Michigan’s Upper Peninsula takes everything that makes the lower peninsula gorgeous, then doubles down, straight into spectacular. Blue skies, green pine trees, and the sparkling, silvery waters of Lake Superior.
Continue reading “Pictured Rocks National where the hell is the Lakeshore”Michigan is cold. It’s cold for about five months of the year, it’s cold at night and in the morning for longer than that, and it gets cold snaps in May, like it has for the last three days. Michigan is also one of the most beautiful states you’ll ever visit.
“Pure Michigan” is one of the slogans for this nature-lover’s paradise, where four distinct seasons allow for everything from river tubing – affectionately called “rump bumping” – to skiing, snow shoeing, ice fishing, and snowmobiling. The state is crisscrossed by hiking trails through landscapes as varied as pine forests, sand dunes, and urban centers.
And it’s those heady, scented pine forests that take Susan straight back to her childhood (Michigan is her home state) and feel exotic to Simon, who marvels in the natural diversity of this massive country. When we hit the pine tree-lined stretches of Highway 127 and Interstate 75, the REAL adventure we’ve embarked upon began.
Yes, we’ve had some setbacks and hurdles along the way, and we’ve booked a mobile RV repair service for a week from now (showers and shampoos with boiled water are our new friend!). With help on the way, eventually, we spent yesterday and today exploring Mackinaw City at the upper tip of the “Mitten” (referring to Michigan’s hand shape) and St. Ignace, just across the mighty Mackinaw Bridge.
We had planned to “boondock” for a day or two, finding parking places without any hookups, according to our whim, but a serious cold snap with threats of temperatures that could reach freezing forced us into a campground with 50amp power so we could run our heater and keep the plumbing from freezing.
With that in mind, we found the beautiful Mackinaw Mill Creek Campground and a cozy spot with pine trees on three sides, just a short stroll from Lake Michigan.
The downside was, it’s midge season. Those pesky, swarming, non-biting, gawd-awful bugs that absolutely invade every breath of air, especially along the shoreline. That cold snap and its gusty wind became our bug-busting friends, keeping these demons of the breezes to a low roar.
Mackinaw City is touristy, but in a charming, midwestern way. Lots of little gift shops, fudge shops, and, in the past, mom-and-pop places serving up the area’s iconic pasties (pastry-enclosed individual meat and potato pies the miner’s took with them into the mines for meals). But we’d have to go into St. Ignace to find those delicious treats – a must-do on Susan’s long must-do list – as only one pasty shop remains in Mackinaw City, and it was closed.
We spent yesterday watching the ferries go back and forth to Mackinaw Island (a place we know well, and decided not to visit this trip), taking a stroll along the main drag, and walking along a rocky beach with a view of the bridge.
Today we crossed the bridge in our car, Nippy, with Susan doing a serious butt-clench the whole way, thinking about the comment our friend made (Hi, Janet!) about how the bridge was recently hit by a crane.
Once safely on land again, we headed to Lehto’s Pasties to pick up lunch (beef, potato, and rutabaga ((swede in the UK)) for purist Susan, chicken and vegetables for sacrilegious Simon), then headed to the waterside for a view of Mackinaw Island and the ferries. A&W Root Beer and Michigan’s own Vernor’s Ginger Ale were our drinks of choice, and it was a truly picture-perfect experience. Just what we’d been hoping for.
After lunch we poodled around, looking for roadside stops where we could walk down to the water. At every turn, we found more and more gorgeous vistas. If not for the winters, we could move here.
The toilet seal was still leaking when we got back to Fati, and there’s no hot water unless we boil it, but we do love this life when we’re out exploring, and Michigan’s natural and human-made wonders lifted our spirits immensely.
Next…Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula!
We managed to crack one of the ceiling fan vents during our charge north, while the hot water has also stopped working, for reasons unknown. Oh, and the seal on the toilet looks to have failed, and the leveling jacks won’t work properly. But, apart from that, everything’s fine.
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What happens when an RVer’s essential tire pressure monitoring system goes wrong? It’s a nightmare.
It’s probably saying the obvious that a typical RV is a complicated piece of kit. It is packed with different systems, gadgets and other operational parts that then need to survive the “earthquake” of traveling along highways that can be highly unforgiving.*
(* That’s a euphemism for roads that are little more than pot-holed and scarred relics – yes, Alabama, we’re looking at you)
There are plenty of ways they can go wrong, including the all-important tires that keep you rolling down the highway. That’s why many RVers use a Tire Pressure Monitoring System (or TPMS) to keep close tabs on the most vital part of the whole vehicle.
But what happens when your TPMS itself goes wrong? Today, we found out. It’s infuriating.
We’d had a pretty good morning, following a lovely overnight at the Tennessee winery. We had traveled through the pretty rolling hills of eastern Kentucky when we opted for a break at the Pilot Service Station in Jeffersonville, just south of Louisville. The tire repair center was quiet, so we thought we’d see if they could check the pressure and general well-being of our 6 tires after 4 hard-driving days.
No problem. They took it in and had several technicians working on it while we enjoyed a coffee and iced tea, and took Ruthie for a walk. There was a serious issue with the valve on our front right tire, so that needed changing, but everything else seemed OK, and off we went again. For about another 20 miles.
Having just crossed the spectacular bridge into Indiana, we got a warning on the TPMS. Our front left tire had ballooned to 393 PSI. Considering the normal operating PSI is 90, that was a pretty startling figure. And quite impossible. If it had been 393 it would have exploded well before reaching such a bloated figure. So it had to be the TPMS malfuctioning.
OK, we had a standard tire gauge to hand and were able to get off the highway and find somewhere to park. Checking the tire pressure, though, means removing the tricky little monitors on the tire valves, and this one wasn’t having any of it. After removing the monitor and checking the tire pressure (a solid 80PSI), the valve wouldn’t shut off and was fast losing pressure. Simon had to scrabble behind the wheel to try to get the monitor back on, leaving several strips of skin on the tarmac in his hurry to prevent losing too much air.
A quick call back to the Pilot tire center revealed another tire specialist nearby, so that’s where we limped, with our hazard flashers on, to get this new problem seen to.
Fortunately, the Best One Tire & Service Center at Jeffersonville was nearby and they had an empty bay ready to check things out. The outcome? Another tire valve issue and more hassle with the TPMS, getting it off and back on again.
Suffice it to say, it was a highly stressful and worrying afternoon, wondering if we’d even get back on the road again today. We’d also lost a shedload of time in trying to reach our overnight Harvest Hosts stop in Indianapolis and had to scramble to find something else closer by.
Fortunately, Susan found the lovely Ashmoor RV Campground in Scottsburg. Small, quiet and wooded, it was the perfect place to sit and de-stress after the TPMS issues.
Ruthie thought it was pretty good, too.
One of the reasons to take a road trip in the USA is for its gas stations. Yes, seriously. You can find some of the most, well, American experiences at these refueling outposts along the main highways. And, if you think you’ve seen them all, you haven’t seen Buc-ees.
We’d arrived at northern Alabama, close to Athens, and turned off I-65 at the sight of this vast, mirage-like complex of buildings that seemed to stretch towards the horizon. Not only is it, jointly, the largest gas station on Earth – with a mind-boggling 120 (yes, one hundred and twenty!) fuel pumps, it has a gigantic supermarket attached to them, as well as a dog park, huge car wash and enough parking space for half of Alabama.
In short, Buc-ees is a cultural phenomenon, drawings fans from all over the south and south-east (especially Texas, where this remarkable brand originated in 1982) for its mix of the cute, kitsch and collectible. You want great barbecue? They got it. Candy? Jerky? Fudge? Got them, too, in multiple triplicate. There are coffee stations, soda fountains, bakery items and ice creams galore, along with thousands of plush Buc-ees (he’s actually a beaver) and other types of themed merchandise, from T-shirts to jewelry. It’s totally bewildering.
Buc-ees’ other claim to fame is they have the cleanest restrooms on the Interstate, and Susan can confirm that, yes, they are as clean as a whistle. Spotless and shiny, in fact. Another trademark is their Beaver Nuggets, crispy corn nuggets that have various types of coating, including white cheddar and sea-salted caramel. Sure, it’s a cheap and cheerful approach, but that is its charm (along with a general level of cleanliness that would put many hospitals in the shade), and it is utterly captivating. We’ll keep an eye out for more Buc-meister outlets as we go.
Oh, and the barbecue was delicious.
If that was today’s lunch, we finished up at our latest Harvest Hosts discovery, another overnight stop, this time in northern Tennessee, just past Nashville (no Grand Ol’ Opry for us on this trip, sadly). However, Sumner Crest Winery more than made up for missing out on the Tennessee musical icon. This little gem in Portland, Tennessee, features a truly darling wine bar and cafe, with local wines, their own chicken salads and pimento cheese (our tip: try the one with candied jalapenos!), and both indoor and outdoor dining and sampling.
You can try their wines by the glass, flights or bottle, and some of their creative fruit wines and slushies are absolutely sipping sensations. The interior Chandelier Room would be great for a special occasion, and their gift shop was another dazzling collection of cute trinkets and souvenirs, with plenty to interest most wine-drinkers.
Tonight, we are hitched up to one of the winery’s three electrical posts, putting us in pole position for the road to Kentucky and Indiana tomorrow. It was a good day. A Buckin good day, you could say.
How the day started: waking up in an empty farm field with all the RV windows and the door open. Our Harvest Host location was the Von Glahn Farms family business in Baconton, Georgia. Pure rural bliss.
Breakfast included beautiful picked-fresh blueberries, and blueberry honey. Truly delish.
How the day continued: stopping to help a (very) slow turtle cross a busy road before he got crushed. And Simon copped for a broadside of turtle pee for his troubles. And that’s a sentence we NEVER thought we would write.
Later on: A truly excellent drive through rural Georgia on Highway 82, avoiding the usual I-75 route north so we could A) Avoid Atlanta and it’s bad traffic, and 2) So we could dodge the mountainous part of the highway through Tennessee and Kentucky. The scenery was wonderful and the route easy to drive.
How it finished up: Alabama did not impress us. At all. Instead of avoiding the traffic of Atlanta, we hit road construction south of Montgomery, and heavy traffic in Birmingham. Instead of missing the mountains of Kentucky, we hit the potholes of I-65, and it felt like an ongoing earthquake until we were finally able to get off the highway for an RV campground (Carson Village in the Birmingham suburb of Pinson). We also got cut up and cut off about a zillion times by Birmingham commuter traffic as we tried to navigate by GPS. Not a happy experience, and we won’t be back in a hurry, if at all.
Neither photo even hints at the gruesome nature of the road surfaces we encountered, and even now, having stopped at the RV park, we can still feel the shocks and shakes in our back teeth.
Tomorrow we head north for Tennessee and a potential Harvest Host brewery in the town of Franklin. Turtles not invited.
How we ended up in a field on a pecan farm in Georgia.
One day down, another 364 to go….
So, after a frantic day’s packing on Saturday, we left nice and early on Sunday at, er, 11:30am. Well, we had a few more tire issues, and, by the time we had everything sorted out (and Simon stopped swearing), it was about an hour and a half later than planned.
We don’t have specific daily targets for the first 5 days, as the object is just to get up to Michigan by next weekend for Susan’s mom’s memorial at their Okemos home. Our dear Kathy Prelesnik died in April 2020, and we hadn’t managed to get back there for a whole heap of reasons until summer 2022, and then Susan’s step-dad Gene took a major turn for the worse and he passed away last September.
In truth that was the final catalyst for our Big Trip, a kind of “it’s-now-or-never” moment. Anyway, that’s the background, and we are ‘winging it’ to start with, just heading north and seeing where we end up at the end of the day.
Today, that was Georgia, with Valdosta soon left in our rear-view mirror, and then Tifton, where we turned left aiming for Alabama. As a member of the Harvest Hosts system – where various businesses offer overnight stays to RVers – we started checking for any opportunities in this part of the state, and lo! and beold, we found ourselves in an open field, all on our own in a pecan farm.
It makes for a great start to our Year On The Road, and we can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.
And here are the happy crew (all together now, “Me and you and a dog named Boo…..”)
Only the thought of visiting Madikwe Game Reserve and the beautiful Rhulani Guest Lodge made leaving Maru-a-Pula tolerable. MaP headmaster Andy Taylor had strongly urged us to go, so we searched through Madikwe’s Last Minute Specials online, and got one night at Rhulani Guest Lodge for nearly half the usual price.
We set off on Sunday morning at 10:30am and, with our fiasco getting from South Africa into Botswana in mind, we allowed for 2 hours to cross the border. As luck would have it there were only a handful of people at both border crossings and it was plain sailing – apart from the car inspection that revealed we had a stray orange in our bag in the trunk, which earned us a bit of a telling off from the guard. Crossing took 25 minutes in total, and within another 15 minutes we were at Madikwe.
We passed through the entry gate and drove along a dirt road, where we saw zebra, Guinea fowl, and hornbills, and when we arrived at Rhulani there were four attendants waiting for us with warm, scented wash cloths, instructions on where everything was, valet service for our car, and a tour of the resort.
Rhulani was a proper luxury lodge, and the immediate impression was enormously eye-pleasing; a small-scale version of Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge, if done by Frank Lloyd Wright in all native materials (stone, wood, tree limbs and thatch).
We sat in the open-air lounge drinking the non-alcoholic cocktail offered and enjoyed the staff’s first-class invitation to be massively indolent.
Having arrived early, we had plenty of time to look around, take in the views, take photos and explore our accommodation, which was a mini-lodge with a private plunge pool, indoor and outdoor showers, four-poster bed with mosquito netting, more great views, WiFi and air-conditioning (but, happily NO television).
We were treated to our own table for two at lunch, as the rest of the resort’s guests were still out on their morning game drive, so we had the place entirely to ourselves, with our own server. A nice caprese salad arrived, followed by chicken, risotto and a delicious side of collard greens. Sadly, Simon’s glass of wine was blown over by a gust of wind and landed in his starter, but his glass was soon re-filled (although the table-cloth was Ieft soaking in chardonnay!).
A fruit meringue was served as dessert and we waddled off to chill out and enjoy the Rhulani vibe (which is a Zulu word for ‘relax’), sitting with our feet in our plunge pool, watching the birds flitting about, and relaxing on our loungers.
When the other guests returned from their morning game drive they had a bite to eat and time to freshen up and relax, then we broke into groups, with us going out with a German couple, and our driver, Sean, a young man who gave up the city life in Jo’burg for life on the open range. Our big Toyota vehicle was equipped for full off-roading (as we would soon discover), and it was immensely comfortable navigating the dirt roads that had nearly shaken our fillings out in our tiny hire car.
Sean was a wealth of information as we discuss the full range of Madikwe wildlife, and in the span of a couple of hours we saw elephants, zebra, a huge male giraffe, wildebeest, impala, lots of beautiful birds, and steenbok, and we drove (slowly!) into a herd of Cape buffalo who were grazing on long, dry grass. The soft swish of their movements and their gentle chewing was just sublime, with the heat, the yellow sunlight, golden grass and their quiet snorts.
We then went to a watering hole where seven elephants were drinking. They were young males, and they had churned the shallow water into mud, so one of them carved out a hole in the bottom of the bank until he reached fresh water. They were taking turns slurping it up their trunks like they were using a straw. What a comical sound!
A male lion had been spotted at the watering hole before the elephants arrived, so Sean decided we’d track him down. We tracked him for an hour, with Sean catching sight of the lion but then losing him when he flopped down in the long grass. As the sky darkened we were rewarded with a full-throated roar. We didn’t so much hear the roar as feel it, a full bass growl that registered in our solar plexus’. With that, Sean took the vehicle through thorn scrub and long grass until he spotted the lion on the other side of a gulley. The lion roared again and when we found him Sean pulled up right next to him, which startled us a bit. Quite a bit, actually.
But the lion had been in the park with his mother since he was a cub, so he was fine with us nearby. As he lay there he gave two gigantic yawns and we had a marvelous view of his extremely impressive teeth!
We ended the evening there, but still saw lots of animals on our way back to Rhulani, including a big chameleon in a tree, which Sean called “the laziest animal I’ve ever seen” because it had been on that branch for a week.
Dinner that night was chilled salmon appetizer, Eland steak for Simon and duck breast for me, mashed potato and baby carrots and zucchini, with a tiny poached pear with cream cheese for dessert. Gaborone was only 15 miles away, and we were treated to the superb sight of a lightning storm over the city, bringing pula, the blessing of rain, to a place we now loved.
After dinner we returned to our villa with the safety of a guide, since there were wild dogs in our compound that night. The next morning’s alarm call came all too soon, and by 5:30am we were showered and ready to go. We had a quick snack of rusks, coffee and tea before setting off into the chilly darkness, but we were dressed for it, and our Jeep had warm blankets to offset the cold.
Sean decided we would track three male lions who had been hanging out along the reserve’s Southern fence. He spotted their tracks fairly easily, as it had rained the night before, but he kept saying, “They’re going this way. Now they’re going the opposite direction…” over and over, for nearly 2 hours. We covered a lot of ground, but finally gave up. We did see a huge male rhino during that time, who didn’t like us very much as we were a terrible distraction from the job at hand. He was on the scent of a female, so he loped off quickly.
We headed down a track where we came upon a giraffe with its head up, not eating. Susan asked Sean if it was looking at us, or at something else, and he said he thought it was looking at something else. Then we heard the most unusual sound, as if someone’s stomach had rumbled at the same time as a lion roared miles away. Sean brightened right up and said, “That’s baby lions!”
He followed their little roarings, and we found a mama lion with four young cubs. The babies were pestering mama for milk to go with the wildebeest she had killed and stashed beneath the tree they were lounging under. When we came upon her she immediately stood up and began to growl at us in a very clear warning. There was absolutely no mistaking her intent, and no mistaking the look of a mother who’s worn out with her babies’ constant demands. Plus, she had blood all over her front from the wildebeest, so we immediately took the hints.
Sean tried to pull away going forward, but she was having none of it. She kept up her angry stance until he backed the truck up and made a wide circle around her. She settled in and nursed her cubs, and from then on she was fine. Another mama and her two older cubs just sat there and watched the drama unfold.
When the babies had been fed they lay down with mama nearby, but one cub got up and ambled our way. When he saw our vehicle he stopped in his tracks, trying to hide behind a termite mound. Sean said he would take his cue from the other lions, and when they showed no reaction the cub knew it was safe. He was so cute and furry, with an obvious personality of his own. What a special thing to see! It made our whole day.
We drove off after a while, spotting troops of baboons as we went, until Sean stopped to give us the drinks and snacks we’d missed out on the night before as we tracked the male lion. Sean stopped the jeep about a mile beyond one of the baboon troops and laid out rusks, dried mango, shortbread and coffee spiked with Amarula. He said he might not have been completely comfortable with the location, but baboons always posted a sentinel, and we’d hear them if lions showed up.
He also told us the female lions with cubs explained the crazy pattern he’d tracked earlier: the males were walking back and forth looking for the females, but couldn’t find them. If it wasn’t for the giraffe, and then the irritable, pestering moans of the cubs, we never would have found them either.
When the time came to head back to Rhulani for breakfast we were fully sated with African wildlife, and already talking about a return visit. Our time at Madikwe was far, far too short, but we held the purpose of our visit to Africa in mind and felt extremely grateful to Andy Taylor (and his wonderful secretary Lynda!) who made sure we didn’t miss out on this incredible gem. We rarely take time off to do something “just for us” (some people call that a “vacation”, we’re told!), and if we could only have a day or so to do it, Madikwe was an unforgettable choice.
Next blog: The Faces Of Africa
Want to see LOADS more photos of Medikwe and its animals? Check out our Into Africa album on Veness Travel Media on Facebook. We will be adding to the album as each blog goes up.
The primary purpose of our trip was research for the book, but there were times when we had a few hours open, and we made the most of them by touring beyond Gaborone. If you’re going to a country, you ought to see the country, and that means getting out of the big city to where the rest of the people live.
The day started with Simon giving a talk to the Maru-a-Pula students about the first years of the school’s existence, and when he mentioned there was no air conditioning in the classrooms the noise in the room grew loud as the students processed that unthinkable horror. He was brilliant (Susan says!), and it was an enjoyable connection between what was and what is.
After Simon’s talk we did our second interview with the former deputy headmaster (for 24 years!), and we are now incredibly grateful to have heard his story first-hand. He passed away last week, having truly made a difference in the lives of many, many young people.
When the community service programme we had signed up for was cancelled we found ourselves with an afternoon free, and decided to drive out to Lobatse and make a big circle back to Gaborone by way of Kanye.
Botswana’s flat, open expanses again captured our hearts (a Symphony in Brown, we called it, from the lightest, palest brown to the deep red-browns and even rose-brown of the soil in some places) and we enjoyed the wonderfully sharp and distinctive style of the countryside, a harsh but empathetic vista that rolled on for mile after mile, broken in irregular fashion by hills and kopjes—plus the occasional baboon sighting along with the usual roadside mixture of goats, cows and donkeys.
It was a subtle and demanding landscape, but timeless and soothing, like there was some essential, innate connection. It also remained painfully arid, with next to no water. How the goats and cows eked out an existence on so little sustenance was a minor miracle.
As we drove through the most rural areas, Susan often thought she was seeing someone’s abandoned garden shed, when in reality it was their house. Some of the small villages we passed included homes made entirely from corrugated metal, and some covered only in tattered tarp and filthy cloth. It was hard to believe people lived in them, but their owners were often sitting outside on a chair next to the front door.
When we reached Lobatse it felt like we had stepped back in time by some 40 years. Nothing about the town center seemed to have changed from what Simon recalled of family trips there in the 1970s, and it still had a small-town vibe, with barely a hint of modernity to be seen. There was nothing to stop for, especially on a Sunday when half the stores were closed and the other half had a drab, downbeat feel, so we drove on toward Kanye, another of Botswana’s original old towns, and mile after mile provided both mystery and drama. Would another goat stray onto the road? Would another reckless driver end up in a ditch? Would there be an end to the grinding poverty that is a constant companion of rural Botswana?
Kanye was livelier in its appearance of moving forward. “Kiosks” selling fruit or candy, or offering services like car washes, haircuts, or shoe repair, lined the street, and there was a general air of bustle and purpose.
Driving along the main street we saw an older man wearing a trench coat, who had dropped some coins in the road. When he bent to pick them up a small truck had to screech violently to a stop to avoid hitting him. We then realized he was dropping coins from his pocket every time he bent over, and his actions were futile until two teenaged boys came to help him. All we had thought of was how insane it was to drive here, and how we never knew what might happen. For the old man, picking up the money wasn’t an act of stupidity. He looked like those coins were nearly all he had in the world.
The road from Kanye back to Gaborone went past Gabane, which suddenly seemed built-up after so much open land. There was still a tremendous amount of poverty—and a billion goats—but there were also a decent number of much better homes.
On the way back to MaP we saw a big billboard reflective of the three-year drought Botswana has been enduring, that read: “If it’s yellow let it mellow. If it’s brown flush it down. Only flush when it’s necessary.” It became our go-to refrain when confronted with the cultural frustrations of scheduling we were encountering; everyone loves to say “Yes!” to a get-together (in our case, and interview), but absolutely cannot commit to a date or a time. So…we had to let it mellow until the time came when we absolutely had to flush it down.
We’re not going to show you a picture of that. Instead, here are some banded mongoose (mongeese? Mongi?)
The next day we drove out to Gabane’s Customary Court (in traditional terms, the Kgotla) to meet with Kgosi Alfred Pule, the village chief. He spoke to us about the importance of MaP’s involvement in the village over the years, then he showed us around (you’ll remember it from our last blog about Botswana’s Independence Day). Kgosi Pule pointed to a blue building, which was now a store, and told us it had been built over the big hole MaP students had used to mix mud and cow dung to make bricks. We would have had no hope of ever finding it, as the village had grown and changed so much Simon hardly recognized it, so it was a real thrill to know the location of one of his most vivid MaP memories.
That afternoon MaP’s secretary, Lynda, suggested we drive to Mochudi for its wonderful museum, and while we made the trip out there we ended up just driving around waving at people. Everyone we wave at – and we mean EVERYONE – smiled and waved back as if it was the most natural thing in the world. One boy shouted, “Hi English!” and another shouted “Hi white!”
Mochudi was possibly the most homogenous of the towns we visited, with lots of small houses (better than shacks but not big or fancy) that all seemed to have the comfortable ‘lived-in’ appearance of homes that are content with their lot, and we wonder about that attitude. A lot. The people were certainly not under-fed or suffering in any way; most houses seemed to have electricity and, we think, running water, which seemed to be enough to create a general air of contentment and happiness. It was an intriguing concept, as well as an unfamiliar one.
There was something special going on along the main street, with tattered stalls and lots of small trailers with a cow or goats. It seemed like it might be some sort of butchering day. We briefly considered stopping at a bar with outdoor seating for a beer with the locals, but decided we just weren’t sure enough about how that would be received, so we didn’t. We probably should have. Or maybe not.
That evening we returned to our guest house with some groceries and water and were delighted to find a reply from Madikwe Game Reserve, who had a lodge at Rhulani available for Sunday night, with two game drives, all meals, and an ultra-luxurious accommodation for just under R6000 (about $250 each). Andy insisted we must go there, and while it was a major splurge, we decided we would treat ourselves to a bit of African safari luxury before we have to go home again.
Next: Madikwe Game Reserve!
Want to see more photos? Check out our Into Africa album on Veness Travel Media on Facebook. We will be adding to the album as each blog goes up.
