Today was our last day in The Park.  We packed up at Lower Sabie and were ready to leave by 7:00 am.   Shan says her body simply won’t let her sleep beyond 5 am and she wonders how she is going to adapt to the school routine next week. Simon is still reeling from the early morning wake up calls!

We took the long drive to Berg en Dal slowly stopping at Skukuza for breakfast.  We sat on the deck of The Cattle Baron and enjoyed watching elephant, waders and green pigeons.

When towing a caravan in The Park you have to be extra careful when meeting an approaching elephant.  The kids were a bit nervous about this guy, but he obligingly went into the bush when he saw we could not reverse

From Skukuza it was another hour or so to Afsaal.  We stopped there to go to the loo, to say farewell to our favourite waitress and to get ice cream

Some highlights from our trip.

We arrived at Berg en Dal at midday, set up camp and rested until 4 pm.  On our afternoon  drive I upped the points to 20 for any of the big five and 50 for anything we hadn’t seen at all on the trip.  Anybody reaching 50 would get an ice cream.  We had some good birding and saw buffalo, lion and rhino which meant that we’d seen four of the big five for the day. We made it back through the gate with a minute to spare.

We all earned enough points to get ice cream but after our braai nobody wanted to eat them so we will save them for tomorrow!