I have wanted to take Marion to see African wildlife for years, and this year we finally booked ourselves onto the end of October Naturetrek Bargain Mammals tour to Kruger National Park.
The brochure described it as "action-packed" which turned out to be the case in two ways, with (happily) wildlife and particularly mammals throwing itself at us day in and day out for the whole week, and (gruellingly) non-stop game driving coupled with 5 moves during the week, so packing up and unpacking from one rest camp to another was a constant background task. This is not a complaint - so far as I'm concerned bring it on if it gets results like we had!
We left on a BA Boeing 747-400 from Heathrow Terminal 5, which was a relatively pleasant airport experience. The total absence of problem or dispute about me transporting my 500mm Canon f4 in a Lowepro Naturetrekker as hand baggage certainly relieved a lot of tension built up over the last few days before the off! The odd G&T to celebrate being on our way also lightened the travel jitters.
Nothing can however turn 10 hours cattle class into a joyful jaunt and we reached Johannesburg feeling rather older than we actually are. Helmeted Guineafowl scuttling along the taxiway were first into the notebook, not new for me but its always nice to get on the board on a new trip.
Inside the concrete maze we identified the other family on the trip by the Naturetrek labels on their hand baggage so we all met our guide, Bert Palthe, as a group and escaped the airport quickly and efficiently.
Next week we will start getting into some serious wildlife and hopefully by then I will have some pictures sorted out.
John
I look forward to hearing more. We were in KNP earlier in October and had a great time.
Pat