Friday, May 9, 2014

Our travels part 2

Hi everyone,

A few days quickly turns into a  few months,that is how time goes when travelling around and being busy.
We are all back in Finland again, me , Liina& Viivi arrived just around easter weekend, and Nico arrived last night. Time to look back and tell more about our journey from Rocktail lodge onwards trough Swaziland while I still remember:)
We left early in the morning from Rocktail beach camp to make it in time to Timbavati Game Reserve, but I think we where a bit optimistic there...it started out well with a smooth road like  the road below and small towns we passed trough:
 


Until we entered Swaziland and could not believe the roads with all the potholes, one can defenitely not drive 100km/h as it says on the signs next to the road, wonder what the car would  look like after that:

 
After leaving Swaziland behind it started already to get dark, we enjoyed a beautyful African sunset, it is a magical moment, as the sun disppeares very quickly behind the horizon and the darkness folds in.


When we arrived at Simbavati lodge 4 hours later, yes, we had to drive in darkness 4 hours and on top of that there was roadwork on the highway and we had to wait 30min in a queue , we where all very tired, and the comfortable bed was a blessing...and a bottle of wine! but we where too tired to have a glas of wine that evening, but it was such a nice gift from the lodge, thank you!
The last 20km to the lodge was inside the reserve and we saw hyena and wild dogs on the road:)

 
 
Following morning we slept in, we did not make it for the 5am wake-up and game drive, we decided we rather go on the afternoon drive, instead we just relaxed the day. On our afternoon game drive we saw plenty of animals, here is just a few pictures of what we saw: 





 
 
Timbavati game reserve  is a Big Five game reserve and comprises of over 53000 hectares of private land next to Kruger park and all fences between Kruger park and Timbavati has been taken down, to give animals free movement.  There is many accommodation options to choose from,  I do recommend the reserve for anyone who wants to get a good safari experience.
 
After two nights in Timbavati we started our journey towards Thabazimbi where Nicos family stays.
There we stayed for a week just relaxing and going trough our emails, as that is not the easiest thing on the road, internet is very limited.
 
A new update is to follow any day soon, about our journey to Okavango Delta and Namibia :)
 
Have a wonderful weekend everyone!
 
Love Jannika