A tree giraffe, a rock zebra, and three rabbits.

My apologies.  The email updates are running late and out of timetable order.   But after a rather frenetic week, here I am sitting at Johannesburg Airport BA Lounge waiting for my flight to Cairo via. London.

I have spent the last week living in a tent and trialling out for long distance deodorant adverts.  Since we last met, I managed to touch two continents, two hemispheres and three countries in less than 18 hours.

Following on from Hong Kong, we flew into Jo'burg and had a direct connecting flight to Zimbabwe to see Victoria falls. 

The 21 hours in Vic falls went something like this.  Get off plane, Have shower at airport, Get on another plane, Get off plane, go to hotel, change clothes, run to victoria falls admission booth, avoid gang of thieves selling plastic giraffes, pay admission, run around victoria falls, get wet, take photographs, get wetter, make lots of appreciative noises about how nice the falls are, take photos, dry wet cameras, leave falls, run to hotel through gang of thieves now selling girraffes, raincoats, elephants and plastic llamas, get to hotel, change clothes to get to river boat cruise (leaving in 5 minutes), do river cruise, point at hippo showing us teeth, take photo of elephant, go back to hotel, eat, sleep, get on helicopter to see falls from air, lean out of helicopter window, get in trouble from helicopter pilot, get back to hotel, leave hotel, get on plane.  

Arriving back in Johannesburg, we arrived at our hotel which was sort of in the middle of nowewhere, well, at least if you were standing on a chair to hang out your underwear, you could SEE the middle of nowhere.  We had a 5 hour drive to the Krueger National park with a driver who looked like he needed a good cardiac surgeon.   He also liked overtaking on blind corners at 140KMH.  We did arrive safley. 

We spent the next 5 days camping (quite acceptable amenities even for Julie), waking up at 5.30AM and trekking through bushland looking for animals.  We did hours of walking.  Our guide holds the Guinness World Record for walking from the Cape to Cairo.  I think he may still be going.   In two days of trekking we saw at least three Rabbits.  Fan-bloody-tastic. 

I am going to get T-Shirts printed that say "I came all the way to South Africa to do a safari and all I saw was THREE F*!N Rabbits". 

I did not spot any Aardvarks.

But wait - there's more.  We did see some wildlife.  At one stage we came around a corner in our safari truck and nearly drove into the rear end of a large Elephant.   At one stage I saw a giraffe and had the rest of our crew looking for it before I realised it was a branch of brown leaves in a tree.  One of the other guys spotted a zebra that was actually a rock and Julie spotted a wilderbeast that was actually a Lion.  We did see a lot of animals (elephants, antelope, buffalo, zebra, girraffe, etc, etc.  It was awesome. 

We are now off to Cairo (via London).  More when I can find internet access.

Ric.