Ok here it is the tales of mine and Mel's African adventure!!

It started on Thursday 24th August, I flew to Sydney from Brisbane and had to wait in a room with a bunch of strangers for the night as the airport closes at 11.30pm and my flight wasn't leaving until 10.30am the next morning. Eventually I caught my flight to Johannesberg, I then had to wait at that airport until 6.30am the next morning for Mel to arrive, I had arrived at 6pm!!

By now I was really tired but it was worth it to meet Mel!! We met up and got our hire car. Now we had a 4 and 1/2 hr drive to our hotel near the Kruger National Park. The drive went quickly and before we knew it we were at the hotel. It was really posh, it has three swimming pools, gym,squash courts and just about eveything you can imagine. As you can understand we had an early night!!

The next day we were up really early so that we could explore the Kruger National Park. We drove Betsy (our car) into the park and the first animls we saw were some Impalas, which are like gazelles. Further on we saw a giraffe, by the end of the day we had seen hippos,zebras,lions,elephants,wildebeasts,antolopes,crocodiles and rhinos!! Plus many other small animals. The highlight was seeing the elephants crossing in front of our car, we then parked next to one of the elephants,we thought it might try and get in our car!! I didn't realise how close we would be to the animals, it was amazing.

We also went to the park the next day but because the weather was hotter there seemed to be less animals around, we did see however some different animals that we hadn't seen yesterday. We had two cheetahs cross in front of our car, a pair of warthogs fighting in front of the car and a monkey that wanted to come in our car!! Poor Betsy. We didin't see any lions today but we did see what they had killed last night,it was a giraffe and now the vultures were having their turn at eating,sounds gross but it was amazing to watch.

Our last day and we spent it in another part of the park called Thorny Bush Reserve. It is a private reserve and we were going on a guided safari. So at 6.30am we were sat in a jeep freezing cold and trying to spot animals. By the end of our safari we had raced wildebeasts, had a herd of elephants including babies cross infront of our jeep and been surrounded by a herd of water buffalo. We had also seen a three week old hippo and a leopard But the best thing was yet to come! We came across a pride of lions!! We parked the jeep about 100 metres away from them, there were three lionesses and two male lions.It was amazing!! After our exciting morning we relaxed by the pool before packing up our things, Cape town here we come!!

We now had the long drive back to Johannesberg so we could catch our flight to Cape Town. It was fairly un-eventful until we got stopped by the police for speeding!! We played dumb and said we didn't know how fast we were going, then he told us that we would have to go to the nearest police station to pay a fine, we told him that we were in a rush to catch a plane. We asked him if we could pay him, he told us it would be very expensive adn then asked us how much we could pay him!! We settled on 200 rand which is less then 20 pounds!! So we had just bribed a policeman!! We boarded our flights to Cape Town and arrived there a couple of hours later!!

We got driven to our hotel in Cape town which turned out to be an old prison!! It wasn't as nice as our old hotel, but it was ok. As it was late we went straight to bed!! The next day we did the tourist thing and went on a city tour on a big red bus!! The guide seemed more interested in pointing out the expensive hotels rather then interesting things!! We caught a cable car up table mountain, as the cable car went up it revolves around so you can see everything. The view was amazing but when we go to the top it was so cloudy that you couldn't see anything, it was also really cold!! We then caught the tour bus again and it took us along the coast. We went to the aquarium, they had a whole tank full of nemos!! They also had some sharks, good preperation for our shark cage diving trip in a couple of days!! That evening we went to a really posh restaurant and ate crocodile,springbok,guinea fowl and ostrich,even Mel ate the meat!!

We were meant to be doing a scuba diving course but it got cancelled due to bad weather, so did our shark diving trip. So we spent a couple of days not doing a lot!! We went to the cinema and went to some nice cafes!! On the sunday the weather had improved, still not enough to go shark cage diving but at least we could do some stuff, we went on a helicoptor ride over cape town and then on a trip to Robben island, which is where Nelson Mandela was held prisoner. It was really good. We had some good news, we were going shark cage diving the next day!!!!

Finally the day had arrived, we were going shark cage diving!! We got picked up really early in the morning and then had a two hour drive to the lodge. We had breakfast and met the other people that would be on our trip. The boat was really small and it was really choppy, so quite a few people were sick, not me and Mel though!! We were part of the first group in the water. We went into the cage which is in the water but not underneath it so your head is above the water at all times. The spotters then shout divers down and you have to dive under the water so see the sharks!! They are huge!! You had to be really careful not to put your hands outside of the cage otherwiae they could have eaten them!!

Mel was in the cage when one of the sharks hit the cage!! She loved it!! On the drive back to Cape Town we stopped at Hermanus and went whale watching, it topped of a brilliant day. We then had to pack as we were leaving the next day. South Africa has been amazing, however if the weather is bad in Cape Town then it shuts down and there isn't a lot to do!!