Sunday 9th March 2014

There was no walk this morning as the rifle drills took priority, the silver lining to this was that we got a sleep in. Wien helped out with the rifle handling why Jomi and I cracked on with the general duties and the ever growing ‘to do’ list.

After breakfast I had a really good excuse to miss fitness, I had to head up to Masasisi to meet Mum and Dad. The last bit of the journey to the park includes quite a detour through one of the villages, this is to avoid a massive gap in the road where it was washed away last January.

Whilst I was waiting I was joined by five local children who seemed to enjoy sitting in and climbing all over the Landrover. Mum and Dad made really good time and seemed refreshed after their long journey. Once they got out of their air conditioned car I think the heat and humidity came as quite a shock to them.

The drive from the park gate to camp wasn’t as good as the one that Johnny and Emma had, there was no elephant to greet them. Nonetheless there was eventually a warthog family, one impala and some bird life to gesture that there were some animals on the reserve.

After Mum and Dad settled in to their tent and we had our obligatory cup of tea we went on a drive for a couple of hours. No big game but it was still amazing to be driving Mum and Dad around. They both seemed relaxed and were happy with my 4×4 driving, the roads are certainly different to Yorkshire where I probably drove them last.