Sunday 13th April 2014

In the speeches last night one of the party gave the chap celebrating his birthday a little buffalo toy to signify the trip, this put a little bit of pressure on to find buffalo, we needed to make its symbolism more authentic.

It’s going to be quite tough being an englishman guiding out here, especially when you’re guests are South Africans who have grown up visiting the bush. There’s always a little bit of a feeling that they may think what does this guy know. If this trails group thought that they certainly didn’t show it, but I did take pride when they were surprised how much knowledge I’d managed to build up over the last seven months.

The birthday group were mostly bankers from Joburg all doing well for themselves and shared some fantastic stories from when they were at Uni together. They were all successful and I would imagine them to be the life and soul of a party, the cool kids. This all made it great that they were so into nature and the bush, I don’t think this would be the same back home, unfortunately nature isn’t higon the list of cool things to do.

One of the reasons why Sean, the organiser of the party chose our trail was because of the wilderness aspect. He liked the fact that there was no phone reception which meant that everyone wouldn’t be spending the weekend staring at their screens. This was a great point to make, illustrated perfectly for the five minutes when we had reception on one of our drives.

In the afternoon we drove down to the Limpopo so we could explore that area, we didn’t venture too far and simply walked along the river bank. However, it was slow going through the thick riverine forest as there had been a lot of buffalo the night before, if not that morning, we preceded with care not knowing what might pop out. We did have a little scare along the way when a kudu bolted from a bush but other than that it was a chilled walk. It made me chuckle when one of the chaps announced that he wasn’t convinced that if it came to a full on encounter he might not be able to stop himself from running, honesty is brilliant.

I did the braai again, yikes I got lots of advice as you could imagine with seven Safas watching my every move. There were a few things that I’ll do differently next time but all in all it was a success with no complaints. That night over dinner I was convinced I heard one of the big five calling close to camp.

It’s been a great trail with some interesting walks but most importantly its been a fantastic laugh with the guests who proved to be a great bunch.