A clear starlight night meant it was a cool morning with a heavy dew but it warmed quickly to give us a really nice day. Dillon took us and Maureen, a regular lodge guest, on an easy walk in the valley. Ionna is like most teenagers allergic to walking but this was a good pace and she did well. The highlight was a baby leopard tortoise. We also saw rock hyrax on the drive down, cape batis, bush buck, impala, the kite spider and fresh leopard prints on the road. We...

The reason I chose this On Track Safaris trip was because they had set it out so the experience builds and you get an understanding of the smaller animals, track signs and the bush environment before venturing into big 5 country and hopefully experiencing the larger animals. After early coffee we made our way, on the safari truck, with other guests to a crossroads of tracks - called the morning newspaper, to see what animals had passed through overnight - kudu a...

Well we finally arrived in South Africa after an interesting start to our journey at the Virgin check in desk in London yesterday. We arrived as early, 2.30pm, as we normally do and waited for Kim and Ioanna, who were coming on their first safari and were enroute from Yeovil. They arrived excitedly, just after 3pm, and we went to check in - I handed over our passports - the lady on the check in desk kept thumbing through John's then finally said he hasn't got tw...

As we leave these are our reflections on Ghana:- It's a country with industrious hard working people even if many are working hard just to subsist. The fruit particularly the pineapple and mangoes we bought in the south were the best we have ever tasted. Religion plays a big role in the country and dominates billboards - advertising prayer events and other religious gatherings. The south has an eclectic mix of religions catholic, apostolic, presbyterian, Jehov...

We were back to 0530 for breakfast as we needed to get to Bobiri Forest and Butterfly sanctuary while the birds were still active. Williams target was to find the dwarf hornbills that live here - I spied the first on a bare branch high up, the dwarf black hornbill, apparently it is often missed as people think it's a one of large kingfishers. The other was more elusive albeit we did see it flying several times and got it's eye and reddish head in the telescope f...