Today we were up at 4am, John quickly went and made a cup of tea to help us wake up as we had to be ready for a 5am pickup to go to the Umfolozi national park. Umfolozi is a place I have always wanted to go to as I remember as a child seeing a wildlife programme about it and their now famous work with rhinos. We waited in the chilly morning air for Brian our guide - some people were already on the truck and we collected another couple- all in all there were nine ...

We slept until 7am and were a tad jaded after our travels and night drive - today was an all day drive called the heritage tour which took us through part of the ecosystem to Cape Vidal and back. We were joined by a French couple and their 5 year old son who were on holiday from their secondment to Mayotte (an island in the Comoros, just off the South African coast, who had voted to stay French and were now a department of France) Isimangaliso is the renamed gr...

We left Cambridge at 1300 in a Virgin chauffeured car - as I was using my hard earnt miles for the flight I thought it would be good to also use some on a door to terminal experience thereby avoiding having to lug our bags on and off the train! After a hurriedly arranged meeting with a reporter friend, we agreed to rendezvous at the Virgin check in desks; this enabled us to have a chat over a coffee, before John and I headed off for a late late lunch in the Virgi...

Poolepynten &Alkhornet. It was an overcast morning, with a low ceiling of cloud and some wind. The M/S Expedition was under way to Poolepynten, a small peninsula about two thirds of the way along Prins Karls Forland Island. We disembarked around 8AM at some distance from a couple of old trapper’s cabins. One of them the traditional “A” shape, made from the numerous logs found on the beach itself, which probably came all the way from Siberia on the Arc...

Hornsund, Spitsbergen. Sunday morning met us with warmer temperatures, but with that break it also gave us a bit of fog. However, that didn’t hinder a planned Zodiac cruise along the glacier face of Samarinbreen, on the south side of Hornsund with Sørkapp Land to the south. The wind was calm and the bay was even calmer, giving us a more pleasant look at our surroundings. As we left the ship, we saw that there were many icebergs in the area, so we pointed th...