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Tuesday 27th February
Journal entry brought to you by Tami
Today we had lots and lots of driving to do. We woke up stupidly early (yawn) and drove for about three hours until we got to this cafe where we had lunch. I'm pretty sure I had something with cheese in it as most vegetarian things over here contain cheese in vast quantities. Since Tuesday (you may have noticed, we're a little behind on this journal and it's actually Sunday now - oop) Sophie and I have decided to give up cheese as we believe that this will help our skin to clear. Ha. (I've broken it once already and we only started yesterday :-S )
Anyhoo when we eventrually got to our home for the night, we were pretty amazed to find out that we were going to be staying in mud huts! How very very cool?!!! They were so cute and brown and awesome. At some point I'm sure I'll get round to uploading some photos of them onto the site so make sure you have a look - they are very very cool. Plus, what an awesome place to add to your list of accommodation - mud huts! Anyhoo there were two huts for me, Sophie and Paloma to distribute ourselves in, one with three single beds and one with a double bed. I was originally going to take the double bed but then in the end we agreed that Soph and I would take singles and Paloma would have the double. We then went up to our host's family home to make use of his swimming pool for about an hour, and Sophie was very excited because he also had a trampoline so she amazed us all with her routines (for those of you who weren't aware, Sophie adn I used to have trampolining lessons when we were younger, Sophie was vry good at them and carried on for a while, whereas I, as with most things, got bored and gave up very quickly, preferring instead to go shopping on a Saturday morning.) However, the trampoline was different to normal trampolines in that it was flat on the ground over a very big hole instead of on legs. Then Sophie got stung by a wasp which was quite (funny) distressing and so she got some sting-away spray from our host (Dave I think his name was) and we were finally on our way to game drive through the Addo Elephant Park. We weren't very optimistic that we would see very many animals as it was possibly the hottest day ever and animals, like humans, tend to be lazy in the heat and just rest so there wasn't as great a chance of seeing them walk about. However we got there and within about four minutes we'd seen a zebra on a hill. We all began to get very excited then, and as we drove round, we saw lots more zebras, blue cranes, meercats, dung beetles, some kudus, ostrich, loads of warthogs, a jackal, some red hartebeasts, a puff adder, a leopard tortoise and best of all, some elephants! They were sooooo amazing, really striking, and best of all they were really close to the car so we could see them really close. It was amazing. We stopped at a couple of water holes and saw some animals and birds bathing and drinking, then we saw this massive elephant (Keith said it was the biggest he'd ever seen) come and bathe himself which was lovely, he was so gorgeous to watch, just so big and magestic. Anyway, as with the aquarium and Cango Wildlife Ranch, it's probably better if you look at the photo album that I will upload at some point if you want to see the pictures, they'll be much more exciting than my waffling description of what we did.
After looking round the park for a while we went for dinner at the park restaurant, then headed back to the mud huts. Everyone else decided they were going to light a camp fire and get drunk around it but I wasn't feeling too well so I went to bed instead like the lameass that I am. A little later Sophie came back in and I was informed that they hadn't had a fire in the end because it was raining, and then we realised that the door to our mud hut was actually leaking and we had a little flood going on on our floor! We had a mad hurry to get all the bags and clothes off the floor onto the spare bed, and then we finally went to sleep. I didn't sleep very well in the end, I had to go outside to use the loo at about 3 in the morning and I got mosquitoed beyond belief, 6 on one ankle, three on the other, and four on my butt which I am NOT impressed with. I just don't understand how they got there, maybe they bit through my pants (which I was wearing, before anyone gets any ideas about Sophie and I being raging naturists). then I went back to bed. What a day. Those elephants were so cute!
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