Tshipse

Hi all,

After I wrote yesterday, we had a really good time back at the bus with the group. There are 21 of us and everyone is really nice. Poor Tess ripped a tendon in her ankle yesterday at Kruger and our beautiful guide and driver made her a crutch to help her walk. She's on a 25 day tour and has a pretty bad limp at the moment but is making the best of it. 

Everyone came to the tables at the campsite and we had a couple of drinks and a good chat. Then Justin made us a beautiful stew for dinner and Rob and I went to bed at 8.30pmbecause we were so exhausted. I think I managed about 7-8 hours of sleep. I vaguely remember hearing Demi shout "it's raining - get your tent cover!" earlier, and Rob got out and put ours on. My bladder then woke me at 4.30. It hasn't quite adjusted to the time zone so annoyingly I had to traipse through the rain to the toilets about 100m away. Ah well! 

We got up at 6.15 and for the two hours since I woke it had been absolutely pelting rain. It was a mission packing up all of our things and the mattresses and tent. We got saturated, as did most of our stuff. Luckily the bus was still warm so most things dried on our journey. 

Then we were on the road to Tshipse, our last destination in South Africa. It's funny, because two days ago we were absolutely boiling. Today due to the rain and wet, we got hot chocolates at our first pit stop and put all our jumpers on!!

We stopped at a shopping centre later on and stocked up on drinks for New Year's Eve. I'm not planning on having more than a few, we will see if I can even manage to stay up until midnight!!!

Due to having arrived and gotten straight into it, as well as last night's rain, we have decided to treat ourselves and pay the little extra to upgrade to a room tonight. Hoping to get a proper comfortable sleep and feel a lot better. We can't afford to do this a lot, but I think we need to now and then to keep ourselves sane!

The journey today was about ten hours and I passed some of the time by watching 'The Crown' that I downloaded off Netflix. Justin also had us play some games. In one we were given an African animal card (mine was a Kudu) and we had to act out and explain the animal for the group to guess. We learned some interesting facts - elephants have a 660 day gestation period (poor elephants!) and baboons have longer teeth than lions. Justin said that stereotypically like black and white humans, black rhino's babies walk behind them and white rhino's babies walk in front of them (typically African women carry their babies on their back). We also played a quiz game, and thanks to having typed information up for the blog that Justin told us, I knew a few of the answers!

We stopped at a baobab tree which is one of the largest trees in Africa. Its roots can spread up to 200m underground in order to find water. Wouldn't want one of those near your house! Its trunk is very thick to hold a lot of water. Apparently indigenous people used to live in the trunks of the trees. The leaves are also used to make relish. 

We made it to camp and the upgrade was totally worth it. Our cabin is beautiful and is like a little but. We had a delicious dinner with garlic bread and pork cutlets. I'm looking forward to a great sleep in our room. I did some washing and we can't hang it outside in case the Vervet monkeys steal it - Africa life!

Love to all

Claire

Xoxox