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I was awake at 4.45am so headed to the shower block for a peaceful shower - I was not the first, there was a lady from somewhere else on the camp site with the same idea. As we were only here for one night so we had another quick start and the need to pack up all our stuff prior to a 6.15am game drive with Admire while Mathew took down the tents and put the breakfast out.
It was a cool fresh morning particularly with the bus windows open - our first sighting was a marabou stork silhouetted against the rising sun, next we watched baboons sitting in the trees sunning themselves and warming up (today's photo) - just as we were trying to do! That said as the day wore on the temperature rose steadily to a toasty 30 degrees plus. We also saw bushbuck, impala, a perched martial eagle and a whalbergs eagle, only identified finally by looking at the bird books - the brown eye confirmed it wasn't a tawny eagle which has a yellow eye. There was seemingly not much wildlife around this morning - other drivers we met confirmed our view.
When we returned Mathew was on the final two tents - so to speed up the process we had breakfast and did all the washing up and helped with some of the less technical packing away. John and I had a quick walk to the shop, with Maggie, but found nothing to purchase - consequently we walked to reception where we met the bus at 9.30am and headed off for our final drive through the park, it ended around noon with lunch at the Melane gate before heading across the Crocodile River, aptly named as we did see crocodiles, to the nearby town to do our shopping for our next two days in Swaziland. On the way out of the park we watched the antics of more families of baboons, a white rhino who nonchalantly walked across the road negotiating the vehicles, who were trying to get a sighting, then when just 2km from the gate we saw several groups of elephants - one family with a very young baby passed right behind us - the protective mother was a little grumpy and we feared for our trailer - but after some ear flapping and trunk waving she moved off into the bush, with youngster in tow.
After we had done our shopping and were waiting for the rv time we had a truly excellent ice cold coffee shake with coffee ice cream at the diner attached to the large Spar supermarket.
Supplies bought we headed to Swaziland - at the border we were stamped out of South Africa, walked across no mans land and were stamped into Swaziland. First impressions were of a mountainous kingdom with forestry a key industry; this was obvious from the plantations of pine we passed through and the large sawmill we saw; in the south apparently the key industry is sugar cane.....which we will see as we drive out of the Kingdom on Monday.
We finally arrived at Malolotja Nature Reserve and our snug warm cabins which we are staying in for the next two nights - we shared with Chris and Caroline as each had two bedrooms and a bathroom. We also had nice fluffy white towels - two nights to look forward to without our 'chammy' leather type travel towel - effective but not as aesthetically pleasing! Tonight we had dinner in the guides cabin - again the inside warmth made a real difference from our usual alfresco affairs! That said after a hot day the outside temperature was quite balmy; the wind was warm albeit it seemed to howl around the cabins making you expect cold - we were all pleasantly surprised and quickly shed our usual fleeces.
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