The Journey Home

This morning I was awake super early at 3:30am for some reason and managed to stay in bed dozing until 5:30am when I gave up trying to sleep and headed upto the house to make teas and coffees.
I was greeted by Millie who seemed to know that we were leaving today and wanted cuddles all the time and when I went back down to our little house Millie followed and sat by my feet while I drank coffee on the camping chairs.
Ellie and I started packing the rest of our things and Millie just waited outside for us and when we were almost done we headed back upto the house and Millie followed.
We were set to leave at 9am but with most of our packing done we were ahead of schedule and Pete just wanted to get on the road so at 8:20am with everything loaded we gave Hilapè a hug goodbye while Ellie was crying, and then gave Millie a big cuddle before we set off.
It was 130km until our first stop in Hluhluwe when we were all getting hungry so we stopped at the spar for some hot pies. Then Pete said we had time for one last game drive and we headed straight into the Hluhluwe Game reserve where we were greeted by the warthogs in the car park.
On the drive we saw Zebra, more warthog’s, Elephants and even rhino and it was an incredible last drive. We really will miss the diversity of all these different game reserves.
At 12:15pm we left Hluhluwe game reserve, topped the diesel off and then it was a very long 350km drive to King Shaka Airport in Durban where we arrived at 2:40pm.
We all went in because unlike British airports nobody has to go through security to get to the restaurants inside and we headed for a steers restaurant where we had our last meal altogether.
Once Pete had finished his coffee and toasted sandwiches that was it.
He was leaving for home and us 3 were boarding flights to Johannesburg airport.
Ellie and I both gave Pete a hug and said we would be back again. And we will, but probably just for a quick visit rather than another trip.
Then Ron went outside to walk Pete back to the car and give him cash for the tolls to get home and when he came back he was alone.
Now we really felt like the trip was over.
Ellie and I boarded the 6:15pm flight from Durban to Johannesburg and so did Ron but he was flying with a different airline and once we said our goodbyes at the gates in Durban we didn’t see him again.
In Durban we had a 3 hour lay over and didn’t board our next flight until 10:15pm and by now we were both really tired.
We tried to spend time walking around the shops in Johannesburg airport and I did find the smoking restaurant so I could vape and when we came out of there we both felt like we’d smoked 50 cigarettes each and we were grateful when we could board the plane and get ready to start sleeping.
At 11:15pm the plane took off, much to my disgust we had 2 babies next to us and a row in front and the woman infront of me was the size of a house and liked to bounce in her chair. Then the lady behind me kept standing up and used my headrest to pull herself up which then pulled my chair back. To top it off I had an aisle seat again and every person that walked past me bumped me, including the flight attendants. To me it was the flight from hell but fortunately we were both so tired we managed to sleep the best part of 8 hours each and woke up with just 3 hours of travelling left.Read more