The next day (6th Jan) Anrie's other sister and her boyfriend took us to the Lion Park. This place is great, there are pens with baby cheetas, jackals, warthogs and hyena and one pen with lion cubs in which you're allowed to pet them. It was near the middle of the day so the cubs were really sleepy, but we still went in and gave them a good pat. I didn't exactly use a delicate touch with them and my white cub was soon up and perky and suddenly swung around and snarled at me. I jumped a bit but thought he was just being mildly playful or perhaps burping. The second time he did it though there was no mistake and he then up and wandered away to plonk himself down again away from any disturbance. We fed giraffe, took a squiz at the ostrich and zebra and then went for a drive around the main park areas, spottng a few different bok and birds along the way before heading into the lion areas. In each of the 4 areas we drove past a pride of lions, some of them really close. I scored some great footage of a lioness 2m outside my window (the rest of the car starting to freak that I had my window all the way down). In another pride a male lion was even closer to Anrie and her window was half down so I could shoot out it. The lion decided to stand up and the self-preservation in Anrie reacted lightnng fast and her window shot up quick smart, amusing the rest of us somewhat, and passing unnoticed by the lion.

Leaving the lion park we drove past a sign to the Cradle of Humanking and thought we'd pop in. The first sign we followed ended up being to a restaurant with a mildly disgruntled guard who shooed us away down the road. We found out at our next sto that the cradle is actually a large area like a national part and we'd been driving through it already. This was good enough for us so we cruised on out and over to Hartebeespoortdam. Here we sat and enjoyed a drink (double-brandy and coke as is then SA standard) and garlic snails. The snails were really quite nice, though there was tonnes too much cheesy sauce.

That night was a bigish affair at one of the partyingest clubs in Pretoria. I moved out of Anrie's family's place and into Bryce's (my Aus mate from Brisbane) room at the Sheraton. Gee Pretoria's Sheraton in swanky! After dropping my gear off there and picking up Bryce we were off to Drop Zone just in time for Happy Hour. While we were getting into the swing of things we racked the balls up for a game of pool or few. A few hours later Bryce and I were 8 games up, with no losses against all comers! The theme of the night was "Aussies can't play pool". After that streak Anrie dragged us up onto the dance floor, and we all boogied the night away before we were dragged off and dropped at the Sheraton.

One fine but short night's sleep later I awoke to a stunning view of the Union buildings from Bryce's room's window. I'd stayed with him because he planned to drive to Jo'burg in the morning (and there was an influx of family at Arnie's place) and so we hopped it.

On our way into Jo'burg Bryce decided he should stop off to look at a suit he'd ordered. It was a bit out of the way and certainly not part of the instructions we were given on how to meet up with my friends Daniel & Vicky. To make matters more interesting the tourist map we were given was small and vastly inadequate, and we kept encountering amusing traffic along the way (eg lanes that suddenly become narrower than a car's width). So in no time we were jovially lost, though not for long, soon Bryce recognised something and were able to ask someone for specific directions.

Camp Itumila, Botswana