Archive for June, 2008

Those who know me well are probably pretty aware that I’m not renowned for being a morning person. Not quite a bear with a sore head, but maybe a dog with a sore wotzit. Or something. Which made it all the more surprising that I was quite fine with the idea of waking up at 5 this morning for another game drive, to see if we could find Frodo or one of the other leopards again. But to be honest, when you get sunrises like these, it’s pretty hard to be too upset about being awake. That, and the two coffees to get the morning started…

Will the great food, great weather and great animal sightings ever end? After a fairly relaxed morning we managed to borrow a spare 4WD and headed off for another couple of game drives in the afternoon and evening. Elephants, giraffe and rhino were the order of the day, though not in the same volumes as Kruger and Ngala (Phinda is only one percent the size of Kruger, after all), and we were extremely fortunate to see both lions and cheetah, adults and cubs alike.

So we decided to stay an extra day with Flippie’s parent’s, for a variety of reasons that I’m sure were important at the time but elude me right now. I finally managed to get out for my first run of this trip – well, it felt more like a waddle, but it was some sort of forward motion in any case. May well be the only time in my life where I can count the wild animals while jogging – for the record there were 14 impala and six warthog. Thankfully nothing bigger than that – the big cats can hit 80-110km/h, and I’m fairly certain I couldn’t quite manage those sort of speeds even with a hungry lion after me…