In the jungle the mighty jungle, the lions sleep tonight... We were on route to our last stop, Kuzuko Lodge.

It was a long drive ahead. 3 hours to Port Elizabeth. We passed a number of different Tourist attractions on route, some looked really cool, one was called 'Big tree'. I wonder what that place is? There are big trees everywhere what was so special about that one I wonder?

We hit some traffic further on route, there was an accident with a lorry on a bridge. Cars were at a standstill and people were getting out of their cars to see what was going on. We were not getting out of the car for anyone or anything.

A Short fat woman got out of her car, which must have been a few cars behind us, and started walking down the middle of the road. She wasn't the fastest walker and she went all the way down to where the accident was. As soon as the traffic eventually started to move we saw her making her way back. She was ages away from her car, but she didn't seem in a rush, she just waddled back. Her car must have been just stranded in the road.

As we drove over the bridge we saw the severity of the accident. It seriously looked like the engine had blown up. The skid marks on the road were huge and so long. Part of the lorry had been moved off the road at this point but it looked so bad, I'm not sure if the driver survived.

We were back on the move again, it honestly felt like we were driving at home, there were cows and sheep either side of the road and so much countryside to see, it was very picturesque.

We had now driven over the border to Eastern Cape. We had made it to Port Elizabeth the first British built City in SA. We stopped at the airport to drop the car off and meet our driver James. There was no more driving for us, we thought we'd better stay safe and get a driver to take us.

He was brilliant, and full of knowledge. He told us all about the buildings the British had built when they came over to SA years ago, he told us where places get their names from. They had a Newport and Colchester they even had their very own Brighton beach. It was just like being at home.

He spoke the Language of click, which if you haven't heard before, Google it. It's pretty awesome. We tried giving it a go but it was pretty difficult.

After driving over elephant head mountain we went off road for miles. Thank god we did take the car back, pretty sure we would have thought we were lost on the road we were driving on. I don't even think the car would have survived all of the stones and bumps.

James told us that the kudu, a huge antelope would just run in front of the headlights in the night and hit the car. Imagine us driving that road in the dark? It would have been petrifying. I didn't fancy a huge antelope bashing into the front of the car.

We finally saw some Springbok on route along with Mongoose, blue cranes, steinbok and even giraffes. We had seen lots of animals already and hadn't even entered the game reserve.

We drove through a game drive that was currently being developed. James told us that to build a game drive they have to buy the animals in. Guess how much a springbok cost? Remember that there are a load of these in South Africa. So how much do you recon? Well 1 of them... Just the one, cost 1 million. 1 million!! Can you believe it? If that's how much a springbok costs then imagine what a lion or a rhino costs? Crikey!

When we got to the hotel reception, we checked in and were taken from the main reception to another reception which was a 15 minute drive away. We loaded up the 4x4 and headed over to our chalet on the bumpy and windy roads.

We were greeted there by a lovely lady who took us down to the lounge area where there were two women waiting to give us hand massages. I've never had a welcome like that to a hotel before. Have you?

The view from the main building was spectacular. It was just miles and miles of wilderness. I definitely felt like we were in South Africa now. We were served an afternoon tea before our first ever game drive.

We were picked up from the lodge by Arlo. He was our tour guide for the evening. For that trip we were on the search for buffalo. Both other couples on the same drive as us had been twice before and hadn't managed to find a Buffalo, so we weren't holding out much hope. Everyone was dressed properly for safari, which we were not! We were dressed for dinner not to really go out into the wilderness.

We were given an allo plant to try at the beginning of our journey, it's apparently the Elephants second favourite food. It tastes like sour cucumber. It's also really good for healing wounds, so Liz put some on her burst blister to stop infection, which actually worked.

We passed a number of animals on route to the buffalo camp. There were Kudu, springbok, red hearted beasts, even Bushbuck which had apparently never been spotted in Kuzuko before.

We had spotted a buffalo in the distance and he stood still before going off into the bushes. Our guide said that it's quite unusual behaviour for them so they must have been protecting something. He was quite a dare devil and wanted to get in closer to see if there was a new born calf. The thing is if you drive into a herd of buffalo when they are protecting a calf, you're pretty screwed really. But in we went anyway. He was on a major buffalo hunt.

We went down onto the sand, which was a river bed, he said it's very possible to get stuck as the sand was so thick. We were in the sand for about 10 minutes listening out for movement. As we were about to drive off Liz and I spotted a calf run out from the trees. We stopped suddenly, as the branches started to snap, there was definite movement. As we stopped there was the herd of buffalo just walking across the sand. Two of them spotted us, they have one facial expression and let me tell you, it's not the friendliest. When a couple of them start walking towards you, you know to just get out of there. We were in the back of the Landy as well so the buffalo would have reached us first. The other couples finally got to see the buffalo, we were lucky charms!

We spotted a rhino in the distance but the sun was setting so we just watched him from afar. It was too dangerous to go closer as he could just charge at us. After a little while we went to have some drinks under the stars. Before stopping we saw a snake, it was a puff adder. Extremely venomous. One bite from that snake the guide said they would have to call a helicopter out to take you to hospital, and he was slithering right next to us... How scary is that?

When we stopped for drinks, it was pitch black. The stars were incredible to see, we could even see two galaxies quite clearly. The stars here are the best I've ever seen them.

He passed the drinks around and as we were sat in the middle of the pitch black wilderness the guide told us a couple of horror story he's had whilst working on the safari, one was about the elephants and how he got caught driving into their walkway and angered the elephant. I can imagine what happened being pretty terrifying.

Once we were quite spooked we began the drive back to the lodge. We had torches to check around for any animals, 5 minutes into the drive, Arlo scanned the trees only to find an elephant head just staring at us. If there was one around, the whole herd was around and the herd here was between 25-30 elephants. They must have walked straight passed us while we were having a drink. They honestly don't make a sound at all when they walk so we were completely oblivious to them walking passed. The other thing with elephants is, you can't spot them easily in the dark and the road we needed to take was blocked with elephants who weren't in the best of moods. We were trapped in the game reserve with all the wild animals. We were like sitting ducks waiting for wild animals to sniff us out.

The other road back to the lodge was also blocked with elephants and there was only one other route back and it was an extra hour. I wasn't sure my heart could take an extra hour driving round in the pitch black, not knowing what was around. We were freezing, starving and stuck. Not the most ideal scenario. Plus at this point every silhouette of a tree just looked like an elephant to me, which freaked me out even more.

We did eventually make it back and luckily for us there was a fire burning and dinner was ready. This hotel was seriously incredible.

We were Zonked after food so went straight to bed. Before we could get to sleep though Liz had to call the night manager. We had a huge Spider fiasco. Liz had seen it but I wouldn't get out of bed, not until the spider had gone.

Two men came knocking on the door, one with a net and one with a torch. I wasn't really sure what the torch was going to do but the guy with the net caught the spider and we were safe again.

It was a 5am wake up call the next morning. Early or what? The birds were chirping away already. God knows how many bird types are here, there were loads of different sounds.

We got dressed, slightly more appropriately this time and we were ready for game drive number 2.

Arlo met us at the truck, the blankets and water were ready for us, but better than that, Arlo brought us hot water bottles. What a legend. The sun hadn't risen yet so it was bloody cold. One of the couples on the previous drive also joined us.

He told us he had heard the lions early that morning and he knew where they were so we headed off to find them. We saw two lions in the distance. As we drove closer one of them, named Kalahari, walked away, but the other one was led in the sun. He was the main one, called Matt. We were so close to him it was unreal. At one point he got up and started walking closer to us roaring. I'm

not kidding it was so loud you could feel the vibrations on the 4x4. I couldn't believe we were that close to a wild lion.

We chilled with Matt for a little while and then made our way to see the Giraffe. They weren't in the same area as the big 5. We could see their heads poking up from the trees. As we moved closer we could see both of them in full. They were pretty calm and just let us watch them. They were very curious, just staring at us to see what we were going to do. A truck came behind us a bit later and scared them back into the bushes.

Once we had seen the Giraffe we dropped the couple off at reception as they were checking out. It was now just me and Liz aboard the truck. We were having a private safari!

Arlo had heard on the radio that the lionesses were playing with the porcupines. And by playing, I mean trying to catch them. Apparently this was a very rare occurrence, so we headed straight there. On our way we passed Kalahari, the Lion from earlier that morning just chilling on the side of the road. He had made his way to see the lionesses. He was just led with his legs apart facing upwards. Apparently this was him warming his balls up. Haha. There were also elephants walking the mountain in the distance.

Not much further down the road we found both Lionesses playing with 2 porcupines. The porcupines were very clever though, they had joined themselves at the head so that the spikes were facing outwards all around them. The lionesses had no way of getting them. They kept getting hurt by the spikes. A few of them went through the lip area. We just watch them try and catch their food, get injured with the spikes and walk away to pull them out, to then go and do it again. They were obviously hungry and didn't want their food to escape.

It was pretty scary being that close, especially when they were hungry. Everytime they spotted us and walked towards us, we were terrified. They were meters away and could easily attack. We didn't get to see if they caught them in the end but to see them attempting to catch their dinner was amazing.

On the way to find the rhino again we saw a number of different birds flying around, mainly predictors. One of them walked around to catch his prey. He was a Secretary bird, and he is called this because part of his head looked like the pins and things in a secretary's hair. Such a strange thing to be named after.

We saw lots of black rhino dung on the way to find him. He was obviously around somewhere but we couldn't find him. Arlo, got out of the car for a minute and brought us back a twig each. He handed it to us and said, this is from the rhino dung. How delightful. According to the Zulus, if you are handed a twig from rhino dung it's good luck.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped to see the herd of elephants now climbing the mountain. I was quite surprised to see that they had climbed so high on such a steep hill. They're HUGE, but good climbers.

Back at the hotel an hour later than we should have been, (which wasn't a bad things for us) breakfast was waiting. We had some food and then went to chill by the infinity pool overlooking the reserve.

Before the next game drive we had a massage booked in. Some relaxation was needed after all the bumping around in the truck. We were very tense.

I'm not sure if they thought me and Liz were a couple though, as both the massage beds were in the room. We were getting a couples massage by the looks of things. Slightly awkward I won't lie haha.

It was extremely relaxing up until the point she pushed on my shoulder blades over and over again' it was extremely painful, but only for 10 minutes or so. Once it was finished I was very relaxed and loosened up ready for our third and final game drive!

We had another lovely afternoon tea before meeting Arlo again. We were hoping the branch he gave us would bring us luck on our 3rd game drive.

We were the pros on board this time,

There were two new couples with us now. We thought we'd share some of our knowledge and warn them about how cold it gets, so they went to get some extra clothing.

Our first stop on the drive was the highest point in Kuzuko. It was a pretty scary drop but one hell of a view. There were no animals to see around that area though. Arlo just kept stopping to show us types of trees. Some edible ones, some nice smelling ones, some very pretty ones but we wanted to see some animals. He kept saying he was buying time for us to see a surprise with the Lionesses.

On the way to their patch we saw some zebra, jackel, springbok, lots of different birds and of course some more kudu. They were bloody everywhere.

We drove passed Kalahari again. He was still lying in the same spot as earlier that day, still playing sleeping lions. He could sense the lionesses and was waiting to check them out.

We were told the rhino was out and walking the river bed, so we went in to find him. We waited and waited but he was nowhere to be seen. He just didn't want to come out and play.

Next stop was the lionesses again. We wanted to see what the surprise was. Well this time they were feeding on a kudu I think, just tearing it to shreds. It was pretty brutal watching them rip this poor kudu's insides out.

The sun had started to set so we made our way over to the elephants and as we were driving we spotted the rhino in the distance just walking around. He had waited until we had left to come out of hiding. Damn him! But that was 4 of the big 5 that we had seen now. There was just a leopard left but as the park only had one of those roaming the 800 hectares of land that they had it was going to be pretty hard to find.

We continued to make our way to the elephants. The sky was a picture. The sun was setting and the whole sky was a gorgeous pink colour.

We got to the elephants as the sun went down and as they were climbing the mountain. We were a lot closer to them than we were before but we lost light very quickly, so they became invisible quickly which meant we needed to leave and head back to the hotel.

Our 4 course meal was waiting for us before it was bed time again.

Another 5am wake up call but this time it was to check out and leave for Port Elizabeth to catch our flight back home.

Arlo gave us a lift back to the first reception, one last time in the 4x4. There were lots of animals out, they knew we were leaving and wanted to say goodbye.

James was there to pick us up again and we started our journey back to reality. Matt the Lion was sill in the same spot and he gave us a glance to say goodbye as we exited the park.

What an absolutely incredible experience. Seeing all those amazing animals living in their natural habitat. A safari is now ticked off my bucket list, although I would definitely come back and do it over and over again.

South Africa has been an experience of a lifetime and I'm sad to be leaving. I can't believe it's time for us to fly back home already, but when one journey finishes you're that much closer to the next one!

See you soon Wales!

Until next time.

JL

Xoxo