61. Watch A Sunrise And Sunset

I forgot to update this one when we came back from South Africa but this is definitely complete thanks to getting up in the middle of the night when we stayed at Lukimbi. 

Sunrise - The morning game drives leave at 5.30 so you get a wake-up call at 5am.  When we were going to bed on our first night Ian and I had a conversation about how he would have to answer the phone as it was on his side of the bed and I told him not to be grumpy as it wasn't the ranger's fault that he had to wake us up. 

In the morning I leaped out of bed shouting that we had slept in and it was 5.20!  I started running around getting dressed and complaining to Ian about hanging up on the ranger and that we were late because of him!  A rather bemused Ian told me that he hadn't hungup as he hadn't answered the phone!  Apparently I had a dream that he had answered the phone and then went back to sleep, oops...  It was only 3.40 in the morning.  We tried to go back to sleep but then we heard lions roaring near by so we gave up on sleep! 

Poor Ian!

Sunset - the afternoon game drives leave at 4pm and they last 3 or 4 hours.  Part of the way through the game drive you stop for sundowner cocktails.  A lovely way to watch the sunset, drinking cocktails and listening to the animals.

15. Spend The Day Watching And Photographing Wildlife

Kruger Park is definitely a great place to see wildlife - we saw 4 of the 'Big 5'. We also saw 3 of the 'Big 6 Birds' and heaps of other birds and animals.

The first night we stayed at Lukimbi we woke up to the sound of lions calling to each other.  They sounded very close but our ranger told us that they were about 2 kms away and then we went to find them.  It was amazing how close we got to the animals and none of them seemed to be the slightest bit bother by us.

Lukimbi is a private concession in Kruger Park which means that the roads can only be used by people staying there or by their rangers and over the years the animals have become used to them.  I loved staying at Lukimbi, everything is set up so that you can see outside at all times just incase there might be something to see.  You even have a view outside from the bath and the toilet!

44. Go For A Picnic

Ian and I decided that it would be a good idea to pack a picnic lunch on the days that we were self-driving around Kruger so we bought a cold box from the local shop to try and keep everything edible.

It was 44 degrees the first day when we stopped for lunch but luckily we manged to find a picnic table under cover in a nice shaded part of one of the camps.  You are only allowed to get out of your car at camps or gates in Kruger which is good as I didn't fancy share my sarnies...

70. Go A Week Without Straightening My Hair

This one was pretty easy really.  When we were in South Africa it was so hot and humid that it just wasn't worth straightening my hair, it would have frizzed up again the minute I went outside.  Plus it was just too hot to spend 20-30 minutes using hot straightening irons and I didn't think that the lions would care if I had frizz hair or not.

So I had curly hair for a week...

14. Go To Kruger National Park

The place that we stayed at in South Africa was only 15km from one of the entrance gates to Kruger so we decided that we should spend some time there.  After reading a lot about limits to the number of day visitors to the park I decided that we should make some reservations so that we could get in without having to start queueing at 4am.

We set off from Marloth Park thinking it wouldn't take us very long to get there, but what we didn't know was that the 15kms was on a dirt road which isn't exactly an easy thing to drive on at any speed in a Ford Fiesta.  When we finally made it back onto the tarred road just before the entrance to Kruger we hit a rock in the road and the hub cap came flying off!  Ian managed to find the hub cap and we drove to the gate only to be told that they had closed it as the daily limit had been reached already.  Luckily we had a reservation so we were allowed in.  Sometimes the Crocodile Bridge gate is closed because the bridge is flooded and it's easy to see why when you look at the photo below.  Easy to drive over if you have a huge 4x4 but not so easy in a Fiesta!  It was a bit of a heart stopping moment each time we had to drive over it!

Once we managed to get to the other side of the 'bridge' Ian had to change the tyre as the rim was buckled and he thought that it would be better to change to the spare tyre in the car park rather than end up being stranded in the park.

Kruger is a huge place and was fantastic, we saw 4 out of the 5 five in the first day (just the leopard missing).  But it wasn't quite as relaxing as we had hoped - one of us was always driving while the other was trying to spot animals which meant both of us had to concentrate all the time.

We had a very close call with a rhino - we were driving along one of the quieter back roads and went round a bend in the road only to find a huge rhino just a few feet away from us.  It didn't seem to happy that we were there so we quickly reversed away from it.

Ian and I decided to treat ourselves and book a couple of nights accommodation in one of the safari lodges in Kruger which meant that neither of us had to drive as they organised 2 game drives a day.  We stayed at Lukimbi Safari Lodge which was fantastic and a perfect end to our holiday.

13. Go Back To South Africa

Ian and I spent New Year in South Africa.  I love South Africa, it's one of my favourite places to visit so I've been really looking forward to this trip.

It was a bit hectic and stressful before hand as we were a bit worried that because of all the snow in Holland and Scotland that we wouldn't actually make it there.  The plan was to go home to Scotland for Christmas, come back to Rotterdam overnight and then fly out to Johannesburg the next day.  At first we thought that there would be problems with the flight to Scotland because of the snow in Holland but that cleared up in time.  On the day that we were suppose to fly back to Scotland Edinburgh airport was closed in the morning so we thought that our flight would be cancelled but luckily it wasn't.  When we got to Edinburgh it was -11 degrees and still snowing.  There was even snow on the beach at Port Seton!

When we were worried that we wouldn't get our flight back to Amsterdam in time.  Luckily we had already packed and left our bags for South Africa in the left luggage lockers at Schiphol airport so in the end everything was fine.

We decided to go to a new place this time and picked a place called Marloth Park which borders Kruger National Park.  Marloth Park in a conservancy area which means that there are animals wandering freely around and that the properties don't have fences around them.  We rented a lovely house called Khaya Romantica

On the day we arrived we saw giraffe and zebra wandering by the roadside and a huge warthog came to the house, climbed the steps to the veranda and lay down in front of the door.  I was a bit scared of the warthog as it was an older one and had quite big tusks so I ran inside to hide! 

The next morning when I was sitting outside drinking tea a huge bunch of about 30 striped mongooses (should that be mongeese?) came running over the path and then a few minutes later a kudu came to graze on the bushes.  We also had a rock monitor and a water monitor and more warthogs come into the garden (smaller warthogs this time so I didn't hide)