We bought Baz bus tickets which allow us to go pretty much anywhere in SA for a fixed price, so we hopped on and headed over towards Nelspruit, where we were hoping to meet some friends of the Miall clan, Nikki and Pete, but unfortunatly we got off the bus about 100km too far, oops. The local backpackers was great though, mainly because of the guy who worked there - Jimmy, who hooked us up with the perfect safari vehicle (see photos) and lent us a tent, some books and binoculars and reccomended a 4.15am start the next morning. Yes I wasn't even sure that a time like that existed until the alarm went off in the middle of the night and sure enough, we got up.

Luckily Jack drove us along the motorway to one of the gates entering the Kruger National Park, and we got there for sunrise. I was so excited about seeing all the animals, but we drove around for about an hour without seeing anything but birds and insects. This made it even more amazing then when we stopped by the side of the road to look at a group of Impala, and this huge buffalo came wandering past. We got the same thrill seeing every other animal for the first time - elephants, hippos, giraffes, lions - there were so many.

The only downside was that our Chico (the little black VW car) didn't have aircon, so we rode along with the windows down sweating in the metal oven of a thing. Still, it was amazing when an elephant would walk right up to us and we had to judge how close we were going to allow it to come. As you can see by the photos, the car in front of us had some serious balls when this huge bull headed for them and started to feel the car with his trunk. Luckily they came out in one piece but we were wetting ourselves!!

The days consisted of driving around for ages, seeing animals, taking risky loo breaks, eating in picnic areas and dinner in the campsite restaurant. We took a walking safari on the third morning which was so much fun, although we didn't see many big animals. The only story to tell involved you know what - yes, monkeys. One lunchtime we stopped in the picnic area and took out our yummy loaf of raisin bread, along with a big knife and chopping board to cut it up. There were a few other people around and we sat down and began to eat. I noticed some vervet monkeys hanging around the tables, some were carrying babies, but they looked pretty harmless. However, with my past track record, I kept a close eye on them, and noticed that they were also checking us out. I started to get a bit more worried as they got closer and closer, but Jack had the situation under control. Or so he thought!

Tucking into my second slice, I saw one of the monkeys come right up to my chair, and I jumped up cause well, I'm pretty scared of them. It then jumped up onto the chair I was sitting on, and swiftly grabbed a slice of bread from the table. Then Jack stood up and tried to shoo them away as they surrounded us, and as quick as anything, another one jumped right up in front of us, dodged the huge bread knife, picked up the whole loaf, and scarpered. We were pretty dumbstruck, and felt rather foolish having to retreat to the car with empty stomachs whilst the thief doled out his winnings to the rest of the group.

Still, they weren't as scary as the baboons.... eek!