We awoke to the sound of Simbian Mobile Disco from the alarm clock/phone but a minute later we heard Florence, the main organizer for the camp ask whether we were awake. She explained that it was 0800 now and if we wanted to join the safari we should really hurry. Surprised we looked at my phone, which stated 0700 – well well no time to argue. Three minutes later we had brought some muffins and got ourselves dressed but unfortunately missed a bacon&egg breakfast. Apparently my phone had decided to adjust itself to the laptop’s timezone, i.e. Swedish and one hour later. Bah.

We did not have a guide for ourselves this time, instead we were accompanied by Chris, an australian guy and four other Swedish people. The whole point of being able to speak swedish without others understanding seemed to have been lost somehow. Todays goal was to spot some cats and off we drove.

Safaris are hard to describe with words, we saw too many wonderful sights to count (however my camera’s memory card was about full after some ~450 shots after the two days;)). In general we had better luck (or a better guide?) this day than the previous and got the chance to see some lions.

First three females dozing under a tree, some ok shots but later on the day we ended up being the only car enjoying the sight of a male lion having a feast on a Giraffe. The carcass smelled somewhat, possibly a day or two old, and there were two dead trees nearby with a bunch of vultures waiting for their turn. Really really nice to see that view, not more than at maximum 20 meters away.

Another highlight was the bathing elephant babies, it seems that anything being newly born or very young can be cute – regardless how mad ugly some animals become as they become adults. Speaking of ugly, it seems that Wilder beast, also known as Gnu, was one of “the ugly five” (warthog being another proud member), Mona found this very entertaining. Something else entertaining was the guide’s very good explanation to why Nialas looked furry – they are.

We had another nice dinner back at Marc’s Treehouse lodge but went to bed rather early to be able to get up for the early bush-walk tomorrow morning at 0600 and then start the journey towards Port Elizabeth…

Despite the heavy rain during the night we awoke dry and rather well-rested. After a nice fruit-salad and muffin breakfast and the daily Malarone pill we were off to Kruger. The three people staying at the same place decided to take the day off which meant that Mona and I got ourselves our very own guide. Not bad at all 🙂

The safari started with us being lucky to see a nice Rhino rather close and Rhinos are quite big, I would not like to get in the way once one of those picks up the speed towards you. Snapping away pictures and enjoying the views (Binoculars were easily worth the purchase in Sweden) time passed and we had lunch at some place called Sakari or similar.

I’m not sure why but there seems to be a general contempt against organization in South Africa, but this restaurant probably set the record. Menus and placards everywhere dictating possible offers/orders – people everywhere and not surprisingly about 3 queues of people. It was not obvious at first that the only queue one should stand in was the cashier. You did not order where you could see the food or some menu, which confused the lot of the guests. After a long wait we got what we had pointed out though (Greek Salad – keeping it simple) and after Mona had done her own cappuccino (they had nice beans as well as appliances – not just the necessary skill/motivation) we got back to the car to continue the safari.

It was a really nice day with a lot of wonderful sights, many of which were recorded by camera and in the end we saw three out of the big five. Rhino, buffalo and elephants – we had not seen any lions or leopards but were hoping for more luck with the cats for tomorrow. Lions are easier to see, not easy but compared to the very elusive leopards or cheetahs chances are much bigger…

Well back at the camp we enjoyed another nice dinner with rice/chicken/vegetables and a couple of Savanna Ciders at the bonfire together with the other four guests before heading back to our treehouse the night.

I believe I managed to get a couple of hours sleep, Mona had perhaps a hour in total so we were somewhat sluggish as we tumbled through passport control to pick up our luggage. Following the signs didn’t do much good and after seeing the same bag pass for the third time I felt that probably our luggage didn’t make it despite the promises of the luggage guy. Then Mona appeared with our bags and a smile, the bags had just been placed on the wrong conveyor belt 🙂

We found the pick-up van labeled Viva Safari and a sign with “Maria Karlsson” and said hello to a couple from Hong Kong, Chen and Alice. Apparently a bunch of other guys were scheduled to join us but their flight was late so off we drove. We stopped for lunch at a fast-food restaurant(?) with the wonderful name Wimpy’s. I was slightly surprised to find that they had vegetarian friendly offerings – however that was you were able to get the hamburgers without meat, for as far as I could tell the same price. I had a dangerously colored milkshaky-thingy together with some chicken wraps instead.

We continued the drive as the others joined (and had to eat in the car), they spoke German but said their flight came from Stockholm. They spoke fluent Swedish, always a good thing to know in advance who would understand any well-timed comments about the War. After a good drive of about 6 hours in total we reached the lodge of the others. We switched car and had a quick nightly game drive to watch the sun set as well as caught a glimpse of what we were about to see in Kruger next day.

After the nightly game drive we got in the car again to head towards Marc’s Treehouse lodge where we would spend the upcoming days. We arrived, ate some rice/chicken/vegetable stuff and as we walked to our Treehouse we almost stepped on a black snake. It wasn’t that big, perhaps 40-50cm and quite thin but still, we watched it wriggle and then saw another wriggling body, brown this time, approach the first one. We were fortunate to be able to watch the snakes start a amazingly fast fight, going at each other and attempting to tie knots. At some point the brown one got the upper hand though and did a good ol’ “I’ll swallow you piece by piece” at the black one. They kept twisting/rolling but the black snake slowly bit by bit disappeared in the brown one.

The very long day was finished with a well-needed shower. The shower and bathroom were some bamboo walls with water and electricity somehow working there. The wind was blowing up and not far away was a intense lightning storm so while showering one would see the sky above light up in flashes every half a minute. After the very nice shower we crashed in our awesome awesome treehouse…