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We left Cambridge at 1300 in a Virgin chauffeured car - as I was using my hard earnt miles for the flight I thought it would be good to also use some on a door to terminal experience thereby avoiding having to lug our bags on and off the train! After a hurriedly arranged meeting with a reporter friend, we agreed to rendezvous at the Virgin check in desks; this enabled us to have a chat over a coffee, before John and I headed off for a late late lunch in the Virgin lounge. This was closely followed by haircut for him and massage for me. Finally we boarded the 2100hour flight to Johannesburg and arrived, after a reasonable nights sleep, around 9.30am - we had been delayed over 40 minutes due to a baggage problem......but this had no impact on us as we had a leisurely transfer to our 1315 internal flight to Richards Bay.
We were met at Richards Bay by Kian Barker - owner of Shakabarker tours our organising company for the next 5 days - and transferred from the industrial, don't stop unless you have to, Richards Bay to the much more idyllic St Lucia. Enroute we saw miles of eucalyptus tree plantations - a sustainable fast growing tree for the wood industry- and more importantly we saw a long crested eagle sitting on the electricity wires.
We checked into Hornbill house,their b&b, and aptly named as we saw both crowned and trumpeter hornbills in the tree above; met Melissa who had put together our itinerary and then walked into town to have an early dinner so we were ready for the 8pm night drive in the Isimangaliso wetland park.
Luckily for us we had ordered before a swarm of American school children descended on the restaurant!
Our guide for the night drive and indeed all our drives into the park was Shikale, a Zulu - who was excellent. We were joined on the drive by a South Africa family.
The weather was damp due to a front was over the area, the previous night they had had buckets of rain, but luckily we had some rain and drizzle but anoraks and blankets meant the experience wasn't impaired.
Our sightings included chameleons (today's picture,is a dwarf chameleon stretching to go higher where they feel safer) we also saw the greener flat necked chameleon alongside impala ( an experiment to see if they can thrive in wetland areas) bushbuck, reedbuck, wildebeest, buffalo, common(grey) duiker, kudu, waterbuck, hippo, greater bushbaby, white tailed mongoose, genet, and the find of the night a serval stalking frogs around a waterhole - brilliant and a first for us.
We stopped for a hot chocolate half way round and were lucky to see a spotted eagle owl sitting on a no entry sign close by.
We returned just after 11pm for a much needed sleep!
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