I managed to wake up in time – 3.30am – or 12pm in the UK, fuck knows what my body clock is doing at the moment.

I set off in darkness and arrived at Erich’s having been stopped by the police for running a stop sign (which I did not see as I was speeding! Ha ha!) He let me off.

We set off at about 4.45 and drove to the Kruger Gate, I Dosed on the way and woke up to get out and sort out payment at the gate. I was greeted by 2 nervous looking Warthog. Funny little piggy with big teeth and by some accounts very defensive.

Then the Safari began in earnest. A low speed cruise around one of the greatest game parks in the world looking at all the animals.

Mainly we saw Waterbuck, Impala, Kudu – Millions of birds including Brown Parrots, Hornbills, Marabou storks, Normal Storks, Elephants, Buffalo and Giraffe.

The Safari was punctuated by several stops to get cold beers out of the cool box and for James a real Boer South African to delve in to the biggest bag of weed the world has ever produced to skin up African bush weed joints. For £3 he had bought a plastic carrier bag full. No shit.

We stopped at mid day for lunch as Satara Camp, also to put up tents – something I attempted much to the locals amusement (this was to be tested later as a storm came in and blew away the tent just after Dark. Good Work Bray.)

The afternoon was more of the same but the highlight had to be at the very end of the day. We decided to go check out a damn at about 6pm – 30 minutes before the camp gate closed. The day had been so hot that we had not seen much, in the way of exciting stuff. As we drove on to the dam there were a few hippos in the water but not much else, James though it might be an idea to drive up a path to a view point which we did but this was quiet to so, we set off back to the camp.

As we turned back onto the tar road we saw about 15 buffalo in a pack charging towards us. This was very cool and pretty ball trembling as the rumble of hooves got louder and louder. At one point I thought 1000 tones of Buffalo were going to pile into the car but they diverted at the last minute and rushed passed us. Then there was a collective gasp as we saw the reason for the buffalo to be spooked. We saw a pride of Lions chasing them. Probably about 10 of them, they too came running down the road and straight passed the car. The Whole lot went running off into the thick bush. Amazing.
That evening we got back to the camp. Just as it turned dark as if out f nowhere there was a huge gust of wind, I had just enough time to jump up and stop my tent flying into the campfire but I was pretty useless at trying to tie the thing back down. James and Erich came to my rescue when they were done laughing.

The wind did not let up all night and even succeeded in breaking the tent pole. As I had not brought a ground mat I decided the best thing to do was to sleep on a park bench in side the tent. It was a little weird being in a tent after the last time I was in one I got shot, but I figured if I’m going to go it might as well be sleeping on a park bench in a collapsed tent in the middle of the African bush.