Home Sweet Home

I arrived back safe and sound from Swaziland after driving for the guts of eight hours. It was good to be back in the college and see the animals again. It felt comfortable and like I was returning to old friends. That's a strange statement but true. I got an unpleasant surprise though when I got back to my room.

I couldn't find my key for the room and Special One had left the day before. A little breaking and entering was called for. I jimmied the window open and nearly fell flat on my face while banging off the sink! I survived that scare and started to unpack. It was only then that I realised that the key for the room was bundled up in a pair of dirty socks!

I looked for the stuff I had left in the room but it was all gone. Not good! I thought initially the lads next door were winding me up but after some intensive questioning I realised that they were innocent. The cleaners had helped themselves to all my gear! There was loads of stuff in the box. They even took my Leprechaun green hat! What the ? I needed a stiff drink to calm the nerves. It really annoyed me to think that for the last 6 months they had been really decent and then they fall at the last hurdle. I haranged Mama Maria the next morning and to say she was shocked to see me was a bit of an understatement. She thought I was gone and had left all the gear! The box contained loads of presents and even a pair of Nikon Binoculars! I think she thought Christmas had really come early. Luckily enough though she came back that evening with all the gear. Thanks be to Jaysus. Anyway with that weight off my shoulders I decided to go out with the lads.

We went for one last shin dig in a boozer called In Da Bosh(In the Bush ) where myself Hank and Pretty Boy met the lads from the snake park. A good night ensued and I decided to take it easy. I had to go and talk to the people where I am doing my placement in January. There was no point having a melted welly head on me when I went there.

Then off to the airport and a 36 hour journey home.

Welcome to Dublin, the outside air temperature is 3 degree's and it's belting down with rain! Lovely, lets get some scoops!!!! I'm back over to Africa before the end of the year.

One week


Exit Swaziland

So the guy at the border thought I was Icelandic. That’s a new one. He didn’t know where Ireland was so he just nodded and smiled and he still probably thinks I’m Icelandic. He probably doesn’t know where that is either. He seemed to be a bit bored but he was actually good craic. He asked me had I anything to declare like guns or cattle or anything like that in the back of “Fixer.” Well I heard him right about the gun but he actually said kettle and not cattle. I had borrowed James’s kettle for the week so he was referring to that. I told him I could declare it if he liked but he said that it was probably old. I’d say to be honest it was as old as his good self as he didn’t even look like he was shaving. He waved me on regardless with a bit of a grin and “hey presto,” I’m back in South Africa. I drove for the day to get down to St Lucia. This is on the East Coast just down from where we were in Mozambique in October. There’s a great current called the Benguela current which brings a rich source of food for all marine life along the coast. You can see the Whale migration and it has an abundance of big fish like Marlin, Yellow fin Tuna, Sailfish and Whale Sharks. I went down there to see if I could go out deep sea fishing.



St Lucia

We went out for a morning deep sea fishing expedition. It was myself, Katherine and a father and son combo from South Africa. The sea was rough and I didn’t take to the fishing at all. I looked as green as the Irish Flag and it didn’t make for great enthusiasm from my part. Katherine caught the first big line fish of the day. A massive Queen Mackerel. I’d say it must have weighed in at about 3 KG’s. We actually made steaks out of it later that night and Braai’d it. I can tell you it tasted beautiful. Mr. Ramsey would have been proud of it!

As I started to recover after getting rid of my breakfast over the side things started to slow down on the biting front. We started to fish on the reef and we picked up some nice Rock Cod. I even caught a few. I was getting myself back together at this stage. It was funny though because Katherine was talking about how well she handles the sea and that she never pukes. I was kind of dozing off at one stage and I heard this hurling noise from close to me. It just happened to be the aforementioned loosing her breakfast over the side. It was very funny. The Afrikaner’s son was next. I was waiting for the Captain to spew but I didn’t get the result on that one. Just as we were heading back to land, we caught a big one on one of the lines. We had to reel the rest of the lines in for fear of getting them tangled up and then the Afrikaners Dad started to pull in a big whopper. I caught a glimpse of it as it jumped out of the water about 25 metres from us. It was an enormous sail fish. The fastest fish in the sea and here we were hauling one in! It took him about 15 minutes struggling with the fish until he was eventually close enough to pull on board. I’ve attached a photo of the monster. He was beautiful. I’d love to go back and have another crack at it after that but I’d need to bring the auld sea legs with me!

On the way home that evening we were told that there were Hippos on the main street. Hippos are responsible for the most deaths of people in South Africa and here they were just walking down the street. We gave them a wide berth.

Myself, Katherine and Laura decided to go to the National Park down the road from where we were staying. It’s got the biggest population of Rhino in the World. We drove through the gate and by the time we were leaving we had seen 11 Rhino. It was amazing. They are such great animals but that wasn’t the best sighting of the day. We spotted a Big Male Elephant on the hillside and there just so happened to be a view point and road that we could drive up to get closer to him. We parked on the road and let him come to us. At one stage he got so close that I had to wind up my window because I thought he was going to put his trunk through. He touched the Bull bar of the car and gave a little shrug of the head but was mainly relaxed. It was amazing. There aren’t too many times in your life that you will get within 5 feet of an adult male Elephant and live to tell the tale. The best thing about it was though that we were completely on our own. We spent about 20 minutes just watching and it was exhilarating. On the way back to St Lucia though I got the fright of my life when we coming into the town. This lunatic was running on the white line in the middle of the road at night with a couple of bags in his hands. We nearly hit him. I don’t know what he was running from but I guess he was scared of the Hippo’s on either side of the road. It was freaky though because he was really close to being iced by me instead of the hippo!

Hostel livin

The hostels over here are really bad value compared to Oz. They generally aren’t cheap and all of the ones that I have been in have been very run down. These are actually the recommended ones in the guide books so God only knows what the other ones are like. I did enjoy the character that some of them have though. An example is a place called Bibs in St Lucia. They have a number of pets who knock about the place. This particular one was a little Jack Russell dog. He was very friendly and actually scared away the Hippo’s at one stage when they tried to come into the camp site. Brave little fella. Anyway to cut a long story short, I was staying in a dorm room with 3 other beds. I moved in the first night and the Ozzy guy that was there told me that the door handle doesn’t work from the inside so that if the door closed you’d have to jump thro the window to get out of the room. Now the Ozzy was telling me this because I had put my stuff down on the bed nearest the window. I moved my gear obviously away from the window. He moved out the next morning without incident but during the night, I heard some strange rustling noises. I didn’t know what they were so I fell back to sleep. In the morning when I woke up the little Jack Russell had snuck into the room and made a grand little nest for himself in my bag! The only concern for me was that he was constantly scratching himself. Off to the Laundromat with all my gear that day!! The other funny thing was that I told the next guy who came into the room about the problem with the door. It only dawned on me on day 3 that I should really tell the reception about the door and not continuously pass on the info about the dodgy door to any new person. I guess it’s the backpacker mentality of easy goingness!


I was supposed to go down further South from St Lucia but time was against me. We decided to head north again and see if we could see some Turtles. The Turtles in question are both Loggerheads and Leatherbacks. The biggest in the World. We went to a really remote place called Mbibi. You need a four wheel drive to go there but I was determined to give Fixer another chance at tackling sand so we persevered. It was great craic this time because I didn’t have to worry about anyone else in the car and I had all the tricks this time like lowering the Tyre pressure etc. We got to our destination really easily and put up our tents. It was a stunning place. We had the practically to ourselves. The only place I’ve been to that compares is Whitehaven beach in Oz. This beach had a reef with loads of fish for snorkeling and when I went for a run there weren’t any other footprints on the beach. It was savage. We went down that evening to try and see if we could spot any Turtle tracks and after about 2 klicks of walking we found a beautiful Leatherback. She was laying her eggs as well. It was really cool. A vehicle had actually found her with 6 guests on board. They probably all paid 600 quid to go and see this phenomenon and we paid 20 and walked to it. It was magic. I couldn’t believe the size of her. She was about 1.5 metres in length and must easily have weighed 3 or 4 hundred kilo’s. It was a lot of weight to have to haul up the beach and we were delighted to see that she is continuing that ancient tradition on our beach!

Last exam

Well the studying is finally over folks. We did our last exam on Saturday and it was based on dangerous game. I’m hoping to pass it and that’ll be me officially qualified to lead walks and drives. It’s been a great six months and it’s actually flown by. I never thought I’d see the day that I’m a little sad that I won’t be doing any more exams! We celebrated our unofficial finish in style. Our Yank friend made a, I suppose you’d call it presentation with all the pictures and video’s she’s taken over the last 6 months. She added some soppy music and hey presto, you have an entertaining 50 minutes. One of the lads, Kevin “Left B”, even said that we’d be weeping by the end of it. I had to add a pinch of salt to that statement considering he had been drinking from 10 AM that morning! As they said it would bring a tear to a glass eye. I headed off for my informal interview with the lodge that I’ll be working for in January. It went well and I’m looking forward to giving it a shot in January. I might even do my level two exams in March. Em we’ll see!

Camping in Kruger

I headed off on Sunday to do a bit of camping in Kruger. I know now that I am officially not a very good camper. It’s nothing to do with pitching the tent. I’ve always been able to do that (no wise cracks) but when it comes to actually being able to sleep for a night on the ground. Not a chance. I’m like a zombie walking around because no matter what I do it doesn’t seem to suit me. I don’t know if any of you are insomniac’s but I know how it feels now. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Braai part and a few beers and setting everything up but when it comes to the actual putting the head down and getting some shut eye I just can’t. I’ve even used ear plugs and one of those eye things that you used to get off Aer Lingus for flying. No joy! At least I’ll be able to put the head down when I get to Swaziland. I’m going to book a nice bed, with a headboard and mattress!

Another Country

This is my third country in Africa. It feels like I’m cheating here mind you. Swaziland and Lesotho are both in South Africa but they are separate countries with Kings ruling them and you have to cross the border to get into them. It’s a nice place so far. It feels a lot more rural than SA. There aren’t as many white people here either so you kind of feel like you’re in Mozambique. I went for a bush walk today and was able to get up close to some cool animals. I enjoy that more than the vehicles where you feel like you’re not really experiencing natural behaviour in it’s purest form. It’s amazing how the animals react differently to perceived threats. When I’m in the car they don’t even bat an eyelid whereas when I’m on foot they are very nervous and skittish. They snort to let all the other animals know I’m there and it’s a really effective defensive technique. It’s always a good idea in Africa to watch where the animals are looking because it usually means a predator is around. I kept that in mind when I was walking but it was great. I have to say though, try walking five miles up and down hills in 35 degree heat.

Bye Bye Special

Well it was the end of the road for myself and “Special One,” as roommates before I left on Sunday. He is going off travelling so it was with a mixture of relief and no regrets that I bid him adieu! The really strange thing is that he is going for a job in the dangerous reptile and snake park. He will probably end up getting the job too and he’ll be handling Mamba’s!! Yikes!