thunder, and the rain held off, but it wasn’t long before it built to a real thunderstorm. We had to quickly clear everything away and retreat to our tents early!

During the night, I was kept awake, first by the thunder and the rain, and later by trains carrying coal away from the nearby coalfields. By 4.50am, I was wide awake and decided to go for a shower. We had to be up for a 6.30am game drive, anyway.

Luckily, Ivan had got up to put the kettle on, so we were able to have coffee before the drive. We put all our stuff back on the truck but left our tents to take down after the drive.

It was still dark when we set off, so there was definitely not much to see! As dawn broke, we could see that it was a very cloudy, dark, cold day. We didn’t see much wildlife during the couple of hours we were out:

• Zebras
• A black-backed jackal
• Blacksmith plovers
• Warthogs
• Spoon-billed storks
• Cormorant
• A heron
• Terns

We were cold when we got back to camp. We packed our tents away and then had breakfast. Today’s menu was bacon, baked beans, scrambled eggs, and toast. It was very welcome!Read more