lizziehamilton

Send two country girls to a big city and it's not long before we need out, at least for a day or two every now and again! So while we have been in Melbourne, there have been plenty of mini trips, such as... Sovereign Hill An old town from the time of the gold rush which is now preserved as a sort of out door museum. All the shops were still as they would have been back then, and all the staff were dressed in their old fashioned clothes. We took a tour of a couple of mines and tried (unsuccessfully) to pan for gold. Great Ocean Road They say that there are three great things to see in Australia - the Rock, the Reef and the Road. The first two are well known back home, ... read more

Back at the Monkey Foundation, we were met by a whole load of new arrivals. As a way of 'everyone getting to know everyone', someone suggested a game of Capture the Flat, which involves two teams, two flags and a lot of running about in the dark. NOT a good idea. Within minutes, me and another girl had tripped (in perfect unison) over a hidden bump on the path and ended up with skint knees and legs like little children. We hobbled up to the cottage before the blood got too bad... We were limping for a good few days afterwards, and my knees were ooooozing for about 3 weeks! Lovely! Remind me never to play that game again... Everything was going smoothly, until the weekend, when someone started feeling ill. Off they went to hospital, ... read more

It was an 8 hour bus ride (after almost missing our bus because we didn't realise it was the one we wanted!) to get to a town called Tzaneen. The bus ride itself wasn't very fun - one of those coaches with 2 seats on one side and 3 on the other, so all the seats are tiny. We did get to watch a Mr Bean film though :-S When we finally arrived, an hour late (which is apparently pretty good for that bus - some people arrive hours and hours behind schedule!), I was watching out of the window to see who might be picking us up. The only person I saw who I thought might be our lift was someone in a pickup, and I dismissed this immediately, since there was only 1 spare ... read more

Our final stop on the way south the Jo'burg was Pilansberg, where we spent a couple of nights. We did a day's game drive and saw loads of animals again - including a huge herd of elephant with some tiny babies, another leopard and plenty more rhino. We also spent a few hours in Sun City which is like the mini Las Vegas of South Africa. It was all quite tacky, but I did experience my first time in a casino (without managing to become a millionaire) and did a class where I learned how to play the African drums, which was fun! The final night of the tour was on the outskirts of Jo'burg where we had a huge finale goodbye party. The perfect end to a perfect month :-)... read more

We only spent a few nights in Namibia, on our way to Botswana, but one of the campsites was the most interesting campsite of the whole trip. It had loads of different toilets and showers all in reed enclosures, and all with different themes. There was a throne toilet (Poo With A View) and a bath that looked out over the river (and yes, any boats sailing by could look up at you peeing!), a toilet in a tree house (Poopafalls), showers hung up in buckets in trees (Tarzan)... Quite hard to explain, but the pictures might explain more... The swimming pool was a floating swimming pool right in the river, and had such a strong current that you could swim and swim and not actually move anywhere. I also saw my first snake - it ... read more