It dawned, as predicted, much cooler so we were thankful that we had opted for a later start and a morning with the meerkats. We missed them getting up and sunbathing as we heard of a caracal in the area - we found the cape fox it had killed but couldn't find the caracal. When we arrived with the meerkats they were scurrying around frantically digging for insects and really big maggots - they are them quickly but occasionally I got a glimpse of one going down! Th...

Well we slept until 0630 - had a great nights sleep but missed the meteor shower. After the long walk walk to the very outside loo I made a coffee, albeit the cafetière under plunger pressure shot a lot of it out all over me and the nice Tswalu white dressing gown! Liam arrived at 8 am with some much welcome porridge which we ate before setting off for the pans in the extreme west. A cold front is definitely approaching the cape because it was a cooler day and t...

We were up before our alarm call at 0630 - it's the end of winter so it was still dark. We walked to the main lodge and after a quick bowl of porridge ( more like semolina or mealy pap) we headed off to drive around the contours of Tswalu. The wind was up and it was quite chilly, the first animal was a bat eared fox curled up trying to stay out of it, this was closely followed by sable grazing on the side of the hills amongst the rocks - one was silhouetted a cha...

We arrived in South Africa on Monday 9th August and spent our first two nights in the lovely Intercontinental Hotel at the airport recovering from the flight - we didn't get too much sleep -and the hectic two weeks before we left. I went to Spa for some indulgence while John was hooked on his new book, by a Nigerian Orange prize winning writer; we also indulged in watching the Olympics - some thanks to South African Television and some thanks to the BBC Sports Ap...

We left Homer in the pouring rain and were thankful this wasn't yesterday as the cloud was really low .......but we saw our bears at Brooks Falls and I have sorted a lot of my photos now and even though the weather was dull I have some good ones of the bears fishing. We made good time to Anchorage - about five hours with stops - one for coffee at Soldotna and a MacDonalds hash brown and one for a loo break and mozzarella sticks at Girdwood. The wildfire was now...