Safari in South Africa

When we left Livingstone in Zambia on Monday the 29th Ocotber,, we flew to Johannesburg where we picked up a bus and went directly to Nelspruit. When we left many years ago, Nelspruit was a little sleepy hollow near Kruger Park. NOw, it is a thriving metropolis, 400,00 people. We were picked up by our hosts Mari and Daan, who looked after us for the next 5 days. First they took us to a lovely pub for a quick meal ( we arrived at 8 pm, after a 3hour journey). When we finished our meal, they picked us up and took us to our lodgings, Chez Vincent, a beautiful B and B. The next morning, after a lovely breakfast we were picked up by D & N and started on our new adventure.
We visited the Blyde River Canyon ( the third largest canyon in the world), Molholohol private Game Reserve which had a wonderful rehabilitation centre where among other things we fed vultures and where we overnighted in a private little chalet, and went for a game drive in the evening and a game walk in the morning; Pezulu Private game reserve which has tree houses, game drives etc (we stayed in the honeymoon tree house), and then to a Cheetah rehabilitation centre and finally to Kruger Park. There we overnighted at Satara and Skukuza, both wonderful Rest camps. We saw many wonderful sights and lots and lots of animals. The highlight was when a leopard stepped out of hte bushes in front of us ( at 11 in the morning) and proceeded to walk across the track and down to the dry river bed. Other exciting moments were sightings of the big five - leopard, lion, buffalo, rhino ( we got too close to black rhino when we were on a walking safari) and elephant. Also hippos in abundance at various water holes.

At the end of our safari, we were again taken to the Chez Vincent B&B and the following day we returned to Joburg for the final phase of our trip: the private car and our own touring...I'll tell you about that next time.

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