Monday 4th. Valley View Guest House, Mogwase.

Only 9pm but we're both shattered. We left home at lunchtime yesterday. Train to Leeds then a very crowded train to Manchester Airport. We flew Lufthansa to Frankfurt, then overnight to Johannesburg. Sitting behind two very noisy small children, so I got very little sleep on the flight. We'd pre-booked a Hertz hire car - a tiny, tinny Toyota - but their office was very busy and it took us a couple of hours before we were on the road. The South African motorways are OK but once we were on a trunk road it got a bit scary. They expect you to pull over onto the hard shoulder if someone wants to get past you, and oncoming traffic tends to overtake regardless of whether the road is clear and expects you to get out of the way, so you have to be constantly alert. Then when you pass a town or village there's people walking all over the road trusting you to not run them over. The worst thing was I could find nowhere to pull over for a rest. I'd intended only to drive away from Jo'burg then stop at a service station for a rest and a bite to eat, but I saw nowhere suitable for two whole hours. We went north from the airport, skirting around Pretoria to the east and north then heading west towards Rustenburg. I didn't have much time for taking in the scenery having my eyes on the road all the time, but Robbie spotted a large antelope some way off, and lots of African sacred ibis' around a rubbish dump. Many slag heaps from the mines scattered across the landscape, but it was mostly rural scenery - some lovely sunflower fields, a lot of cane fields and a huge blue sky, and once we turned off the main trunk road we were in to the bush veldt which is quite pretty. We got to our guest house at about 3pm feeling like zombies. Mogwase is a ramshackle assortment of huts spread over quite a large area just outside the border of Pilanesburg National Park, but the Valley View Guest House is jolly nice, on a ridge on the edge of town with a view across miles and miles of plain. There's a swimming pool and a gym, and we can't believe we're only paying £50 a night B&B. Have we got our currency conversion wrong? We both crashed out as soon as we got the keys to our room - it is very hot here midday - 34 centigrade. Then whiled away the rest of the afternoon in and around the pool. We could see tongues of lightning dancing over the plain 50 miles away, but it was fine and sunny here. There's a couple of palm trees beside the pool that have a colony of southern masked weaver birds in them, with their hanging woven nests. I invested in a decent birder's telescope and tripod this winter, so I was able to pick out some European bee-eaters on the hillside above us, and a lovely grey go-away-bird (yes, that's it's real name!) quite a large, gentle looking grey bird with a fine majestic crest. We drove to a tourist resort restaurant just inside the park for dinner. The meal was huge - although we'd eaten nothing but a muffin since breakfast on the plane and were weak with hunger, the salad starter on its own would have been enough. But I still managed to polish of a sirloin steak afterwards...better get straight into that gym tomorrow morning! The lightning reached Pilanesburg just as it got dark, and soon we were eating under a thatched roof watching torrential rainfall pummell the concourse outside. A large friendly moth appeared and started feeding on the balsamic vinegar on Robbie's plate. Being very tired, we tried to get into the wrong car - nearly all South African cars are white - then drove through the park in the dark with great sheets of lightning flashing all around us. Then I took a wrong turning and we got lost in Mogwase village. Did I mention how tired we are? Going to sleep soon - it's nearly 10pm.