On safari!

The weather is 27 degrees and I am starting to type up this post from the balcony of the 'lodge' in the Eastern Cape . What an amazing place South Africa is, and we've barely scratched the surface.

And now four days later I'll continue the blog from Cape Town airport!

This has been the best holiday Steve and I have ever had, I think the highlight for me was the safari , but all of it has been amazing.

We enjoyed our stay in Tsitsikamma National Park at Storms River, stayed in a wooden chalet hanging over a gorge, a beautiful setting for celebrating our 32nd wedding anniversary. We hiked the waterfall pass , and did the suspension bridges, also lucky to spot whales again from the shore.

Lalibela Safari lodge was incredible, everyone so welcoming, although the first surprise was the twenty minute drive from reception to the lodges! We worked out the whole area was actually a bit bigger than Jersey!

After a quick bite to eat we set out on the evening drive and our guide was a chap named Rudi, i tell you there was nothing that the guy did not know. He's actually trained in taking walking trails, so was always stopping to talk to us about the flora and fauna, as well as making sure we spent time with the "big" animals. Certainly elephants are my favourite, although I loved the gentle demeanour the giraffes appeared to portray.

We were so sad to leave the quiet, peaceful tranquility of the game reserve to head to Port Elizabeth ( PE as the locals call it) and catch a flight to Cape Town.

Having arrived at the hotel earlier than we expected , I suggested we tried to go up table mountain as I'd seen the forecast for the next day was poor, and so we joined the queue - not too bad going up about a 40 minute wait for the cable car, but the weather was already worsening.

We did glimpse the views from the top, and so it wasn't a wasted trip, however the wait for the queue going down took over an hour, and it was getting cooler , plus we were on top of the mountain and very exposed !

Sure enough the following day it was raining and the mountain had its tablecloth on, so our plan was to catch a few hop on hop off buses and see the sights, as well as getting our bearings, we learnt quite a bit about the Capetonians from the commentary provided too.

Yesterday we were supposed to visit Robben Island, but just as we were about to board the boat a message came through that the winds had picked up and it was too rough. Disappointed , but it can't be helped, so once again a change of plan.

Another bus route and a visit to the Kirstenbosch botanical gardens, where
bizarrely our guide was a retired Irishman !

Today we hired a private driver, a lovely man called Desmond, ( brought up in district 6) who took us out to Cape point, and Boulders beach ( Simons Town) , getting us back in time to catch our transfer to the airport.

So, it would seem everything has gone according to plan, and if you are on Facebook you would definitely think so, as I only post the 'good bits', and there were many on this trip!

However there were one or two blips on the way, don't like to keep things too straight forward and simple.

The "chest infection" that had wiped me out two weeks before the holiday was seemingly still with me, I finished the much stronger course of antibiotics four days in and thought I really should start feeling better.

My coughing had not decreased, I was quite tired, and admittedly we did have early starts but by 9 pm I needed to go to bed. What I found increasingly concerning was the raw burning pain in my chest, that came upon me on even the slightest exertion, walking up 10 stairs would do it.

Fortunately it only started to worsen when we were on safari , but as the only exercise you needed to do was hang on in the jeep, even I could manage that.

It came to a bit of head on Monday afternoon when I just felt awful, I'd slept quite a lot in the day between the 5:30am drive, ( brunch at 10am) and the afternoon drive didn't begin until 4pm. I thought I'd have to miss it,breathing was constricted , I had a bad headache and was STILL coughing.

In desperation I texted KG back in Jersey and outlined my symptoms. I had also looked at the tamoxifen leaflet for information, I'd only been taking the tablets a few weeks and one of the more uncommon side effects were experiences I'd been displaying .

DR KG was not only 'on duty', but "what's app" rang me, she said that when I get to civilisation again to get checked out, however in the meantime stop taking tamoxifen , puff on Steve's ventolin , go back on rivaroxaban ( blood thinning ) tablets , and take disprin twice a day.
She was concerned I had a blood clot in the lungs. I was concerned I had a massive amount of cancerous tumours in my lungs,neither situation ideal, ( well, your mind does play tricks on you when you're not well)

We left the game reserve and had a short flight to Cape Town, arrived at the hotel early afternoon, and then we had a stroke of luck, there was a doctors surgery straight opposite the hotel, but of course lets get priorities right- we needed to go up Table Mountain, and NOTHING was going to stop me!


I've explained how chilly it was up there ( 5 degrees, compared to 27degrees we'd had in the game lodge!) so by the time I fell out of the taxi at 5:45 pm I didn't look or feel great.

We nipped across to the surgery and got an appointment for 8:45 am the next day ( good or what ), fair to say, hot bath more tablets and another early night for me.

Dr Wendy Dicks was a very lovely doctor , she listened to my rambled account of ailments, my sketchy outline of drugs I'd been on and then the added tickler of having ovarian cancer .

She decided that after a thorough examination that she would do an ECG, and promptly wheeled the trolley in and did it, if there is something amiss with the heart it could indicate a blood clot. It appeared normal ( hurrah) and then took two blood samples to send off to the hospital , one for infection level, the other called a d-dimer ( apologies if anyone from the medical world is reading this and I've got it wrong- also no snide jokes from my siblings about being dim thank you) which is an indicator of a blood clot, and we would have the results back by the evening.

She then diagnosed that I actually had acute sinusitis , the nasal drip ( very pleasant ) was causing the coughing, but my chest was clear. Dr Wendy put me on a different set of antibiotics, she said the others would not have worked on my sinus at all, ( that explains a lot then) , also prescribed a saline nose wash ( yes as unpleasant as it sounds, but extremely effective ) some herbal cough medicine to soothe my throat and some probiotic tablets to counteract the upset the antibiotics would do to my digestive system.

All this for the princely sum of around £67 , we did have to buy the medicine which worked out around the same price , but I do have insurance so hoping I can claim some back.

When we arrived back to our hotel that evening, we nipped across to the surgery and DR WD had left us a note explaining that I was very unlikely to have a clot, my neutrophils were raised, fighting infection obviously but all seemed fine, however I was to go back if I was concerned about anything .

More than once pre holiday I had Steve's reservation and voiced concern about 'taking me away on holiday, and what happens if I get sick' ringing in my head, however it wasn't too bad.

I let him be the 'leader' up all the hills, and when it got too much he pulled me up, he very carefully monitored my wine intake , don't want to counterbalance the antibiotics . He made me hot drinks in the morning( well he did keep waking me up at 6 am!) and he didn't get annoyed with my continued coughing. #lovehim

This post had to be continued at Gatwick airport, now awaiting our flight back home, shame it's another 5 hours away, but all was ok on the 11 and half journey back, and it didn't appear to be foggy or raining outside so all things being equal we should be home by late afternoon.

And now although still coughing(?) I'm starting to feel so much better.

Top Marks South Africa.

Pictures to follow 😎
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