Walking around Phelwana

We drove another hour or so, through dirt roads roadworks until we came to our turnoff for the hotel for the night. It was about 10 miles of incredibly rough, dirt roads, that were just terrible. It almost made me ill! We had only just found out that the hotel we booked, which was incredibly cheap, turned out to be an actual safari logdge, compared with just the hotel we thought it was. On our arrival into the Phelwana lodge, and met our butler and

the house staff. Mummy and Daddy had a seperate lodge house, but ours was super cute, with a self catering unit, a little hot tub, a barbeque grill area, and even a rope bridge over the river. We were told that because the lodge didn't have elephants or the big cats, we were allowed to wander around while it was

light out. I don't think they expected us really to take them up on the offer, because we asked in which direction we should go and off we went. We didn't see too much at first, apart from lots of kudu and deer, but then we headed to the big pond, with the hippos. I've heard that the hippos can be quite aggresive animals, so I was super nervous, I can't describe how nervous I was around them,

because you know it's dangerous, but you can't help but want to see them. I was constantly keeping an eye on where they were! We saw the coolest thing too - a dung beetle! It was incredible, just like in the movies! We took such a great walk around the place, looking for the warthogs,

and zebras and the giraffes, looking at the deer and such. I knew there were water buffalo around, and we needed to find them! They also can charge, so we were super nevous, but we did manage to track them down and chased them (not purposefully) around some bushes, where we could see them! We got quite turned around on the big game reserve, but we were able to find our way back quite easily. While we were getting changed for dinner, we saw this kudu outside our room! That was the coolest. I think that if there had been more

rain water, the watering holes would have been fuller, and the hippos might have been right outside our room! We ended up having dinner, and then going on a night safari too!