Sunday 1st June 2014

I’ve been well fed by the ladies in the kitchen, I don’t even need to go looking for food now, they come and find me to let me know that breakfast is ready. The scrambled eggs are so creamy and the mushrooms so buttery. The staff here are really bubbly and friendly. They’ve got beautiful voices as well, at the morning meeting we had both a hymn and several renditions of happy birthday.

No game drive this morning, just the drop off at the airstrip which included a wonderful ele encounter on the way. The other two vehicles carried on, I should have probably followed but instead I waited with the elephants for a while. An adolescent cow walked right up to the vehicle, inspected us and through her rumbles indicated to a tiny calf to come across the road with her. She was taking good care of her little sister.

I had a bit of time to make up and caught up with the others at the Tchkondeni Departure Lounge, AKA a local shabeen. The guests refuelled here before we carried onto the airstrip. One of the guests flew off in their six seater, as they banked towards JoBurg the charter plane landed to start the evac back to the city.

This plane carried with it a second pilot who was going to fly the plane that they’d left behind. We greeted him, he then walked over to the parked plane and reached into the landing gear’s housing and pulled out the keys. Just what you’d do if you were leaving your car for a friend to pick up.

Alveat dropped me back at EcoTraining, it was good to be back catching up with the likes of Jomi. However, it wasn’t long before the glamour of The Outpost and its private planes was a distant memory and I was emptying the fat trap.

Sitting on my backside over the last four days in the Landy whilst eating game drive snacks hasn’t done my fitness any good. I cut my usual 10k by half, even that was a was a struggle. If anybody asked I was planning to say that I cut it short because there wasn’t enough light left… the bush is no place to run as dusk edges towards night.

After watching everybody else drink gin and tonics for the last four days I thought I should see what the fuss was all about, not bad although lumps of ice are non existent in this part of the concession. When it comes to the gin, Jomi’s got a heavy hand.