Taking the Long Road. . .

Thursday morning we left Southbroom at around 10am.  We had one last coffee at the coffee shop and said bye to some really sad waitresses that will miss the kids morning visits(and our tip as well I’m sure).  Our first stop was in Durban.  We stopped to say good-bye to Robyn our representative while in SA.  This wonderful lady truly believes every child deserves a home and puts in a bounty of hours to make that happen.  Assisting in international adoption is a side project for her as she works at a children’s centre for special needs children as her day job.  She knows the system inside and out and is one of the reasons that things run so well for the families while they are in SA. Many thanks for all the work she does!

Our first destination was Richard’s Bay.  Gene and Adam simply looked at the map and picked a reasonable driving length.  Richard’s Bay put us just outside the game reserve we were planning on seeing.  The 4 bedroom home fit us well. 

Richard's Bay 

We were up early and on the road by 9am as it took us an hour to get to the game reserve and then 4 hours of driving in the reserve. We were going to find some elephants!  Low and behold immediately after entering the park there was a large male elephant!  Thank goodness because the rest of the drive was a little bit of a bust.  We saw a whole lot of fire!  In SA they burn their grass on a regular basis and did we every drive through some firestorms!  Also explains why there weren't a lot of animals in the section of the park we drove through. 

Finally an elephant!!

We arrived at our guesthouse in Hluhluwe around 4:30pm.  We drove a couple km down the bumpiest gravel road ever to get there.   We bunked in lovely individual cottages with thatched roofs.  There were warnings out for leopards!  They have 3 that have been frequenting the residence as of late.  We were told to keep the children closely supervised and not wander about the property at night.  We enjoyed a lovely full course meal under the stars by candlelight.  They told us not to rush in the morning so the girls got a little splash time in the pool as well before leaving on our next 4 hour drive.

Perfect size for a little splash.

Our cottages

Fireside candlelight dinner

This next leg felt like the longest so far.  Our stop for the night was in Ermelo.  This was extra exciting for D as we had our own TV in our room!  This has been the most “hotel” like place we have stayed at so far.  It is neat to be in such a new unique place every night.  It is always a surprise as Gene is doing most of the bookings from his phone so we don't even know the name of the place we are headed.  The girls continue to travel extremely well.  Z still hates the car seat but generally spends a large chunk of driving napping. D still talks the entire time she is In the car and asks “why” every 2 minutes but we are surviving. 

Ermelo; one of our last "homes" in SA

From this point we have about 2 ½ hours left until our last “home” here.  We plan to stay somewhere between Pretoria and Johannesburg which are about an hour apart.  We will need to pick up the passport Monday morning in Pretoria but fly out of the Johannesburg airport Tuesday night.  We haven’t gotten any replies from our stay inquiries yet but God’s taken pretty good care of us so far so we are fairly unconcerned.    We still have 15 hours to find something. . .