Another week filled with animals at Thanda. My number of photos is quickly increasing and I am having a crash course in Lightroom and backing up. I am crossing my fingers constantly that my computer does not die a horrible death and take all of my photos with it. I hope to be in a position later today to do my first ever back-up! Big scary that I have gotten to this ripe old age and never had to back up… but I won't say that too loudly lest my computer he...

A part of me is definitely wishing that my leaving Africa today is just an April Fool's joke, but the other part of me is very excited to be seeing my family and friends in less than a week so I am also glad that I am on my way to Australia. I spent my afternoon in Durban on Sunday walking along the beach and generally getting a feel for the city. The city has a much more Indian influence than the rest of South Africa and that means that the blacks don't seem...

On Sunday morning the photography group loaded into the Quantam and drove to the Drakensburg for a four-day photography and hiking trip. It is a 7-hour drive from Thanda and so the first and last day of the 4 were mainly attributed to travelling, but it was nice to get off the reserve none the less. The photography is a mixed group of which I think I have given details before, but as a refresher we have: Betty - 72, American - an amazing lady who has clearly...

As I sit on my balcony in St Lucia with a sign 5 metres away that says 'Beware of Hippos and Crocodiles After Dark' I wonder if I am any safer than sitting in the middle of a game reserve. The whole group has come to St Lucia for the weekend to let off a bit of steam and also so that we are half way to the airport for those that are leaving on Sunday and need to get to the airport in Durban. I am sad that Francien, who also arrived when I did will be staying ...

Finished my second week of photography at Thanda. This week we did an average of 2 game drives per day and took photos on each drive to go into our final catalogue of photos. We didn't quite match the amazing Leopard viewing of last week, however we did see a mixture of Lions, Elephants, Birds, Hyena's, Buffalo's, Giraffe's, Zibra's, Kudu, White Rhino, Impala, Nyala, Hippo's and Wild Dogs. I would have liked to see more Elephants, so fingers crossed this hap...