Back to Mkhuze

By 7:30am we were all awake. Funnily enough I wasn’t the first one up this morning and as I walked up to the house I could already hear hurricane Anneka bellowing away.
The kettle had just boiled so I made a coffee and said my pleasantries then escaped to the roof terrace to wake up slowly. Pete joined me 5 minutes later and said as soon as the staff turn up we’d get going, which was fine with me.
After 2 coffees I took Ellie tea in bed and told her the plan, then I got dressed and went back to the roof terrace.
Pete came back up and said Anneka had wanted to join us so he’d lied and told her that we were going to go on a kayak safari and as we bundled in the car to leave at 8:30am she shouted enjoy your kayaking to Ellie and Ellie got in the car very confused.
We headed down the sandy tracks and back into Mbazwani before joining the highway and 45 mins later we had arrived back at the Mkhuzi game reserve.
Once again we didn’t need to pay as we had the rhino card and after logging our details we just entered the park. Within 500 meters Pete spotted what he thought was a worm on the ground and then realised it was a caterpillar and opened the door and put it in his hand.
It was a monster caterpillar bright green in colour with deep ridges all down it’s back. We later identified it as a lunar moth caterpillar and it was quite beautiful.
For the rest of the day we had a pretty average game drive. We saw hundreds of baby animals which was lovely including impala’s and giraffe. And then we just spotted the usual herds of impalas and Imyala with the odd zebra thrown in.
We stopped for lunch at 12pm in the rhino dino cafe and Pete and I had Ostrich Pittas and they were lovely. Ostrich tastes just like a good steak but with absolutely no fat. Have you ever seen a fat ostrich?
Then it was back to the game drive and the afternoon went pretty much the same as the morning only much, much hotter and we were glad to be leaving at 2:30.
Ellie slept across the back seats all the back to Mbazwani , she definitely isn’t feeling well because of the mild sunstroke but luckily the gland in her thigh has started to go down but Pete is convinced we both have tick bite fever so he stopped at the doctors in Mbazwani only to find they were closed. Pete said we’d try again tomorrow if Ellie wasn’t feeling well.
We got back home and Hurricane Anneka was telling us about her day of nothing and what had been going on on the news so Pete and I grabbed 2 beers from the fridge and Ellie ad a juice and we hid in the roof terrace until sunset.
Then I said we should really go and face the music and sit with Anneka much to Petes disgust and we all went back downstairs only to find that Anneka had gone for a lay down in her room.
There was silence for a change while Pete cooked and the 3 of us just whispered talking trying not to wake her and listened to the evening sounds of Africa come to life. For an hour it was very relaxing. Then dinner was served and hurricane Anneka woke up super charged and we had bellowing across the dinner table again.
After dinner Ellie went straight to bed, Pete, Anneka and I sat talking until Pete changed the subject and got onto WW2 aircraft and my pictures. Something Anneka couldn’t get involved with so at 8pm she went to bed which left just me and Pete on our own until 9pm which was great. Then we both went to bed, it was an unbelievably still night with absolutely no air, I knew sleeping was going to be tough tonight so I took a cold shower and then lay on the bed praying for some kind of breeze that never came.Read more