Another stupid o'clock start, 5am, not helped by a bunch of corporate americans splashing about in the pool outside my room until who knows what time in the morning, so again, not much sleep!! Was up & in the shower by 5am and ready for the truck by 5:30am, with the retired couple (who are so lovely) and we picked up a french father & daughter from another camp in the park - they had great big tree houses which looked pretty cool.

Thankfully our truck did indeed have a roof and sides, but it was pretty cold on the way to Kruger proper. Journey was about an hour, hour and a half and it was a relief to get back onto proper roads (I'm sure I bruised my backside and arms with all the jolting & jarring). I will have had enough of dirt tracks by the end of my stay here I think!

It is impossible to describe just how big it is here - the land and the sky just seem to go on for ever.

Was cloudy all morning, which was a relief, but it broke up around lunchtime and then it got incredibly hot in the mid afternoon, so was somewhat relieved when the sun went down. It was actually pretty ok in the truck, as you are moving most of the time, the breeze keeps you cool, but when we stopped, it was getting pretty hot. Stopped for lunch in the park at one of the lunch areas and it was soo hot, I thought I would melt. The old couple with me were shedding clothes and really suffering for a while. Luckily there was a general store, which was air conditioned and sold ice cream, so I spent alot of our lunch hour wandering around that and eating ice cream to try & cool down.

We did so well with our game drive again - felt very privileged, as some of the other guests said they had come to Kruger and pretty much seen nothing!! We went in via the Orpen gate, and stopped at the shop and stocked up on stuff. I got a map with an identification sheet in it, so we could recognise the most common animals and birds. We saw masses in the first few hours and so close to many of them. The difference in Kruger is you have to stay on the roads and you cannot get out of the car, so you can always tell when there is something to see, as there is a roadblock of cars all stopped in the road.

We pretty much started with impala's, zebra's and wildebeest, but we also saw giraffes and a lot of elephants, one of which was facing us down, so we had to stand up to it with the truck, otherwise it would have charged us. According to our guide, who was really really good, the male elephants are all in "must", which is the male equivalent of being in season, so they are all feeling agressive and macho and needing to find some female elephants to dominate.

We did quite well with antelope, in addition to the impala's which are everywhere. We saw Kudu, Springbok, Steenbok, Waterbuck, nyala and some little baby mongooses (or should that be mongeese?) Out of the big "cats and dogs" we only saw one male lion, sweltering in the midday sun and some black backed jackals at the end of the day. Kept hearing rumours of a leopard, but we never saw it. Saw masses of buffalo, a couple of hippos hiding in lakes and lots of warthogs, which apparently are one of the "Ugly 5". Also saw quite a few giraffes, which are really lovely and quite graceful in a loping kind of way. Happened across 3 ostriches, which was also a nice surprise - for some reason I hadn't expected to see them.

Our guide was really good and had lots of great information about the animals we stopped to see, like wildebeest being the stupidest animals or the synergy between hippos and crocs in the the lakes and the weird habits & customs of the pack animals, like some sending all the unnecessary males off to form bachelor packs!!

What was really great was the number of baby animals we saw, pretty much everyone we saw, except the lion, we saw mothers and babies. We even came across a mother elephant with a few week old calf, who was incredibly protective. Thought she was going to charge us at one point!!

Probably the highlight was the birds. The guide explained that they tend to congregate around the roadways, as they made it easier for them to see their prey - less cover than in the bush. Many of them are so beautiful, so brightly coloured and shimmering plumage, with reds and bright turquoise and a stunning lilac one, which the american lady next to me kept trying to photo, but everytime we found one, she'd just get her shot lined up & it would fly off! So amid all the green/brown of the bush and the dark colours and camoflage of the animals, the birds were lovely splashes of colour.

So, although we didn't see all the big 5, I think we did really well. It was a very long day though, we didn't get back to the lodge until 7:30pm, so pretty wrung out. Had reported the night before that there was an issue with my toilet flush, where it wasn't refilling properly and due to a staffing change, they hadn't fixed it, so they moved me to a new room, but although it was bigger I decided to stay put, as my current room is one double bed as opposed to 3 single beds (and the mossie netting didn't look half as good!). They're offering to move to an air conditioned room tomorrow, as about 9 people are leaving tomorrow, so may get a new room for the last couple of nights, but will have to check the room out first, as actually pretty like my room, despite the slightly faulty toilet and the noise from the pool!!

Earlyish night tonight, although I have a bit of a lie in until 7:30am, whoopee!! Am going to the cheetah project tomorrow at 10am, then another game drive in the afternoon. Managed to not get burnt or bitten today, result!!