Firstly and foremost John and I wish you happy festivities wherever you are in the world .
2025 started slowly for us. John had two eye operations which slowed our travelling down. We also had a February deadline for another of our books – “50 Gems of Bedfordshire” it will be published February 2026 by Amberley Books. …I think this will be about Johns 30th book with Amberley Publishers…and my 2nd!
In April we headed to Norfolk with my Dad. We hired a lovely bungalow near Sheringham for a week. What a lovely week it was, meandering around our beautiful countryside.
May saw John and I heading to Portugal and Southern Spain….we fell in love with Praia de Luz ….wonderful apartment for a week, super beach, restaurants and “Jackson Mystery Tours” around the countryside….(that’s Johns name for exploring and getting lost).
A wonderfully relaxing and “chill out” time.
We travelled up to Spain and spent time in an intriguing village called El Rocio….a real throw back place on the edge of a national park which is home to the highest number of Iberian Lynx in Spain…needless to say we didn’t see one…but we did very much enjoy our time there.
We travelled on up to Seville for a week…hiring a strange apartment in a residential block. We enjoyed the Cathedral, horses and carriage sight seeing, a river cruise and a flamenco show.
Driving back into Portugal we stayed a week in a holiday complex apartment near Albuferia….ummm not one of our best accommodation choices…. But we made the most of it with beach days and exploring the area.
Back in the UK we had a variety of days out with Dad, such as a coffee on a longboat on the Grand Union Canal
The end of July we headed for Devon. A fantastic occasion which saw my sister as a truly radiant bride as she married Mark….a day which was such a happy occasion.
September came and yippee! we were off to South Africa…..
Much joy as we met up with good friend Gill and our dearest Cora
Then off to Kruger for 3 weeks of heaven…..this year we started at the most southern point and went right up to the northern tip……Mother Nature blessed us and we saw some truly magnificent sights…
Our cameras didn’t stop clicking…but we did take a few shots of people..
And of course there were some fantastic sunsets…
Back to the UK we went with Dad to the New Forest in mid November…although it was cold it was still fabulous to see the ponies and we sat watching them on several occasions from what was my mums favourite spot….a joyful occasion we repeat every year…
As we reach the end of 2025 there is nothing left to say except to wish all our followers a Very Happy 2026…we hope your year is filled with adventures, laughter and love.
……This was one of my favourite songs at work …basically because I tried all my working life to get children to understand the beauty around them, it’s so important for a positive mind set…..and when I retired the whole school blasted ( I use the word deliberately because they certainly wouldn’t have won a choir competition 🤣🤣) it out to me…it made me cry….
As I look around us at this moment in time I can’t help but want to sing it…..the natural, nature we have been immersed in for 2.5 weeks is everywhere around us.
For the first time in about a week I had a great nights sleep. It was the first double bed we’d had since leaving Gills in Joburg…and yes you’ve guessed it …it was great to warm my freezing cold feet on my big grizzly bear🤣🤣 And it sure was cold last night…yesterday barely got up to 19 degrees Celsius and the night was more than a tad chilly…in fact it was “flipping freezing”…..the rondavels are designed to stay cool….South Africa is supposed to be a hot country…this coldness is unseasonal.
Today we both woke to the squawking of some persistent Guinea fowl at 7.30 am….John made coffee and we chilled out until 8.00am…the day was warming up and thank heavens, there was a bright blue sky with not a cloud to be seen.
We breakfasted quickly and headed out to game spot. Johns new game led him to select Waterbuck …a bit cheeky as we had seen a herd at the gate yesterday evening and I think they numbered 10+ which is his new rules….so I chose buffalo…we’d seen a few “dagger boys” not too far away……. We left camp and about 600 meters from the gate was…yes you guessed it ….a breeding herd of several hundred buffalo🤣🤣🤣🤣poor John he just can’t win, even when he changes the rules🤣.
We watched them for a while…the bush was literally heaving with them as far as the eye could see….a herd this big is an amazing sight.
We drove through them and continued on the road to numbi gate. The hyenas we’d seen yesterday were nowhere to be seen…but it was a,ready hot so they would have been in their den. At the gate we took the dirt road across towards the Phenbeni gate. We turned back on ourselves taking the road around the dam….which had nothing drinking there, but we did see a large pod of hippos.
After a while we came across a couple of giraffe and then at last some waterbuck!!!
As we continued we passed several small herds of zebra.
A fairly large group of impala were roadside. Two males were rutting…a lovely sound hearing them crash horns in their battle for dominance.
We passed by what we call the balancing rocks.
When we got back to the tar we headed back to camp…the combination of Wimpy food and corrugated roads can play havoc with your inners….after a quick break we headed on a dirt loop and saw some superb elephants drinking out of a pool of water on an elevated rock formation. One looked as if he was “on top of the world looking down on creation”.
Back on thr tar we headed to “ have a shit dam” opps sorry I meant Shitlhaven dam 🤣 naughty me !!! . The dam had numerous hippo and we sat eating lunch watching long lines of elephant come down for a drink…it was by now 33 degrees Celsius….what a contrast from yesterday. Watching the elephants is fascinating…
The park has a supposed capacity for 7500 elephants but the latest count came in at 35000…..way above the parks capacity…you can see this by the devastation they have caused…some areas look as if they belong on the moon…. grey dust and everything grey and dead because the elephants have literally cleared the areas not a tree standing…very sad…but for now we enjoyed watching them drinking and having mud baths….the sounds, smells and sight are fantastic.
For much of the time we were on our own…enjoying these majestic beasts whilst munching our sarnies…we soon found out why…when we got to the top of the dirt road to rejoin the tar there was an array of cars, safari vehicles, trucks etc…..there in the tree opposite the turning laid along the lower branch was a delightful leopard…in a typical leopard pose.
We sat awhile watching this elusive predator in all its glory. Because we had come up from the turning we had a great view and didn’t have to hassle for the best spot.
We moved on and went further up to take the Naphe loop, which was devoid of anything including impala.
Back along the tar was looking directly into the sun ….there were no hyena where we’d seen the yesterday and the leopard had moved on by the time we passed its tree….
Back to camp we went , an ice cream and a rest was the order of the day as it was very hot.
Around 4.00 pm we went out again for a drive. We took the dirt road towards Berg-en-dal. Passed the huge herd of buffalo again and then shake rattled and rolled….this time we found the Fayi loop ( I could have sworn it was the fairy loop🤣) ..it was an interesting loop but completely devoid of any wildlife, but very pretty. It brought us out on the numbi gate road. Because we still had time we turned left towards the gate and in less than 1km we saw the hyenas from yesterday…the mum was laid in the road with a young black pup suckling we also saw 2 more youngsters and another full grown one…what a lovely sight.
Turning back to camp we stopped for a couple of sunset pictures.
Then we headed for the camp gate with 10 minutes to spare…oh no…the buffalo were blocking the road.. thankfully a parks employer drove passed us and cleared enough room for us to follow them through…phew we got to the gate minutes before closing time.
Back to the rondavel for a quick face time with grandchild and family…then off to the wimpy for steak and chips and some high speed wifi to upload the blog.
It was warm enough to sit outside and play cards before going to bed ….
We packed up our baggage and loaded it into the car…we were away about 8.30 having showered and had yogurt for breakfast. The housekeeper showed her face, the first time we’d seen her in our 4 night stay…but there had been evidence of her…she had made the beds and done the washing up….so her loitering gained her the expected tip.
It was a really cold grey day. In fact most of the day the temperature was only 16 degrees Celsius…the highest it went to was 19 degrees Celsius…and what’s more it rained for most of the day…not a downpour but that annoying drizzle which is too much for intermittent windscreen wipers but not enough for them to be on all the time. We kept our long trousers and fleeces on all day.
John selected zebra and I went with wildebeest as our first spot of the day…..it was in-fact a lovely line of wildebeest…..John has surrendered …I am just to in-tune with the wild….he has admitted defeat…and wants to start a new game tomorrow….so as from tomorrow it’s guess which animal we see 10 of first…ummmm Today it would have been giraffes.
We saw a lovely family group not long after setting off down the H1.
Giraffes are the tallest of all land animals; males (bulls) may exceed 5.5 metres (18 feet) in height, and the tallest females (cows) are about 4.5 metres. A newborn giraffe is about 6 feet (1.9 meters) tall at birth and weighs about 150 pounds.
They are quite easy to tell apart…the males horns are thick and bald ( no wise cracks about them representing most of the male species🤣) Where as the females horns are much thinner, with fluffy hair on top they also often curve inwards.
Some giraffes are darker than others due to a combination of factors including genetics, which determine an individual’s base pattern, and age, with males often darkening significantly as they mature to signal their status to other giraffes. Environmental factors like diet and climate may also play a role in coat color variation.
When there are a group of giraffes together browsing they are known as a “Tower of giraffes”, when they are walking from place to place they are known as a “journey of giraffes”. They are fascinating creatures, I could spend all day watching them….but we had to continue our journey south.
We saw some big herds of buffalo, both breeding herds and smaller groups of dagger boys. Lots of elephants were browsing the trees and bushes all around.
We had been travelling for very nearly an hour before we saw our first impala and then we saw a massive group…and a lot more throughout our trip. Some rather cute wart hogs were munching on the sweet grass at the side of the road.
While a pair of steenbok were hunkered down in the bushes trying to escape the inclement weather.
We felt privileged to follow a line of zebra up the road…so long as I didn’t get too close they were content to just walk along the road in front of us. If I got too close they broke into a trot until I dropped back…. We must have followed them for about a kilometre ….just us and them…we felt like a sheepdog shepherding them along. Then out of the blue they all looked to the right, startled they cantered off to the left…we looked to see if it was a predator but saw nothing….it was a lovely moment in time…no other cars just them and us…
We decided not to stop at Tshokwane as it was so busy. We continued on towards Skakuza…..the main tar road was appalling. In most places totally covered in sand which had been there so long it was corrugated. This is the H1 the main spinal road which runs from one end of the park to the other….how the parks board can have allowed it to get into this shocking state is beyond me…there were some road works taking place…typically 2 men were doing the work, while 20 stood watching them…one side of the road was being worked on but both oncoming and our direction traffic both had the go sign showing with no one working it …so inevitably be both met in the middle..ummmm …one of the workers moved a traffic cone so we could pass…..” piss-up”and “brewery” spring to mind…. Shortly after this we saw the unusual sight of a ground horn bill up a tree.
We also saw a variety of different eagles…tawny and bateleur …in trees.
We drove past quite a few herds of elephants before arriving at Skakuza. A quick loo break and a swift reccy of the shop and we were off again.
Onward towards Prestoriakop. We stopped at Transport Dam for our lunch. The usual hippos were wallowing and 3 big crocodiles were on the opposite banks.
We also saw a sight we’d never witnessed before…. A dead buck on the shoreline with a massive crocodile swallowing it…..presumably it had caught it, killed it and was now demolishing it…quite a sight.
On we travelled and between the Napier loop was a den of hyenas…..a very cute very young black one and two elder pups…
We got to Shitlhaven dam ….or as my son used to call it for years when he was a little boy “have-a-shit dam”. It always makes me laugh…there were just hippos in the water….
We continued on…I have to say I was not impressed with Viva Safari vehicles…they drove fast, overtaking then stopped, blocking the road when they saw zebra or giraffe etc…they showed no regard for other vehicles whatsoever…in-fact yesterday one had put me in a precarious position by blocking the road when a young male elephant was showing me attitude….this company will begetting Safari vehicles a bad name…its not just about their customers it’s about showing everyone respect. Grrrrr…whinge over
We got to camp and booked in….had a rest for an hour before driving towards numbi gate for the last hour…we saw another group of dagger boys and another den of hyenas….a lovely end to a very good spotting day.
Our supper was at the restaurant…if you can call a Wimpy a restaurant…John had a breakfast and I had sausages with hard microwaved mash and gravy which was so thick it wouldn’t come out of the bowl…then it was a game of cards and bed.
“The day that the rains came” – by Jane Morgan No. 1 on the UK singles chart in 1959 – she died a couple of months ago aged 101….(makes my dad look like a spring chicken at 94 this year 🤣🤣🤣). NO! I am not old enough to remember it, but it seemed an appropriate song to start the day….cold, grey, drizzle…that wonderful smell the bush exudes when it’s been dry for so long and then it gets damped upon.. The temperature didn’t rise to more than 17 degrees Celsius all day and in England we would have called it a miserable grey day….but we’re not in England and in SA it was yet another day for wildlife spotting.
We had a slow start to the day…both of us aching from the rock hard beds…we’re so used to our luxury encapsulated sprung memory foam mattress…we forget how fortunate we are until a bed like last nights reminds us 🤣🤣. But thankfully the shower was powerful enough to massage the aches and pains…
We made a plan and decided to drive the river loops between Olifants and Letaba…that was plan “A”….. John was allowed two choices of first spot today because he is 6-1 down…. He chose elephant and giraffe and I chose zebra….off we went …Oh my goodness!!!! The vibration from the corrugated roads was the worse so far…thank goodness we don’t have false teeth because I am telling you even our jaws were rattling and we’d defiantly have lost any falsies🤣🤣🤣….i didn’t need to bring the “tens” machine with us, these roads shock every fibre within your body….
After 45 minutes without a single sighting Plan “B” was made and we took the circular road back to Olifants…. John was just saying “in 5 minutes time we’ll have been going an our without seeing a single creature, animal or bird”. As he finished talking I caught sight of a Grey Lourie ( now renamed The Go- away bird) . Then 2 minutes later we saw a giraffe standing next to 2 zebra…John claimed the point..6-2 …
Back on the tar we were going to go down to Balule Camp on the dirt…but as I was actually having to use the windscreen wipers, the drizzle was slow steady rain, we hatched Plan “C”. Staying on the tar we saw a nice small troop of Chacma baboons.
Turning down towards Satara we saw a herd of Waterbuck in the rivers shallow channels. Other cars were stopped and it was soon apparent that they weren’t looking at the buck. We asked a car and they said 3 lionesses had been seen……been was the operable word…they could no longer be seen. ….some cars crawled along the road at the edge of the river…we asked again and were told 2 male lions had been seen..yeah! Who started this rumour…no one still there had actually seen a lion….we left them to it.
A little further on we saw a lovely African harrier hawk in a tree next to the road.
As we went over the bridge I spied two magnificent Goliath Herons…they really are majestic…we haven’t seen one since we were with Same Aaron in Botswana in 2023. We spent some time watching them wade in the shallows.
We had been going to turn towards the East and take the road which runs parallel to the Mozambique boarder….but we still hadn’t seen many mammals so Plan “D” was hatched and we turned to the west. It was again a bone-shaker road. After a while we saw a fabulous Kori Bustard….they are very strange looking birds…the largest flying bird native to Africa.
We continued on and as the surrounding area opened up into scrub land plains…and there darting across the plains, across the road and back again were not only one but 3 Black Backed Jackals…..
Black backed jackals are a widely distributed species that are known for their cunning and daring. They are often seen nipping in to steal a morsel from Lions. They have a distinctive call known almost as well as the roar of a lion. They are the most common and best known of all the African carnivores. The name jackal is frequently used to denote the cunning and versatility so typical of this species. They have a dark saddle on the back, which runs from the nape of the neck to the base of the tail. They have a black, bushy tail and reddish flanks and limbs; standing about 400 mm at the shoulder and a meter in total length. Our 3 black backed Jackals were racing around.
A red billed hornbill even photo-bombed my attempt at capturing a running jackal.
I was ecstatic about our sighting as they are one of my absolute favourites.
Shortly after seeing these little fellas we about turned and retraced our steps. On the way back we saw pockets wildebeest keeping out of the rain under a tree.
At the tar road we went straight over on to the Balule Camp Road. We saw quite large groups of impala mostly laid down, keeping warm out of the wind, it had by now stopped raining.
A group of waterbuck grazed at the road side and small groups of zebra hid behind bushes.
We crossed the river on the low pontoon, nothing was on the banks or in the water.
We sat overlooking the water to eat our sandwich before heading back to Olifants camp. We were almost back to the tar when I almost drove past a massive elephant just munching on a bush at the side of the road. We had a quiet conversation and he continued to enjoy his snack while we slowly passed by.
A few metres further on was a much smaller elephant who had obvious aggression towards us…shaking his ears and stamping his feet…we accelerated passed tout de suite, without incident.
Our viewing count for the day was quite low 99+ impala, 2 lilac breasted rollers, 1 grey Lourie, I African fish eagle, 1 African harrier hawk, 6 giraffe, 25 zebra, 2 Goliath herons, 8 baboons, 1 yellow billed hornbill bill, 3 red billed hornbill, 17 waterbuck, 3 black backed jackals, 18 wildebeest, 3 elephants.
Back in the camp we spent the afternoon resting before going to the restaurant for supper. It was heaving as no-one wanted to braii in this inclement weather. We both had burgers, I had chicken breast and John had beef, a Diet Coke each and ice cream to round it off…all for the princely sum of £17.00.
We wandered back to our hut using torchlight then snuggled down for the night…too cold to sit outside and play cards and no room inside.
Day 5 This was a rest day for us, we spent the day catching up, with our blog and Facebook and emails…some times it’s important to put an extra day in your trip so as not to get so tired that you can’t appreciate the activities you’ve planned. The laundry got done and the WhatsApp home to family was made. We drove around the village/town of Gweta a bit and took some pictures of its quirkiness…In the evening we said farewell to Cynthia and Jooste they were moving on, their trip was in its final stages as they returned to Windhoek, Namibia. There was singing and dancing by the staff after supper…their harmonisation is always a wonderful sound. An early night was required due to the next days early start.
Day 6. I don’t know how to start the days description, apart from wow, wow and wow…..
We knew we had a 73 Km drive to Makgadikgadi Pans National Parks gate…so wrapped up with double fleeces a headscarf around my ears and a mask across my nose…( finally found a use for a covid mask!! ) looking more like a bandit than a Safari goer, we set off at 6.20am with the Chief driving us ….( yes!! I was awake but only just).
It was cold on the open vehicle and we both had trouble with running eyes and noses from the wind….I put it down my bleary eyesight that I thought I saw a man squatting low in the grass just next to the main A3 road….my first thought was ‘shame he must have been caught short’ but as he started to stand up, he still didn’t seem to pull his trousers up I thought ‘dirty devil he could have gone behind a bush’’…”As we got closer and our eyesight could focus I realised it wasn’t a man at all but a huge black maned lion. It crossed the road and walked down the other side of the road, turned around and came back…we spent an enjoyable 10 minutes watching him parade up and back before he disappeared into the bush. What a great start to the day…
Arriving at the gate The Chief got us a far more acceptable breakfast which replenished us ready for the next part of the day….nothing could have prepared us for the state of the road…if Tuesday in Ntwetwe Pans, was bad this was horrendous..we shake rattled and rolled along for an hour seeing jackals, steenbok, ostrich, a few zebra, an odd wildebeest, and a ground squirrel. Then suddenly we caught sight of the Boteti River and it’s surrounding plains. It was literally heaving with zebra, as far as the eye could see.
What an amazing sight….There were a few pockets of wildebeest’s and a large pod of hippos in the water. A couple of elephants parted the zebra as they headed to the water…The noise was wonderful snorting,farting and braying. Chief was an expert about getting us within a few feet of the herds and driving us through them…they didn’t seem to even notice us..they stared, snorted and continued doing what they do. After about an hour we followed the river which was dry all apart from some pockets of small lake like oasis. We saw kudu, a pair of blue cranes, more ostrich and finally asked a friendly wildebeest if we could share the shade of his tree to have lunch…he agreed by moving off but his chum stayed put less than 10 feet away. After a very pleasant lunch we drove back to the original larger expanse of water. The herds had amassed even more, we would guess well over 1000 head of Zebra. There was a medium sized herd of elephant which continued to be joined by other small herds. They delighted us with their ‘meet and greet’ antics.
The hippos we’re basking in the sun, having vacated the water for the Elephants, their young were wandering around. The wildebeest and their young entertained us by skipping around chasing each other and the zebra continued to snort and bray…..all too soon it was time to head back to the lodge some 2 hours away. On the way out of the park we saw a pair of giraffe, another jackal, a slender mongoose and we visited a solar powered watering hole which was also swarming with zebra and a huge elephant throwing mud around.
Back on the tarred road we mused over the spectacular scenes we had just witnessed. We came to see the zebra migration and wow did we see it.
The Chief, had turned out to be a fantastic guide and driver, very friendly and extremely talented, a real asset to Gweta Lodge….Thanks Chief for a totally awesome time.
2 J's World of Adventure 