February 26

February 26

We travelled to George and caught our flight to Hoedspruit, with an hour and a half layover in Johannesburg.  The flight out of George was good with a clear view over the mountains.  We had a pleasant trip and arrived in Johannesburg about five minutes early.  We quickly found an electronic store and replaced the video camera that we had stolen in Sedgefield and then carried on to our gate for the flight to Hoedspruit.  The second leg of our trip was in a much smaller, two propellor plane.  Again,the weather was clear and as we flew over several game reserves you could clearly make out various animals.  Several zebras were galloping down an open road as we descended into Eastgate Airport creating quite a surreal feeling as we were landing.  It appeared as though we landed miles away from the airport and were taxi-ing across Africa before we finally reached the tiny little terminal and were offloaded to walk across the tarmack.  We were greeted by Ronnie from Pezulu and he drove us the 40 minutes from Eastgate to the lodge, mostly on dirt roads (more closely resembling a 4x4 track!).  The Pezulu Tree House Lodge is situated on the Guernsey Private Game Reserve and the dirt track into the tree houses closely resembles a roller-coaster ride that threatens to take out the bottom of your car at every bump!.  The lodge is nestled away discretely in the bush.  We were staying in the Dream House and we gathered the key and headed down the road to our home for the next four days. 

We settled in to our new surroundings and relaxed on the balcony of our tree house.  The balcony overlooks the water hole and an open pasture area.  We had a large female ostrich hanging out at the water hole that was quite content just grazing there.  We watched her for a little while and were entertained by a family of baboons playing (and likely destroying) the tree house beside us.  We waited until three o’clock at which time we wandered over to the main lodge for “high tea”.  There were only five guests at the lodge when we arrived, one from London, two from Belgium and Julie and I.  A nice small group and we all introduced ourselves and chatted.  During dinner we heard a funny sort of howling that sounded a bit like an owl.  It was a hyena!  

One of the appealing features of the Dream House was that you could open the big doors and roll the bed out onto the balcony and sleep under the stars and listen to the night sounds of Africa.  Julie and I tried to open the big doors but the frame on one of the panels came apart, releasing the glass inside it (thankfully it didn’t come apart completely and the glass stayed in it).  We struggled to get it closed again, spent the night indoors and reported it in the morning.  We spent the evening sitting on the balcony and could actually hear the lions roaring in the neighboring Thornybush Reserve as we watched the moon come up, an awesome experience!!  Between the hyena howling and the lion roaring, Julie thought perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing that we couldn’t get the bed outside!