We had another beautiful flight on Emirates Air. No goodie bag this time but still champagne on arrival and all you could eat and drink. We arrived in Johannesburg at 9:00 PM and the limos were waiting to take us to the hotel where we were spending the night before flying to Krueger National Park with our safari mates in the morning. The hotel was gorgeous with a beautiful gift shop that we spent a long time staring through the windows because it was closed. Lucky we are coming back to stay there on our last night. The hotel also graciously offered to kept our Dubai suitcases until our return from safari. We got very little sleep that night because everyone was so excited.

Up very early to eat at a beautiful breakfast buffet with some very strange foods like impala sausage, fish, and some things I could only guess at. No bacon and eggs here. I ate fruit and a muffin. After breakfast we met our other safari travelers, 14 all together. There are a couple from Texas who build little houses. They are the only ones who enjoy our strange humor and have become friends. When we invite someone to come to The Villages you can tell that we like them. There was a couple from California and the man was the biggest know-it-all that we had ever meet. Absolutely obnoxious. Couple three was also from California. When the wife found out that we were not taking malaria medications she told Jude that she wanted nothing to do with us. Finally two single women who are very nice. Our guide’s name is Ndaba and we all have trouble pronouncing his name. He is a wonderful story teller and very funny.

It was a 45 minute plane ride from Johannesburg to the nearest airport to Kruger. More great gift shops but we knew we would be back in this airport. Ndaba has already figured out that we are big shoppers. A short bus ride to the park where we climbed into 4x4s that would be our transportation for the next 3 days. We arrived at Buffalo Rock Camp that has 10 tents on platforms with porches and bathrooms with 3/4 bamboo walls. It was like showering outside which would have been great except it only got to about 70 in the afternoon. Just before our arrival we were told that an elephant came into camp and drank out of the swimming pool. We saw the elephant dung between our tents. A beautiful but very rustic camp. Tents were unheated and it was miserable getting dressed in the morning when it was 40 degrees. We were forbidden to sit on our porch at night or to walk up to the lodge in the dark without an escort. Dinner was served outside under the stars and twinkle lights. We have to be up tomorrow at 6:00 AM so we all went to bed right after dinner