I guess it’s time to start blogging! With lack of internet and motivation it’s hard to get my head into the space to write but I’ll give it a go!

From Johannesburg we headed straight for Nelspruit, a town near Kruger where we could rent a car. Seeing as we couldn’t ride Betsy through Kruger (as much as we’d love to!) we decided to hire a car and do a ‘self drive’ safari. It’s one of the only parks you can do this in Africa and also the cheapest way.

As we were doing it on the cheap we took our tent and booked a couple of nights in a couple of different sites in the park.

We were pretty excited driving into Kruger and over the two days we saw herds of elephants, giraffe, zebra, impala, wildebeest, buffalo, warthog and antelope.

We also saw rhinos, hippos and the best of all, a lion!

It’s amazing seeing these animals in the wild, I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn’t in a zoo! Prior to going to Kruger we had been told that it was over run with people and whenever you see an animal there will be at least 10 other cars there with you. While this was true at times we were also totally alone on many occasions… we decided to veer off the main road at one point and take a dirt road to our campsite. Whilst travelling at the usual 20/hour looking from side to side I glanced at the road ahead and saw a lion laying in the middle of the road. I was so excited and speechless I just started hitting Dean and pointing.

We both screamed and dean quickly closed our windows. I was hoping to see a lion but having one on the road in front of us with no one else around seemed like a dream! He just layed there watching us, looking around and yawning. So so cool! It was so tempting to lean out the window to take a photo but I couldn’t risk being one of those stupid people you read about… We had no way of getting past him and he seemed pretty content lying there so we just stared and waited. He eventually got up and strode away. We felt so lucky to have experienced that moment totally alone with a lion.

We made it to the camp just as the gates were closing for the night and ended up staying in a round thatched cabin. The next day we set out at 6.30am and drove until 5.30pm😳 We had another private interlude but this time with an elephant. We saw a lone elephant by the side of the road so I pulled over to watch him…. he then started walking straight for us…in hind site it was possibly a dangerous situation which I should have reversed out of but it was too exciting to leave so we stayed there with the windows down staring…as he got closer and closer we got a little nervous as he could have easily crushed the car or nudged us out of the way but luckily he decided to walk past…again, we were totally alone 😁

There was so much amazing wildlife in the park, and we had a fantastic time. We saw more than we expected to see and all up it cost us less than $300. We have a few other safaris pencilled in over the next couple of months so it will be interesting to see the difference of doing it on our own versus being guided.

Feeling very blessed 💕

Today the three of us came together again 😁

We had one of those rare days where everything just worked…we found a cheap place to stay near the airport (where it didn’t feel we may get mugged), we received Betsy with minimal fuss and a sixteenth of the cost we were expecting and got her together within two hours and she started first time 😁

We spent the evening in our room re organising luggage and getting our gear together whilst streaming triple J. We did our first load of handwashing in the bath and cooked dinner in the room on our camping stove (because apparently it is possible to get mugged at night in this area)

I’ve realised I’ve packed too much, dean has realised how many hair products I’ve tried to hide in the pannier and I need to work out how to manage this issue…I think I’ll just blame stress and jet lag and go to bed and deal with it tomorrow! Hopefully he’ll forget about all of my ‘cremas’ after a good nights sleep 😉 Love xx

Laying in bed writing this on my phone with Sal passed out next me, so don’t expect much…

The flight was 32hrs of long, uncomfortable, bored. Most of which was spent next to an overweight old lady who seemed to like leaning against me while she slept. She also really liked bad perfume. Yuck.

We spent an hour in the Joburg airport trying to find missing luggage and a fee free ATM, then had a mild panic attack at the hostel due to getting the exchange rate mixed up, (which was also the reason to spend an hour looking for a fee free atm).

It’s ten rand to one dollar, not three to one.  Stupid!!!

We’re still a bit bleary eyed today, which I’m blaming our little atm episode on…

We visited the Apartheid museum this afternoon (you think you have problems!???), but upon leaving realised it’s in a dodgy part of town and we didn’t have phone connection to order an uber… the taxis all looked like a one way ticket to stabbing-ville, so we went looking for wifi.

Long story short, three guys in cahoots somehow convinced us that we could buy a wifi pass at an atm (wtf?), one by one they wandered past and offered to help us, which ended up with Sal snatching the ATM card from me and running off, while one of them insisted that I’d broken the machine and needed to return with the card to fix it…  “um… I dont think it’s broken, um… I’m really tired… um… sorry if it is broken…”

Then we did something a little smarter and asked some security guards for help, eventually getting a cab back, and looking up “Jo’burg atm scam” …

Hey that’s exactly what happened to us!  WITHDRAW ALL THE MONEY AND CANCEL THE CARD RIGHT NOW!!!!!  Done.   I’m blaming it on the jetlag.

It’s the old rule, If you’re somewhere dodgy and someone offers to help you for no reason at all, don’t trust them.

I cant see anymore.  Need to go to sleep.  A LOT of noise coming from outside as the UEFA cup final is on tonight, I think someone just scored…

Goodnight world, we miss you xxoo