Last day in South Africa. Nick gets up early to do the final game drive with the dutch family and Christina and her mother, but since I will be spending 6 hours driving today I give the game drive a miss and get some extra sleep. Breakfast at 9:30 is the usual 4-course affair, followed by a dash to check out by 11 so our tent can be cleaned for the next guests. The Gualaguala guide suggests that we tip a total of about £30 a day, which seems mightily excessive to us, so we go with about £10 a day, split between the ranger, tracker and general staff.

At breakfast Ann comes to say goodbye and we mention that Paul recommended Gualaguala to us. She says she’s a regular visitor to the UK and was ‘finished in Aylesbury’. As we’re settling up, Nadia (the lodge manager) offers us some packed lunches for the journey, which seem a far better idea than our current plan of finding somewhere to stop on the way.

For the last hour, we sit by the pool and relax until we have to go – which Nick and I have negotiated to be 12:30, so that we don’t miss the flight (Nick’s worry) or get to the airport hours and hours before the flight (my worry). It’s going to be a long journey, but should be relatively fast, as it’s highway all the way, and we have now learned the art of overtaking, South African style.

The journey is scenic, particularly at the beginning, and mostly uneventful, but we do have to keep watching out for potholes. The high quality road surface tempts you to think you’re fine then suddenly there’s a big pothole seemingly at random, which are particularly dangerous if you’re driving at the highway speed limit. We only hit one, but the jolt sends our front left hub cap spinning across the road. Nick spots it first and we pull over to walk back for it. The verges are overgrown, but we find the hub cap within a few minutes, along with several others. It seems sensible to keep the cap in the car rather than reattach it, in case we come across another pothole.

We stop for fuel and to eat our packed lunches late afternoon with a hundred or so kilometers to go. Arriving at Johannesburg airport at about 6:30pm, the car is handed back to Avis, and we’re on our way home.