Kruger National Park day 2

Today we packed up camp and left Kruger NP (where we've been for the past couple of days) to leave for Joburg. It was very much a camp of two halves: one of us who chose to make a proper night of our last evening on safari, and the other made of those who were annoyed at being woken up by this. We started the evening off by having a liquid dinner, and watching a song and dance performance by a local Zulu tribe. It was great, and they started dragging us up and making us dance with them. It was one of the funniest things I've seen all trip. 

After this some of us headed for a bar, and when our driver/leader ushered us into a circle and whispered "what happens at the bar stays at the bar" I knew it was going to be a good one. Alcohol is crazily cheap in South Africa - even cheaper than in Ghana. I was paying R18 per drink: in my mind I thought 1 rand was roughly equivalent to 1 pound so I started off slowly, but after I got told R18 is about 87p I thought it'd be rude not to take advantage of this opportunity.

Round after round later, the bar staff were obviously getting irritated by us and called last orders 5 times (over 2 hours) before chucking those of us still standing out. The final 7 got back to the truck and carried on. And on. And on. Between us there were 3 Brits, 1 Zimbabwean, 1 Aussie, 1 Irish and 1 person from Luxembourg. It's amazing what alcohol and this melting pot of cultures can lead to: we had a bash at river dancing, the benefits of polygamy were laid bare, we observed in-truck acrobatics, played Dobble, and learned all there is to know about tax avoidance. At 3am, after we'd trashed the truck and completely drained the battery by pumping music out of the speakers, I did the conscientious thing and collected up the metal mugs we'd been drinking from, along with all the other tin crockery we'd been using. Getting on and off this truck is hard enough completely sober in daylight, so drunk me at 3am didn't stand a chance. I fell from the steps, bringing an entire steel dinner set crashing down with me, and provided the final straw for everyone else on the campsite. I think the annoyed people were expecting a degree of sympathy and mediation from our driver/leader; instead they got something along the lines of "shut up, we're drinking".

The sensible thing to do at this point was go to bed. That is far easier said than done when there are 10 identical tents and you've got to remember which one is yours, without resorting to trial and error, and then get into the right one without making your co-camper want to smother you with a pillow. It took a few goes but somehow we managed it, and were up at 6am to take down our tents and load the truck - still absolutely hammered, and feeling the wrath of lots of sleep deprived onlookers. They were seriously unimpressed when the truck needed jump-starting.

The rest of today will be spent driving through the mountains from Hazyview to Johannesburg. We had an 8am McDonalds stop, and the survivors from last night are about to bed down at the back of the truck.

Love (from a dog rough) Emily x