Blogs from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, Africa

Thursday was our longest lie in for a week – we only had to be up in time for breakfast at 8.00am. We set off with Connor and our friends from the previous night for a boat trip in the St Lucia estuary. Further towards the sea there are lots of boats, but the lodge has sole rights to the water further inland. The boat was a small catamaran with an engine, designed for shallow waters. It was piloted by Warwick, a delightful and very knowledgeable chap of 84. He was recently widowed and taking people out on boat trips gave him the opportunity to meet new people. We saw plenty of hippos, but sadly none of them wanted to come out of the water, so all we saw were groups of bobbing eyes and ears, ... read more

Our last morning in Manyoni. It was another of those game drives where, as time goes by, you resign yourself to not seeing anything very exciting. Nonetheless it was warmer and the early morning light made for beautiful views. Suddenly Graeme’s radio crackled into life. A lion had been sighted. We turned round and set off in pursuit. When we got there, another jeep was just pulling away. We drove into the bush to get as close as possible, but the lion was still mostly obscured by grass even though he was less than 10 feet away. He was not about to get up, as he had killed a warthog and was noisily consuming it. As it’s a smaller creature, he was crunching straight through the bones. What looked like a rack of raw pork spare ... read more

In the words of the Dinah Washington song, what a difference a day makes. It was at least 20C cooler than the previous day! The wind whistled around us all night, and we felt it in our lodge through the thatched roof. It was trying to rain, but mercifully never came to much. Having previously been too hot in just a thin shirt and trousers, today we added a sweater and a hoodie and, after a while, our rain jackets. We were glad of the blankets provided, to keep our legs warm and the cameras dry. Game drives are not so scenic in cloudy weather, but we were hopeful that the cooler weather would bring out more animals. We spent the first half hour unsuccessfully looking for hyenas, and began to fear this might be an ... read more

We opted for an early breakfast ahead of a long driving day to our first game reserve. Our journey was going well until the Google Maps instructions took us onto a dirt road which petered out into a track with just a farmer shepherding some cattle. Clearly not the R68! After a 7 point turn we retraced our steps and found the right turning. At the next junction we were sent off onto a 20km stretch of dirt road, which was fine in places and somewhat hair-raising in others. We were both quietly thinking to ourselves that at least it was so quiet we would not meet a lorry, when what should appear around the corner but… We pulled across as far as we could, and allowed the lorry driver to steer past us with all ... read more

We woke up to find the hills bathed in sunshine, something we’d not seen in 2 ½ days. Shame we were leaving….we drove for miles down the dirt road past the other ranches, the Drakensberg and the intensely green trees and the golden brown grass bathed in that early morning light before heat haze builds up. All the colours stood stark against each other. Things look so different in the sunshine. Dodging the potholes as best we could and steering around the craters, we took the N3 motorway north, confusion reigning at one point when Google maps stopped working, but we were soon back on our route. Signposting in SA is often nonexistent, and we never found a useful map, so as back up Sara had for each journey printed out detailed instructions as back up. ... read more