We awoke this morning all a little sad that this was the last safariL

Our goal was to find cheetah – the only animal we had not seen, but it was doubtful.

I was trying to find the perfect tree too in the rising sun sky.

What we did end up seeing are more elephants – up close and personal. I mean, up close and personal! It was very cool – although as we were leaving, one elephant gave her roar(??? What is that sound called – you know, the elephant sound!)

This was a typical view when there was a cool sighting:

But this is a better view:

We also saw 5 rhino together, giraffe, hyena, wild dogs, and a ton of hippo in a water hole where we stopped for hot chocolate. There was a croc there too.

I finally got my kids to pose for some shots:)

It was a great end to 27+hours of safari time.

We had breakfast and then packed up to head back to Jo’burg. This was our breakfast view:

The drive back was not quite uneventful — we drove on the road the GPS instructed us, only to find it completely blocked by a fallen tree so had to get rerouted – which added some time.

The scenery was beautiful – can’t really capture it all on photo though:

Then we stopped at McDonalds, walked in and Josh all of a sudden started puking!!! I think he was just completely exhausted combined with car sickness. It was quite the scene in McDonalds (and came as a complete surprise to everyone – including him!), but I have to admit, I was relieved it had not happened in the car!

Next we got pulled over by the police (3^rd time this trip – had paid first police officer off, second one just looked at Rob’s license), and this time tried to tell us we were going to fast. Rob said we were going 80 and it was an 80 zone. The cop said it was a 60 zone. Sick of this kind of corruption, we both were feeling much more gutsy and Rob told him he knew it was an 80 zone as we had just seen the sign. I then showed him on my GPS how it said it was an 80 zone. He backed off, said we were not convincing , but that we should be more careful and then drive safer. He looked in our car and then talked about our beautiful family and we left, feeling happy we had not been forced to pay him off again!

Lastly, we drove through another cool rainstorm – with lots of lightning. It was quite spectacular again, but made driving a bit tough for Rob. We were happy to check back into the guesthouse in Johannesburg and say so long to our non air conditioned truck:

We had another great meal, played some ping pong and headed to bed as we had an early flight (can’t wait to sleep in!)