Not really a last day in Kruger, as basically travelling back to Jo'burg today. Had my lie in while the others got up for the bush walk at 5am. Got up at 7am ish for breakfast to leave the Park at 8:30am.

Had a new driver, a South African named Vessel (not sure of the spelling!) who was a cheerful Afrikaaner and discovered that not only was I sharing the van with the 4 american college grads, we also had an Italian, named Lorenzo who seriously did not get on with the college grads, so the trip promised to be fairly awful, with them all niggling each other back & forth.

Actually the trip turned out to be far better and worse by turns than I expected. We set off a bit late, as the americans were faffing about and arguing with Lorenzo about who would sit where, but actually, once we started out pretty much everyone except me and the driver fell asleep, so it was actually peaceful. Unfortunately, everytime we stopped anywhere everyone woke up and took far too long at the stops. Thankfully we only stopped at a couple of places - the 3 Rondovels (which I had seen the day before), at a layby in the mountains to photo a waterfall, for lunch in Lyndenburg - where we had some fabulous burgers - and at a motorway services to fill up with gas.

Due to the faffing, we didn't make great time and were scheduled to hit Jo'burg in the rush hour, but the americans decided to change their drop off point and went to the airport, as they were off to Cape Town next and wanted to try for an earlier flight in order to get to Cape Town earlier to maxmise their time there. Then Lorenzo was dropped off at a hotel right by the airport, so that left just little old me to the Holiday Inn. So I actually arrived at the Holiday Inn at a reasonable time, about 5:30ish, which was pretty okay.

First thing - washed my hair, 3 times, as I hadn't really had the time in Kruger & the shower pressure wasn't great there either. Felt sooo much better with clean hair!! Then down to the lounge to catch up on a bunch of emails and some tea. Then found that disaster had struck and my ebook reader had managed to discharge a whole battery in my bag, so charged that while I reorganised my luggage to make it a bit more even and watched a bit of rugby on the telly. Will have to remember to pack my ebook reader a bit more carefully in future!!

Travel day again tomorrow - flight to Cape Town, then pick up hire car & drive to Stellenbosch to go stay with Mr Potgieter for 2 weeks. Very much looking forward to catching up with him & meeting his family and doing a little bit of sightseeing and some chilling.