Heaven

We were amply rewarded for our early arrival. It is a perfectly clear day, 75 degrees with a light breeze here at the Valley Bushveld Country Lodge where we are relaxing waiting for the hot tub to warm up. As you can see by the pictures, this is no hut. And there isn't another guest here. We do have a cook and her helper who are fixing dinner. Just us and the birds, after dinner the hot tub and the stars. We feel a little bit like "Downton Abbey goes to Africa because the two of us are seated for dinner at a long table that seats fourteen. Tomorrow we will go see the elephants at Addo Elephant National Park.

I am sure you can recognize most of the stuffed heads on the walls in the lodge. Maybe you recognize the huge "corkscrew" horns of the Kudu from one of our recent "in the wild" pictures. These heads are from animals hunted on private reserves. The lodge owners breed these type of animals on their "farm" and every two years they have a round up, using a helicopter, to collect animals that are sold to the hunting reserves or parks. The hunting is very highly regulated by the government. The Giraffe had an injured hoof and was lame so the owners of the game park where it lived requested that it be"put down". The end of this week our lodge will be filled with American hunters who come over here to shoot on the private game reserves.