Blogs from Gauteng, South Africa, Africa - page 2

November 27, 2020 LX 288 touched down at Johannesburg International Airport (called Tambo), at 03:55 AM, after a 9:47 hours flight from Zurich. In it were two mighty excited passengers Nui & Nenad. Despite the Covid restrictions everywhere, we managed to squeeze out of Europe and into the summer of the southern hemisphere. As the SWISS Boeing 777-300 ER taxied, we looked how darkness slowly gave way to dawn, and at each other, gave us a big kiss, and said YES !!! we are here. Nenad was previously in several other African countries, but never in Southern Africa, nor the country South Africa. A wish he held for years. And for Nui, this exotic, far away place held so many mysteries and excitements she was eager to discover. Johannesburg the biggest city of the country with ... read more

We arrived from Hoedspruit, South Africa and are now in Johannesburg waiting to board our flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where we have a 5 hour layover. We flew through here in our way to Cape Town so I’m not looking forward to hanging out in their lounge until our flight to London takes off at midnight. See you in Ethiopia.... read more

Even though we left the Thornybush Game Reserve today, there was still a 5am wake up call, bags out at 6!! And then there was the excitement of the morning - a frog in the shower! Lucky it was when Trina was in there and not me! We have had a great three days, in our lovely room (except for the frog), and seeing the Nyala {yet another sort of antelope) all around as we walk to and from our room. One of the males seemed to be always at our front door or on the footpath between us and where we wanted to go! We were transported by the same mini buses back to Hoedspruit (they were bumpier than the jeeps, speeding down the corrugated dirt "roads"). Three giraffe were near the roadside to say ... read more

We awoke earlier as usual although we would have struggling to make a morning game drive had it been on our agenda for the day as it was just after 5.30am.It is going to take some time before we get back to waking later although it isn’t really going to be necessary to get too much change to our timing as we are both back to work the day after we get back to Tauranga. We took the luxury of staying in bed and listening to the afternoon talk back on Newstalk ZB(well you do have to keep up with a bit of news) We caught up with the Aussies at breakfast who had done the boat cruise yesterday while we went on the game drive. They were heading for Victoria Falls this morning while we ... read more

Dawn was breaking as I drew back the curtain to check on the status of the weather and was pleased to see it was another fine sky overhead which should make for a pleasant flight north to Johannesburg so we can position ourselves ready to head to Kruger National Park tomorrow. Again, although the bed was firm we both had a good night’s sleep with the added bonus that there was no early morning phone call from Auckland from someone who had found ‘our wandering dog’. With the car to be dropped off at Port Elizabeth airport this morning we have spent a bit of time condensing our possessions so the it fits again into a suitcase and a backpack each and that includes the gin and vodka that we still have left. We have done ... read more