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 of us. All the covers were down on the vehicle as we had a 45 minute drive to Umfolozi and needed a level of protection from the elements otherwise we would all have had hypothermia. The cold was bad enough on the short trip after we arrived, put the awnings up, and made our way to a picnic spot by the river to have breakfast. Watching the sun come up was both lovely and welcome as the temperature slowly rose. Enroute to breakfast we saw a big herd of buffalo, followed by a big bull elephant browsing close to the road - he was doing surprisingly well considering a third of his trunk was missing ( today's picture).
As we progressed through the park we saw a couple of adult rhino then a rhino with a baby, a Burchell's coucal - fluffed up to keep warm, a black shouldered kite and a lappert faced vulture and the usual range of antelope. At our BBQ lunch at the rest camp we were visited by a family of warthog that kept us entertained while they snuffled around.
Sadly no big cats today.......but all in all a good introduction to the park and at least we saw the much famed rhino.
After being dropped off we walked into town and tried another restaurant for dinner - we shared a pizza and blue cheese salad - really excellent but the service was so slow that we left without our second cup of coffee!