Last weekend, at Lou and Mike’s wedding at Gwahumbe in KZN, I reconnected with old friends, the Takis brothers from Swaziland who I last saw about eight years ago on one of my very best holidays to Kariba and Sodwana. My cousin, Tash and I were planning on going to Mbabane but the Takis’s were going to be at their game farm bordering the Kruger Park just outside of Phalaborwa, so we packed up our khaki and headed off on what became a 7.5 hour drive to the farm on Friday night.

You will know how incredible it was when I say that driving 15 hours for a weekend was totally worth it. We arrived at about 3am to the sound of lions mating just outside the house. We saw giraffe, elephant, kudu, klipspringer and a very inspired dung beetle. But the best sighting from the weekend was what we later called a ‘bushy-tailed-mongoose-shaped-sheep’ but which I’m sure was actually a spotted hyena. We were almost at the farm with Tash driving when she slowed down as a shadow crossed the road. The animal was locked in the headlights as we stared each other down and he then ran off.

Life in Africa sure is good.

More pics on Flickr here.

‘Sunset’ by H Ford CC BY-SA and ‘Spotted hyena’ by Eva Hejda CC BY-SA on Wikipedia.