Birchleigh

We were awake at 7am to bright sunshine and the sound of birds coming through the window above our head. We’d had a good nights sleep and couldn’t wait to start our day. I made a tea and coffee and we drank them in bed and then I went for a shave and cold shower and while I got dressed, Ellie had a shower.
At 8am we went to the restaurant and had freshly squeezed orange juice and then a farmhouse breakfast to start the day. It was a good meal and our first conversations with lots of smiley South Africans.
At 9am we returned to our room and got a message from our taxi company saying they would now be picking us up at 11am from the front gates. That was the latest we could afford to be without having to drive the rest of the way on our own in the dark.
At 10:30am we headed out to the front enclosed car park to wait for our taxi company hakunamatata and I sat on the walled garden area next to some huge geraniums and the smell reminded me of my grandad.
At 11:30am and almost an hour late our taxi finally arrived. It was a huge minibus driven by a monster of a woman named Larrisa and after piling our bags into the side door we set off.
It was a long 4 hour journey to Neilspruit and we stopped halfway at a service station which had Rhino, Oryx, Ostrich and Wilderbeast roaming around at the back of it. These were our fist sightings and we now felt we had arrived.
The minibus was unbelievably hot and Ellie sat on the second row while I sat on the third row. Larrisa didn’t stop talking most of the way telling us about all the pies she had fingers in and by the time we arrived at Kruger international airport I felt quite sick from the heat and being thrown around in the back at 150kph. The only time it really cooled down was when we drove through a huge hail storm for 10 minutes. Then the sun came back out and we were roasting again.
At 3:30pm we arrived at the Kruger International airport and said goodbye to Larrisa. Then we went inside to the information desk where we picked up the keys to our camper van and then went outside to the car park to find it.
It took a little while……….the “camper” was tiny.
We unlocked the doors and put our bags in and then I set the sat nav up. The camper was beautifully finished with bed mats, a tent and fridge although the van itself is so basic it doesn’t even have a radio. There’s no central locking but I think if I put my left arm out I could probably reach right out of the left window it’s so thin.
We popped back into the airport and paid the car park fee of £3:50 for all day and then we set off to Marloth Park.
It took us 90 minutes to get to Marloth park and we named our camper little simba on the way. Little Simbas top speed seems to be 60mph on the flat and it doesn’t like going uphill but we can get 75mph out of it going downhill.
Just before it got dark we arrived in Marloth Park and we headed straight to the securcon office to collect our keys. Then we headed to Volstruis Street to our first sleepover. Ostrich Cottage.
It was now 6pm and we were both starving we hadn’t eaten since breakfast and once we had wrestled through the outer security door and worked out how to open the inner patio door with no handle or lock on the outside we were in. Our plan now was to just put our bags in and go to a restaurant for dinner.
On the way back out Ellie slid the patio door shut and I heard it click. The lock had come down and because there was no handle or lock on the outside we were now locked out. Try as I might I couldn’t lift the patio door up to release the lock and I even tried putting the car key in the hole where the outer lock should have been to release the inner lock. Nothing worked.
We locked the outside security door and then headed back to the security office to tell them of our plight and they said don’t worry we’ll send a maintenance team around. Then we went back to the house.
Locking ourselves out cost us 90 minutes but even the maintenance guys said the door was ridiculous and needed fixing. It took them another 10 minutes to break back in.
It was now 7:30pm and we headed off in the dark to the Giraffe bar and grill passing Impala, Warthog and zebra on the way.
Inside the restaurant we both had steak as this is the only place we can afford to eat it, this broke our run of veganism we had been on the last 2 months. Then we went back to our house taking a couple of cold beers with us and once back at the house I sat naked in the splash pool watching a little dyker down by our water hole whist having a beer.
It had been a very long day but after cooking off in the pool I was ready for bed. The air conditioning had done its job and cooled our room down to 16°c and at 11pm we finally went to bed.Read more