Monday AM. I was up at 4 am.... 2 hours before breakie, and 3 hours before meeting up with Charles. So I finished packing, and took shower. At quarter past six, I headed across the street to the ATM to grab some shillings.... and ran into Charles. He was like, "had breakfast yet?" I hadn't so he shoo'd me off to go eat. I filled up on breaky and grabbed the bell boy with my luggage on his trolley. Charles pulled his LandBruiser around and loaded up my luggage, once again, he picks the stuff up and says "LIGHT!!" He is used to travellers who bring everything with them including the bathroom sink. (those tourists should pack their toilets instead of the sink!) Today was just drive, drive drive! My butt got sore sitting in the LandBruiser. Most of the ride was on tarmac roads... but at one point, we started on the dirt roads... which were semi smooth til Charles decided to pass the BigCat/JCB Digger which was "smoothing" out the new road. This safari was really different as we were constantly going through villages where the kids hollared out "pens!" "biks!" (I am not handing out pens til the end of the trip kids!!!) Before we got to the dirt, Charles pulled over to the side, dips his head out the window and looks at Safir (Sapphire I call him) and me.... "Flat tyre!!!"
We made it to the enterance to Selous National Park..... Charles paid the fees.. and drove us on into the park, another few hours. Saw Giraffe and Impala along the way and an elephant or two. We got to Sable Mountain Lodge at around 2pm... where I was checked into my banda and pointed to lunch. Mmmmmm lunch!
the views from our open dining room were awesome. No game drives today... just relaxing at the banda, shower and reading. Sable Mountain is on solar power only.... and they only turn on the power for certain hours a day. I had no electric outlets in my banda... so no charging up the ol laptop, puter or camera (camera battery was chargable in the landbruiser.)I did a bit of journal writing on the puter... read on the Lana'i and at seven went down to the dining hall to read and have a tonic and gin.
Dinner was fab!! tomato and avocado salad and chicken for mains.I was soooo looking forward to the tomato and avocado salad.. but it wasn't served in a half avocado as we had at the Masaii lodge back in 06. I definately worked off my meals by climbing up and down the hill to meals. Mum woulda hated this climb... and when she got here on day three.. she hated it. But heck, even Charles was like, "i am not climbing that hill again in the AM, you meet me down at the landcruiser."
No comments:
Post a Comment