Well , last blog finally!
After this there is not even a whole day in Johannesburg then home via Sydney.
Yes it's time to come home, especially as my beloved pooch is very sick and poor Chelsea has had to do a bone marrow aspirate and blood transfusion.

So to get here was a bit weird. We were picked up at the hotel by the Tour Co van then went back to the airport transfer station where we'd been at 10 pm the night before, then changed to a City Express bus for the 335 km trip to Nelspruit , then the Safari vehicle and guide met us and we went the 90 min trip in the open jeep - we froze!!!!
There were 5 on the tour , but the other 3 left today,and 2 joined yesterday. A bit weird.
Anyway we are in a nice tented village, in a en-suite tent with air-con. And free buffet breakfast and dinner.
Mind you the AM game drive starts at 6 am so not much time for brekkie !
We have 5-7 hrs in the AM driving and then 3 in PM.
Hate to say it but I'm actually over it!
The first PM and AM were good but it's been lean since! Not much to see!-

We saw some elephants playing in the water which was great , lots of white rhinos( 1000 left in Kruger, 1000 poached last yr! 27 Rangers killed last yr , 60% by poachers !!!!!!) and Courtney today found a VERY RARE black rhino. The guide had not seen one for 2 yrs.
there's lots of zebras, water buffalo , giraffes. We saw some lions far away, but no leopards or cheetahs.
It's a massive park, bigger than Israel or Holland, so hard to find animals. We do a lot of driving !
All the poaching and in fact all bad things in SA( violence , muggings etc) in blamed on illegals from
Zimbabwe and Mozambique not locals. There are very fluid borders with these 2 countries on the northern borders.
Most of the park has electric fence around it, but new villages are creeping to the park boundaries , and you can see their lights at night whereas the guide says 8 yes ago you couldn't see a thing.
We passed lovely farming country coming here , plus the worlds biggest wood plantation. And Kms of banana plantations and apple and avocado orchards.
It's not nearly as green as down south.
But very productive. There aren't the mountains either up here either.
The ' townships' ( blacks housing) continues to be Kms away from the towns and industry, and much poorer, more like shanty towns.
We had a heat wave today with the temperature reaching 43 oC, so barely an animal to be seen. Wish I'd stayed at the pool!!!
2 days later.
We had another game drive which produced little , then another freezing drive back to the city shuttle- but we were 5 mins late and it hadn't waited! It took an hr to get alternate transport , then we were dropped at the airport not the hotel!! Grrrhh.
We had a private taxi tour of Soweto and Johannesburg the next day.
The shanty town part of Soweto was as I expected , no water, power or sewerage, but it's still very organised and the house we peeped in was clean and tidy.
Other areas of the suburb are very nice, and some are like any suburb. They have 5 big Malls catering to Blacks only as business people worked out the massive consumer numbers they could cater too.
We saw Winnie Manelas nice house, Nelson Mandela's small house, and down the road Desmond Tutu's house( only street in the world where 2 Nobel Peace Prize winners have lived)
We went to a museum about the school riots in 1976 where the Blacks protested about being forced to start learning their lessons in Afrikaans. Over 50 students were killed.
We drove thru downtown Johannesburg and up to the 50 th floor of Africa's tallest building. Can't say it's a pretty city, no parks, barely a tree, quite industrial rather than commercial.
And barely a white person.
The city is surrounded by hills, some are gold mines, and there is often dust storms.
Quite glad to leave it.
Ok, time to go home!!
Hope you've enjoyed the travels.
Carol.