So we finally got our wild camping trip to Inch Cailloch and our first time out in the new dinghy. Glad to report that it stayed afloat and the electric outboard got us there and back with no need to paddle!

We made our way to Milarrochy Bay via Balloch as we had to register the dinghy first (compulsory if you are using an outboard). We had a laugh when the guy in the office asked where the boat was just now, and I replied “it’s in the car”! His jaw dropped and then I realised that we hadn’t mentioned yet that it was an inflatable!

Anyway, we got sorted out. £6 to register and we chose to buy boards to display the reg number on (£4) rather than use the included stickers.

After chatting with both the office in Balloch and visitor centre in Balmaha, we decided to launch from Milarrochy Bay and leave the car there overnight (apparently leaving the car is discouraged, but not disallowed).

Here is a photo of the dinghy in our lounge when we first got it, and blew it up to check it stayed inflated ok, it look ridiculously huge and we thought we had overdone it by buying the 4-man version!

However, once we had all our luggage on it, we were glad we hadn’t opted for the 3-man one! (This photo is from the Sunday as it was all a bit crazy – and choppy – on the Saturday crossing):

On Saturday, as mentioned, it was pretty choppy, so we didn’t get to take any photos during the crossing as the camera was in a dry bag (whilst i meanwhile was getting soaked by a wall of water every few minutes – thank goodness for my Gore Tex jacket!)

Anyway, somehow we made it there, dry underneath but with wet bottoms! Our spare clothing was only slightly damp as we had piled our packs on the top, otherwise it would have been soaked – note to use a dry bag for spare clothing the next time! At least our sleeping bags were in a waterproof bag.

If you want to read about our trip in more details check out our page here.

We set up camp on arrival and were the only people camping that night, so we had the place pretty much to ourselves, apart from a couple of motor cruisers (the people in them stayed aboard) and a couple of guys, Zee & William, that we got chatting to, who were only there for the evening before heading home for overnight.

There was picnic tables, firepits and compost toilets, so we had good facilities.

If you ever go to Inch Cailloch there are some great (short) walks. Our favourite is the Summit Trail, the views from the top are spectacular!

After our walk, we made a cuppa and Paul got the campfire ready. For dinner we brought leftover curries from the previous night’s takeaway, nice & easy, no cooking required as they just needed to be heated up. We then got the fire going and toasted some marshmallows on it. All of this enjoyed with some wine and a wee “dram” of Drambuie we had brought with us.

Finally, we were ready for some sleep. It was pretty cold, we slept with clothes and hats on. We normally camp with an electric hook-up when possible, but of course this isn’t possible on a wild camp! For our next trip we are thinking we need some fleece onesies to sleep in (well, I do, Paul said he was quite cosy)!

During the night, we heard the stag that apparently lives on the island, barking (?) very close to our tent. We were too cold and tired to pop out to take a look though. Perhaps it was just as well as someone later told us we don’t want to get to close to a stag…

After breakfast and another walk to the summit, we packed up and got ready to leave while the going was good – ie. while the loch was flat & calm. What a difference going back on flat calm waters without getting soaked!

Keep a lookout for our next blog – we plan (weather permitting) to wild camp overnight this coming Saturday in the Achray Forest (3 Lakes) near Aberfoyle. In October you don’t need to get a permit, so we can just see on the day how the forecast looks, then get going (all being well)…

Woke up to another spectacular sunrise and now hoping for another zebra visit, as apparently the often come in the mornings, as well as evenings. Nothing yet, but I don’t want to go back to sleep in case I miss them…

One of the best things about the places we have stayed here, is just listening to the sounds of the bush, especially around sunrise and sunset when the birds and animals are more active. To be honest I really don’t want to go back to the city, I could happily just stay out here, but I suppose the contrast from city life makes it even more special here.

Later – the zebras didn’t visit this morning, but we saw the colourful lizards and a huge grasshopper about the size of my hand!

The drive to the airport was long and pretty boring, but we knew that already. It took around 4 hours, with nothing much to see and very little in the way of service stations or picnic stops. It was easy driving however (easy for me to say because Paul drove!) at least until around 20 kilometres from the airport when it started to get pretty busy and people weaving in and out of the lanes. The airport and return car rentals were fairly well signposted, but it definitely helped to have two of you looking out for the signs, as it would have been easy to make a wrong turn or get into the wrong lane.

We deposited our car, glad to have made it to the airport, and signed to pay for extras like refuelling (road tolls etc. are billed later). For a charge or 20 rand plus fuel, it was much easier to let them refuel the car than try to find a fuel station. We were under the half tank and the price they charged seemed reasonable. We think the rest of the 1300-ish rand we signed to pay for, was the zero excess we opted for, which hadn’t been charged as yet (at least we hope that’s what it was).

Going through security and passport control was a breeze, quick and easy! We then booked into the Aspire lounge for 460 rand each (around £26 given the current exchange rate). We had some rand left over and they let us use that and then pay the rest on our credit card. The lounge is really good, we would 100% recommend it! Great choice of drinks, wine etc, and excellent food. Showers are available too. Well worth the money if you have a few hours to kill (we arrived about 3.30pm and our flight is 7.20pm, however you are allowed 4 hours access if needed). Feeling nice and relaxed a couple of wines and some lovely lunch later…

Until our next adventure…

This place is idyllic! It’s so quiet and peaceful, the views are beautiful and the sounds of being in the bush is tranquil. At places like this we always sleep with the curtains open, especially as we have big sliding glass doors, and if we happen to wake for sunrise we can see it from the bed. It gets dark around 6-ish so we have often had early nights (around 9-ish) so waking for sunrise is not really much hardship, it kind of happens naturally.

This morning’s sunrise was beautiful, I awoke about 20 mins before the sunrise, and woke Paul up. We popped outside to our veranda to watch the sun come up, even though we could have watched from bed, it was nice to take some photos too.

Afterwards we went back to bed for a little while, then just chilled out for a bit, had breakfast on the veranda and enjoyed the views. There are some beautifully coloured lizards here, a few around our house which I photographed.

We made a packed lunch and around midday took a walk up to “Zebra heights”, which is one of the many trails on the estate. It was hot work as today was over 30 degrees, so we were glad it wasn’t too long a walk. We enjoyed it though, and the views were lovely. Afterwards we took a short trip to the main pool as it gets more sun and is therefore a bit warmer than our own splash pool. On our way up there we saw a massive grasshopper – probably about 5 inches long! To be honest it looked a bit scary!

Some more chill time before setting off on our game drive en-route to our “bush dinner” just 3 of us, we were joined by Nate from London. The estate here doesn’t have any predators, so we saw some of the more common wildlife. The spot for dinner was lovely, overlooking the valley and mountains, set up lit by lanterns. It was very romantic. Lovely food, canapés followed by 3 courses and wine.

We had set up Paul’s GoPro while we were away to record in case the zebra had visited again, and when we checked the video they had! It’s just a shame we missed them, but at least we caught them on video.

Finishing the evening sitting by the fire, and we have done our on-line check-in for tomorrow’s flight home. We were allocated a window and aisle seat again, meaning having to disturb someone should we need up to go to the toilet or stretch our legs, so this time we just (resentfully!) paid £34 each to swop to an aisle and middle on the upper deck centre section. Hopefully this won’t prove to be a bad move (I guess it depends who is sitting next to us). Can’t believe our wonderful South Africa holiday is about to come to an end. It has been amazing, and hopefully one day we can come back and do it all again…

So we left Mjejane this morning hoping for a last chance to see some lion, leopard or cheetah as we drove out. No luck, but we saw the giraffes and zebra just next to the gravel road on the way out of the reserve. The zebra were very cute (they turned out to be our “animal of the day” – more later).

It was a little under 2 hours to drive to our next stop, Tomjachu Bush Retreat, which is around 20 kilometres or so from Nelspruit, and up in the hills.

This place is divine! We booked the “Rock House” which is fully self catering, with beautiful views and a small private pool. We are looking down the valley and over to the surrounding mountains. It’s a big place, there are lots of walks you can do (we started today with just a short one) and lovely picnic spots.

Our highlight today was around 5pm, as the sun was getting ready to set behind us, a family of 3 zebras came to drink from our pool and one took a walk right up to our patio doors! Now this was the kind of interaction we had hoped for in Africa!

After enjoying watching the zebras until they moved on, we then cooked up a candlelit dinner before setting the outdoor bush fire up.

Tomorrow we have booked to go on a “bush dinner” rather than cook, it should be pretty awesome…

We had some wildlife visit our garden today – the warthogs came to visit first, right up by the pool, just grazing on the scrub next to the decking. At lunchtime the monkeys came, we reckon they must know roughly when people have lunch, and they come around hoping to steal food! They came in via the boma area, where Paul had prepared the fire for later tonight. We had left the bag of firelighters next to the wood, and they must have thought it was a bag of food. We watched from the upstairs deck as one of them snatched it up and ran off! Here’s hoping they didn’t try to eat it!

We had to run downstairs to double check we hadn’t left any doors to the house open, as soon there were about 10 monkeys on our deck! One of them did a poo and a pee on the outside dining table – lovely!

This afternoon we decided to try a final game drive in the hope of seeing some of the “cats” or more rhino. We saw the rhino, but unfortunately no cats, although one of the safari jeeps briefly saw a lioness. Anyway, it was a nice drive, with plenty sightings of the more common animals and a nice sunset. The only thing that spoiled it was 4 guys who talked both loudly and incessantly throughout the whole drive – eventually I asked them to stop talking and start looking for animals. I can’t understand people like that – so annoying! You’re always told to speak quietly on the drives so as not to scare the animals away.

On return we stayed at the reserve for dinner by lamp light, a really nice romantic setting. Then back to the lodge to our enjoy own fire in the boma before retiring bed.

Enjoying a couple of days relaxing here in our amazing lodge. It’s still taking a while to find our way around the place as it is just huge! This morning (our first full day here) we woke earlier than expected, had breakfast outside, relaxed between sun and shade, and took a dip in the pool with my lilo. Unfortunately the pool wasn’t heated, so the dip was a fairly brief, but invigorating way to cool off.

We had expected to see much more wildlife and birds around the garden, but it has been very quiet, unlike the garden in Hoesdspruit. Our garden looks on to the bush, there is a short electric fence around the area where the lodges are to keep the lions etc out (it’s not a high fence and apparently it doesn’t always keep them out, so they recommend not walking about, especially at night).

At lunch we decided to check out the Game Lodge which overlooks the Crocodile River. It was really beautiful and lunch was lovely there.

Hoping to see more cats, we came back to the game lodge for the 3.30pm drive – game drives are really cheap here, 200 rand for 2.5 – 3 hours. Our own lodge reception also do drives also for the same price. With the current exchange rate of around 18 rand to the pound, it’s very cheap.

Anyway, the drive was nice and we saw the “usual” wildlife like kudus, impalas, wildebeest, giraffe, elephant (including a baby one) etc, but no cats… It was disappointing as we had been told yesterday there were lions near the road in to the lodge estate. Also leopard and cheetah have been sighted on other days. However, we did see the “secretary ” bird, which is pretty rare. By the river, we also saw more hippos and a crocodile.

After the drive, we came back and Paul lit a fire for us at the boma. We sat and had some “sundowners” (a bit late as the sun had already set) and enjoyed the noises of the bush. Although there are other lodges here, they are very well spaced apart and in the dark you feel like yours is the only one, you feel alone in the middle of the bush. It’s really cool.

We had a late lamp-lit dinner on the outside deck after the fire had gone out.

We have been doing well with our early starts, and today was no experience. Up about 6.30am, we had a quick breakfast and then set off on our final Kruger Park drive.

Our stop for the next 3 nights is an Airbnb within the Mjejane Private Game Reserve. The good news is that this reserve also has the “Big 5” so hopefully we will see any of them we missed in Kruger.

Our final route we decided to go via Lower Sabie – this was somewhere we would have liked to overnight, but the bungalows we had been booking (BD2) which have en-suite and outdoor kitchen, were not available there for our dates.

En-route we managed to miss a leopard, which was very frustrating – there were so many cars, and the leopard was in the bush, that without the right spot to see it, it was no use. By the time someone moved their car and we could get to a better view, it had moved on…

We sort of saw a cheetah, but again it was seconds from moving on, so we saw that there was “something” with spots out there in the bush, but we barely saw it, let alone get some photos.

The highlights of today’s drive was seeing hippos, crocs and water buffalo (amongst others) at a waterhole just before we reached Lower Sabie rest camp, our lunch stop. This waterhole was only about 1 kilometre from the rest camp.

We spent quite a bit of time there just watching and photographing the animals. Finally we drove on to the Lower Sabie rest camp for lunch. It is in a beautiful spot, and we felt a little disappointed that we hadn’t been able to book to spend a night there. Lunch was great, and the view was perfect!

Getting ready to exit the park, we took the S25 dirt road towards Malelane rather than exit at Crocodile Bridge.

For our Airbnb lodge they recommended doing a shop in Malelane before arrival, as there is apparently only one basic shop in the reserve.

The shops here don’t have the convenience food (or fresh fish) that we had been accustomed to at home, so the shopping was a frustrating process. We ended up with enough to survive until we are due to leave (3 nights later), just in case we decide not to venture outside the reserve, but rather to just relax and enjoy it. And there is a restaurant at the very close by game lodge (who also do game drives, of which we hope to do at least one).

Finally, our lodge which we booked via Airbnb, is like a show home from a magazine! Very luxurious and so huge we are struggling to find our way around inside it! And at around £95 a night (including the Airbnb fee) it is a bargain. Note: the price does go up a bit for more people staying. After a busy few days in Klaserie & Kruger, it will be nice to just relax for a couple of days and enjoy this reserve and lodge (& it’s swimming pool, if we feel brave enough – it’s supposed to be heated, but it doesn’t feel like it!)

This morning we woke up about 7-ish (a lie-in – ha ha!) so we decided to make an earlier start, so that we would have longer to explore.

Hardly even out of the camp, we saw some water buffalos fighting just by the roadside!

We then did a loop from Satara on the S100, S41 & H6. This was a great move! We saw some giraffe, impala, zebras etc (the more “common” sightings) along the S100 & S41, and it took as while as it was a gravel / dirt road. We made a stop at the picnic spot where the S41 meets the H6. This spot had great views and we also saw some crocodiles down by the river.

Carrying on to the H6, not far along this road we saw quite a few cars stopped, so we knew there must be something interesting to see. We pulled over with the other cars and were delighted to see a large pride of lions! It seemed to be a family, there were some younger ones, and some old looking ones too, both lions and lionesses. It was fantastic to just stop and watch for a while.

Back on the main road towards Skukuza (tonight’s stop) we made a picnic stop at Tshokwan, a nice little spot where we saw a couple of monkeys steal someone’s packed lunch, an impala come in to graze and the birds landing on the tables and nearby trees to watch for crumbs.

Closer to camp we crossed a couple of bridges, where we saw some more crocodiles.

We arrived at camp just in time to check in to our bungalow and off-load our luggage before our sunset game drive at 4.30pm. As at other camps the game drive vehicles are large trucks that take around 25 people.

Ours wasn’t quite full, and the weather was better, so it was more comfortable and a bit warmer than last nights drive. However, we didn’t see as much, especially once the sun had set and we had to use torchlight.

Before it got dark we saw a herd of elephants crossing the road in front of us, with babies in tow. So cute! And then a hyena just walking along the road beside us.

After dark we saw very little until the bridge a few kilometres from camp, where we spotted a hippo and crocodile. Closer still to camp, about 2 kilometres away, a herd of buffalo were blocking the road! Our driver/guide carefully “pushed” our truck past them and got us back with just enough time to go for a nice dinner before the restaurant closed at 9pm.

Tomorrow we are looking forward to our next stop where we are staying for 3 nights – Mjejane Wildlife Reserve. This also has the “Big 5” so we may get a chance to see the one we missed, the cheetah… And of course, we still have most of tomorrow in Kruger before we exit, so we shall see what tomorrow brings…