Another 6am departure, but I slept really well and was looking forward to reaching Livingstone. Another transit morning in the truck so we could get to our campsite asap.

We arrived at The Waterfront at 2.30pm and then it was all go. We had a welcome talk in the auditorium from a GAP representative that is based at the campsite, where they explained the campsite and all the activities that were available to do while in Livingstone. We watched a DVD of all the options which ranged from grade 5 white water rafting, to sunset cruises, to elephant back safaris, to close lion encounters and finally to bungee jumping! That was only to name a few you could also golf, go tiger fishing on the Zambezi, cultural tours etc. Then it was was decision time..!

Phoebe, Nicole and I had already planned a day trip into Zimbabwe to see Victoria Falls from that side, then I signed up for the 'Devils Pool' experience and The Big 3 Air Experience. Everything else looked amazing but I had to be realistic. A few of us then decided to upgrade from our normal tents and pay $10 per night to get a bigger permanent tent that had beds in it, a lamp and power point. It was certainly worth it because there was a lot of rain late afternoon and all around the small tents was just dubs dubs and dubs.

Greg had organised a group dinner for us all at the restaurant at 7pm so we had time to sort out our things and shower.

We went to the bar early to sit and chat, and this is where our day turned upside down! Greg came up to a few of us and informed us he would no longer be our guide through to Cape Town and that he had been suspended. We were all gutted and in shock, he was a 5* guide, with 3 years of experience with GAP and so much passion about the countries. Not one of us could fault him at all, he looked after every single one of us, he was an excellent cook, very approachable and great fun.

We were all aware that the group before us that went from Cape Town to Nairobi was a disaster for both Greg and Chris. They had mentioned on a few occasions, the last tour was tough going with the clients complaining about everything and they could do nothing to try and change it. As a group we were all informed Greg would be our guide all the way to Cape Town, so when this was changed everyone was mad. Greg was truely gutted and could hardly tell us without crying. When we arrived at The Waterfront he checked the GAP notice board to see how many clients were on the next leg of the trip and this is where he found his name was missing from the guide section. That's when he phoned the office to be told he had been suspended from our current trip after all the complaints from the last groups feedback and they had booked him a flight home on Sunday.

Greg still managed to turn the situation around and try to keep us all positive that our new guide would be better than he was. We all knew this couldn't be the case as he was so good at his job. It turned out Chris our driver from the last part of the trip was now going to be our guide and they were flying a new driver up from Cape Town. Chris had been a driver for 2 years for Gap and had only ever done 5 days guiding before. It was a shock to Chris being told you've now got to cook, look after everyone, do paper work, bookings etc etc. The 6 of us who were carrying on to Cape Town all said we would help make his job as easy as we could and give him extra support.

Anyways group dinner still went ahead but we all, especially Greg, had quite a few drinks. Every one of us were truely gutted and putting in complaints about how unprofessional the situation was handled and we weren't consulted about changing our tour in the middle with no explanation. The meal was good but the mood was low.

Later on in the evening I ended up chatting and listening to Greg for ages, it really was an awful way to be suspended in front of 17 of your current group. Everyone was pretty boozy and we made the most out of a horrible evening.

Who knows what the trip will be like from here on, we have 15 new people joining our trip so the truck is going to be packed. I will be very surprised if the new group are half as nice as the last, I have been extremely lucky to have had such a fantastic group and met some amazing people this last 2 weeks. It won't be the same without the Greg/Chris team and it's going to be sad saying bye on Saturday to the group.

It was another late night but at least I had a comfy bed to fall into :) Turned out to be a good night in the circumstances. xxx