Our last night at Onguma was quiet - shared with the 3 others who went to bed early so we sat by the fire and drank our wine and chatted to Dennis, our waiter. The nights get cold (and the mornings even colder) but we had really warm quilts and, to make it even better, we found hot water bottles in our beds - a lovely touch. As I said, the mornings are cold and with no heating in the tent - and getting up before sunrise - we made use of the robes and slippers! ...

Appendix of animals, birds and insects seen during the trip: ANIMALS (21) Springbok Black faced impala Impala (standard) Giraffe Hartman’s Mountain Zebra Plains zebra Slender mongoose Banded mongoose Elephant Blue wildebeest Warthog Dassie Oryx Ground squirrel Shrew Mouse Kudu Lion Caracal Blesbok Steenbok BIRDS (27) Eagle White backed vulture Guinea fowl Rupell’s Khoraan Northern black khoraan Ostrich Red headed finch Sunbird ...

We left the hotel at about 08.15 and re-entered the park. The park is about 100 miles across from where we were entering but a) there is a speed limit of 60kph, b) there are lots of detours and waterholes along the way and c) the quality of the gravel roads varies. All of these combine to reduce average speed and that doesn’t take into account events along the way! After a little while we saw half a dozen vehicles parked up which indicates ‘something of in...

So yesterday afternoon David and Helen from Chalfont St Giles flew into the camp with their pilot as a stop on their Southern Africa safari trip! They joined us on the afternoon game drive during which we saw zebra, oryx, giraffe, ground squirrel and springbok. In spite of seeing elephant droppings and lion cub and leopard tracks we didn’t find the actual animals. Shame! Though we did hear lions roar on the way to bed (we were on the way to bed rather than th...

After our morning walk we had lunch at midday with instructions to be back for 4pm for tea and a game drive. We set off in the Land Rover viewing vehicle. (I say Land Rover and later ask the owner why he uses them. Apparently they are cheaper than Toyota but three of his LRs have replacement Toyota or Isuzu engines!!) The scenery round here is beautiful - it is ringed with mountains - and we soon spot springbok (common) and soon after a small group of Kudu wit...