Safari update - 3 days worth and some close encounters!

For the last few days of our holiday I left the camera at home and really tried to be present when we were out on our game drives - I could not resist taking a few snaps with my phone though!

Lioness ( we saw two of them)

Crazy bird 🤣

Warthogs - they are actually called Pumba!

Giraffe (a whole tower of them, but they were playing hide and seek between the trees!)

White Rhino

A close encounter of the Rhino kind…

Up close to the male lions

Leopard Tortoise - one of the ‘small 5’

We saw a cheetah having her lunch - thankfully we were too late to see her ‘selecting’ her lunch...

some quite scary encounters with the lions

they are big softies really

We met the whole pride just after they had their dinner..

The closest lioness in the pic above was clearly full from the meal - she let out the loudest fart, then she stood up, moved away from her bestie, looked us dead in the eye and squatted down to do the biggest dump! All the while eyeballing us to say 'what are you going to do about it?' Let me tell you, it absolutely STANK! We could not start the engine to move away as it would have disturbed/upset her, so we all had to sit with our noses covered until it was safe to move. I think it is the worst thing I have ever smelled, and I used to be a nurse!

We had a last look at some rhino

and played more hide and seek with elephants and giraffe

That last game drive was just perfect - we had been up since 4 packing and getting our stuff ready so the staff could transport it off the reserve while we were out, and Sim tried his best to let us see as many animals is possible.

When we finally left and got to our car, it was to find that they had packed us a breakfast to go! So sweet.

One final pic of us with Sim our guide, and off we went.

The journey home was uneventful, if unnecessarily stressful! Of all of the airports I have ever been to, Johannesburg is the least organised, most chaotic. We had a 3 hour layover and only made the plane by the skin of our teeth! Only one scanner working, only 2 passport controllers, the place was rammed.

Still, we made it onto our Qatar Airlines flights - do you remember me saying how ridiculously code the outbound flights were - well I had 'raised my concern' to them via email (British for complained) and we did hope we would be upgraded on the return flight - no such luck as both flights were jam packed, but they certainly knew my name! On both flights I had a an air steward come to me to say they were my personal steward, and I should let them know if I needed anything, and then periodically checked in on me throughout the flight - they even served my meals first before moving to the other end of the cabin - goodness knows what our fellow passengers thought - Emma did the sensible thing and slept, so we will never know if they knew her name too....

We did a lot on this trip - highlights being shark cage diving, penguins on the beech, the wine tram, feeding elephants, a death defying drive on a burst tyre and 11 Game drives - but the thing we have done most is laugh.

We are home now, and suffering from the post holiday blues - there is nothing for it but to start planning the next adventure!

P.S. in case you are wonder about Audrey - I did write to the President of SA with a commendation - no reply as yet, but I am going to try the SA Conulate now I am back in the UK ☺️