Dan and Dani

We were pleasantly surprised with Sophie's as it had been described in the trip notes (we were at the start of a three week overland tour of Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania with Geckos, the tour group we used for the Galapagos and the Inca Trail) as 'quite basic by western standards' and didn't really think that it was fair to call it basic. We had a large room with 3 single beds, good mozzie nets around each bed, a t.v. (although it was quite temperamental) and a bathroom with all you could need, even hot water. The rest of the hotel was clean and tidy and pretty well decorated and all the staff were friendly and helpful, although one of the young guys was trying to get a ticket to England through Dani! We basically ... read more

After the success of Makalali we decided to put our tracking/game finding skills to the test and try our luck in Kruger National Park, some 70 km to the east of Hoedspurit. Kruger encompasses an enormous area of land averaging 65km across and 350 km long with further private game reserves located around its borders. The terrain ranges from open Savannah to thick bush and from completely flat to mountainous with a series of major rivers running through it.. Navigation around the park is via a network of good tarmac roads with further dirt tracks branching off into the more remote areas. While you can take organsied Safari drives at the different camps located around the park, for the most part, people, just drive around and see what they bump into. After 4 weeks at Makalali ... read more

We arrived at Rio airport around 8pm on the 26th and got a taxi to the Ipanema area. We´d had a look in the LP about where to stay and were given the choice of about 5 or 6 different areas and we really had no idea about the best or safest place to stay. By luck, we seemed to have chosen the right place. We headed to the Hotel San Marco which was a little more expensive compared to what we´ve been paying but we always knew Rio would be a little expensive in general. We had a very nice little room with A/C, a brilliant hot shower and cable T.V (we hoped to save some money this way!). The staff were very friendly and helpful and pointed us in the direction of a ... read more

We arrived in Campo Grande at about 5.30am and were luckily met by the tour operator who we´d booked our next Pantanal trip with. He rushed us off to his office to pay him then took us to a very nice hotel around the corner where we were able to get showered (with hot water!) and have breakfast for free. He then put us on another bus at 7.30am which we traveled on for another 4 hours before being dropped off at the entrance to the Pantanal. We weren´t really too sure what was happening or what we were supposed to be doing so we just sat and waited, and waited and then an hour later a guy arrived in a truck to pick us up. It was a very quiet, bumpy, dusty hour and ... read more