Sunday 23rd March

We were told that we had to leave at 5am and we setted the alarm for 4am. Unfortunately our alarm never went off to our surprise and Daniel was woken up by the door knocking at 4.50am asking if we were ready! We overslept and was puzzled why our alarm clock didn't go off! We had 10mins to get ready and luckily we were successful!! We were the only 2 people to be taken to Kruger National Park so we had plenty of space in the minibus. We left at 5am and the journey took about 5 hours. We first arrived at the reception and was told that our guide will take us to the campsite. While we were waiting, we didn't know what to expect for the next 3 days. Our guide in the open headed safari landrover arrived and we dumped our stuff on it and hopped on! We were on our way and we were already on the lookout for the animals. We didn't spot any on our way. We arrived at the campside which was secured by the electric fences to keep the wild animals out! We couldn't go straight to the tent as it was being cleaned so we had a cuppa while we waited. We met a couple of people who were training to be a ranger. Everyone were very friendly and certainly deaf aware, so far we were pleased. Also we learnt that there were only 3 of us staying as visitors so the campsite was very quiet.

When our tent was finally ready, we were very impressed with the size of it and it came with beds with duvets. We dumped our bags and made our way to the main camp to find out what would be happening for the rest of the day. We were given our lunch which was delicious! We were then told that we would be taken on the afternoon game drive at 2pm. Unfortunately the sky opened again, giving us rain all afternoon. However the game drive was still going ahead. We joined with other 6 people on the open headed landrover. We were wearing our raincoats and was still getting wet by the splashes from the top of the landrover! As we were on our way to the entrance to the National Park, we spotted a giraffe eating away and then we spotted a waterbuck. It got us excited that we were doing well with spotting the animals!

By the time we reached to the entrance, our guide had to report at the reception and unfortunately he came back with bad news that we couldnt go through cos there were too many cars in the park at the time. We thought it was a odd reason cos we noticed few cars that were leaving the park at the same time! Few people in our group complained and thought that they were making excuses! They took us back to the camping reception and sorted the issue out. We were then told that it was back on again so we returned back to be told that we still couldn't enter! We got annoyed cos it was waste of time. We were very disappointed as we were so looking forward to the safari. We were returned back to the campsite and it was still raining, we couldn't do anything so we just rested in the tent till it was time for our meal which was at 7pm. There was no electricity at all and we had to get by, by using lanterns or torches. We were struggling to follow others in the dark so we decided to go to bed early as we were told to be ready by 5.45am for the all day safari. We were in bed by 8.30pm!