We had a lie in at Pestana Lodge due to the previous day being very tiring from the long drive and the exciting game drive. Unfortunately the longed for shower was rather deflating as although it had a huge rain water sprinkler…sprinkle was all it did with a few large drops from some of the areas of the head…why oh why do people think these showers are great…you have to wash your hair even if you don’t want too and you can’t direct the fine spray to the areas you do want too🤣🤣🤣 After a rather disappointing wetting, we headed for breakfast….the least said about that the better…cold and dried up sums it up….but customer relations promises to do better on our return visit…..if they don’t we will be crossing Pestana Lodge off our places to stay and not recommending them to anyone…the jury is still out and we will see if they perform better at the end of out holiday. One of the reasons we have always stayed here in the past is its tremendous location …..the bridge you see from the deck at Pestana is the one which leads you to the Kruger Malalane Gate ….so we are hoping they improve the quality and quantity of the food by the time we return in 3 weeks time.

We headed into Malalane to pick up our perishable consumables…low and behold just 9 days ago they opened a Woolworths – for those who don’t know Woolworths in South Africa is the same as Marks and Spencer’s in the UK…..(many years ago they couldn’t trade under M&S so they traded under Woolworths and it’s stayed the same since )… Great news, their food is always good and we could buy prepared mixed salads, mixed fruit platters, lovely black cherry yogurts, lurpak butter, mini cheese cakes, pork sausages, sirloin steaks etc etc…We bought a bag of ice and put it in the bottom of the cool box, hey presto we have our own on the go refrigerator …… shopping done we headed to Kruger gate.

Once in Kruger we headed up the tar and looped back along the dirt roads…a 5 hour game viewing drive..

After the evening drive the day before we were not surprised that we didn’t have lots of “big” sightings. We did see 99+ impala, 20 warthog, 14 zebra, 83 elephant, 9 giraffe, 9 kudu, 2 lion, 4 steenbok, 1 bushbuck, 1 squirrel, 12 white backed vulture, 1 bateleur eagle, 2 guinea fowl.

As you can see John is keeping a tally of what we see each day- once we’ve seen 100 they get tallied as 99+🤣🤣…..some wonderful sightings.

We arrived at Berg-en-dal camp just after 5pm. We had been allocated chalet no.10. It’s not a perimeter chalet but it is nice and quiet. The chalet is in excellent condition…with everything working. The camp seems extremely quiet, we haven’t seen many people and we’ve heard none of the usual noise of adults chattering and children playing.

Around 7.00 pm we made a braii- barbecue- It was our first time doing this…..although I’ve had plenty of braii’s I’ve never actually made one or cooked on one myself…..so our first attempt scored about 3 out of 10🤣 and we can only get better🤣….but our sausage and mash was very tasty and neither of us have died from food poisoning- yet🤣🤣…Thank goodness for the berry cheesecake for dessert…. Whilst eating we heard the roaring of a lion a wonderful serenade to our supper….A few games of cards later and we were ready for bed……looking forward to tomorrow.