Africa – 17th Sept 2008 – Day 16

We both had a wonderful nights sleep, waking a few minutes before our wake up call at 6am.

After a quick shower we headed down for breakfast. Just as we arrived a lovely porcupine joined us in the garden looking for some breakfast. He has been names Charlie, by Camerons wife. He arrived in the camp a year ago looking ill and with a poorly foot. They have nursed him back to fitness and now he pops in every week for some apple and bread. They are much larger than we expected, but very cute.

We joined Cedric and Sabbela for the morning drive to the Atosha Gane Reserve. John was our guide again. We had a long drive to the park but once in the park saw a large number of animals including large elephants, hundreds of Zebra, a family of hogs having a mud bath and our first group of Mia cats.

We headed back for a good lunch where we met a couple of new English guests called Adrian and Angela.

The temperature here gets very hot by 2PM, so we headed back to our room to relax. We updated the blog and then tried to sleep, but the weather was far too hot. Unfortunately our new tent does not yet have it’s fan in place, so it gets very hot indeed.

By 3.30pm we met Angie and Adrian, Cedric and Sabbela for the afternoon drive. The animals were very thin on the ground, apart from two male lions and a few Giraff and, as always, the myriads of antelope.

On the trip, John, our guide, told us about the time, four weeks ago, when 15 lions came into the camp over night. It was his job to check the camp next morning. He almost came unstuck, when a female lion managed to sneak up to him in an ambush. Luckily John’s two gun shots scared the lioness off.

Dinner was a very civilized affair, we sat with Angela and Adrian. Wow, have those two travelled. They have given us lots of ideas for the future and introduced us to a company called Discovery Initiatives which they could not recommend enough. They live near Blackpool and love the outdoor life. Adrian works for one of Fiona’s companies resellers, Fijitsu. Angela is an accountant.We asked for some sparkling wine but ended up with a free bottle of Champagne. Very nice indeed!!

We headed for bed at about 10pm.