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 App - it's hard to believe that this time 4 years ago we were in Brazil and predicting the current highs and lows of the games!
Thursday dawned, and after a morning in the gym and readying ourselves, the driver arrived early to take us to Fireblade - a private airline with executive jets owned by the Oppenheimer's who own Tswalu. Their heart is conservation and diamonds - and according to Wikipedia they were behind the company - Anglo American.
That perhaps explains the five star treatment we and six other guests had while we waited for the flight, during the flight and on our arrival into Tsawlu.
We were met by Liam our guide and Ben our expert tracker - who within 5 minutes of leaving the airstrip had found pangolin tracks and its burrow - sadly too deep and dark for us to see inside.
We slowly made our way back to camp having a game drive enroute - we found the pride of lions - looking decidedly hungry and skinny but doing what lions do best- sleeping. As we progressed we spotted a slender mongoose and within minutes a yellow mongoose, the latter was being mobbed and watched by small birds.
We then let Ben jump out where he had seen a pangolin before and while he searched we went on to a waterhole and found birds drinking particularly laughing doves and a 'lark like bunting' - that's it's name! Not long after Ben called on the radio - he had found the young one - after the initial excitement we kept our distance but it was quite nervous and stayed concealed as much as it could under the bushes where it was hunting for termites, but I did get some shots and it was nice to see such a rare animal so early on in the trip. Not long after we spotted another desert specialist the brown hyena ( today's photo) - very fluffy and slightly more attractive than the spotted hyena of the African plains. Indeed their were two one marking its territory the other nervously keeping an eye on him.
We saw more birds including the swallow tailed beeater , ostrich, dusky sunbird, the northern black Korhaan, and scaly feathered finch and the sociable weaver ( indeed the airport canopy was built around one of their communal nests).
As we approached the lodge we saw several species of antelope, wildebeest, springbok, red hartebeest and the final Jewel in the crown sable - lovely black makes with impressive sweeping horns.
Once we arrived we were met by Rachel who gave us the briefing on everything we needed to know before taking us to our enormous lodge , with everything you could think of, to settle and shower before dinner.