Marloth Park to Sodwana Bay

Overnight we had countless load shedding. It was definitely off more than it was on and when I woke up at 6am it was still off. Luckily the time that it had been off had just about filled the pipes with water and I managed to boil just enough for teas and coffee’s, then I sat in the garden with Pete and we were joined by the bushbuck, and deicker before a huge male kudu came in and scared them both off. Then the 4 warthogs came back and scared the kudu off and finished off the last of the food.
We were packed and ready to go at 9am and after a last sweep of the place for any belongings we left our hot noisy hell hole with no power clean and tidy, Barr the mess the baboon had made. Then it was a trip to the field security office to drop the keys back and then we took a final drive around the gravel and dirt roads of Marloth park with Pete fantasising about how he could fill a huge house as a game and safari lodge. He’s got all the ideas but absolutely no money.
We finally left Marloth Park around 10:30am and headed straight to Komattiport for fuel which was £100 for which we paid and food at the spar while Pete said he had phone calls to make but we knew by then he was phoning his mum because he’d run out of money.
When we got back to the car with food for the journey he admitted that his mum couldn’t do a bank transfer because there was no internet.
We got the Swaziland border just before lunchtime and we had to pay for the car which was only £5 and even though Pete took his card in, he may aswell have taken a brick.Then 90 minutes driving into Swaziland Pete got pulled over for speeding. The fine was R60 which is around £2:50 and they insisted he pay the fine but obviously he didn’t have any money and we only had R20 which they wouldn’t accept. Then they started telling me they were going to take my driver and I just laughed and said that’s ok I’ll follow you and finally Pete managed to talk his way out of it and they let us go.
Another 90 minutes of driving and we passed through the Swaziland border and back into South Africa.
We stopped back at the game shop that sold game meat for me to get Biltong to bring home because it’s in smaller vacuum packed packs and then we were going to get an impala wors sausage to go with our ostrich steak and braai rolls but Pete then saw Impala kebabs and insisted we get those instead. Then we realised that we would also be feeding Ron aswell who was back at the house, which wasn’t a problem as Ron would normally insist on paying his way, but for someone that is constantly skint Pete has got really expensive taste. Especially when it’s not his money.
Back on the road I couldn’t wait to get back to our little house and get out of the car which costs us money every time we get in it.
Pete said we could drive back through Phinda Game reserve which I knew would take an extra 2 hours but we are here for the animals so we agreed as this would probably be our last game drive.
Going through Phinda was actually really amazing. It felt like all the animals had come out to say goodbye, we saw 3 Rhino just standing at the side of the road, then we saw a mother and baby rhino laying across the road. We passed hundreds of giraffe, 2 of which were right on the road and we had to drive past and they were about 4 foot away. Then we saw hundreds of zebra, then a massive herd of impala just walking up the road towards us, then wilderbeast and finally a lonely water buffalo who looked very grumpy. It was a lovely last game drive.
Finally we were back onto tarmac and with just 30km to go I was relieved, and when we finally got back home at 5pm we had been in the car for 6 hours.
Unloading the car Millie the cat came down to greet us and he was super pleased to see us and wanted lots of cuddles. Then after dropping our stuff off back in our room we all went upto the house where Pete and Ron played chess, I had a non alcoholic beer and Ellie had tea, we were all starving but with the chess game going on and Ron and Pete talking,time ticked on and dinner didn’t even get thought about until 6:30pm and didn’t get started until 7pm.
While cooking dinner Ron said that he had turned his new job offer down and now wanted to return to Richards Bay on the 24th with us to start looking for something else and Petes face just dropped and turned to panic. Pete had thought originally that Ron would be here for 6 months, when we picked Ron up it had already turned into 3 weeks and now it was just another 3 days. Pete spent the rest of the evening talking in South African to Ron trying to twist his arm into staying longer because we knew that if Ron went, nobody would be here to pay to feed him.
At 7:30pm dinner was served and it was just the kebabs and potato wedges which were extremely tasty but there was no sign of the ostrich steaks so I mentioned them and hopefully we’ll be having them tomorrow.
After dinner we all sat in the lounge area of the house. I couldn’t wait to get into bed and luckily Ron said he was going to bed first at 8pm and then the rest of us could follow straight away.
It had been a very long day of driving and this was our first night in 5 days we would be able to sleep with the windows open and have air in the room.Read more