BUGS!

We arrived back at the lodge to our trio of Catherine’s (there were three "hostesses" that were our point people for anything and everything we needed -- Catherine, Cathryn and Kate) there to greet us with cool wet cloths in that delicious lavender/citrus scent. After wiping our faces, we headed back to our rooms.

But since it was after darkness, we weren’t allowed to “walk the plank” alone. We had to have a night porter lead us anytime after dark since it was the bush, and animals lurked in the bush. And any animal could be there waiting to pounce if need be. This is a daytime shot of the plank but it gives you an idea of how it's situated and this is only a portion of it that we had to walk.

We arrived back at our room to find the bed had been turned down, the mosquito netting had been lowered and the entire place warmly lit.

And then we noticed it. A huge beetle took flight from the table in front of us. This thing sounded like a buzzing bee times 10 in terms of sound. It was like watching in slow motion as the thing powered up, slowly got airborne, then flew. It was bizarre. As we looked around, more bugs had been attracted to the light. And then our eyes were drawn to the floor where we found at least 20 more beetles, ready to create a buzzing nightmare.

Needless to say that Mike, the bug-o-phobe wasn't really digging the Africa experience at that point but he was a good sport about it all.

The whole scene reminded me of that Travelocity commercial where the family books a great vacation online with another website, then wakes up in the middle of the night to find their entire mosquito netting teeming with bugs.

We took showers, got changed, then called the night porter to take us to dinner.

We also alerted the Catherines about our bug issue and Marty and Matt said they didn't have the issue. Catherine explained that so many factors could have caused the bugs. From that moment on, we arrived back at our room each night to a very dimly lit, bug-free environment.

Dinner, and every meal was amazing. We meet Edward who was to take care of us for all of our meals -- similar to your guide and tracker, the philosophy at Singita was to connect you with your team of people who were going to take care of every aspect of the trip for you, and that creates a bond between the employees and the guests. We pretty much had the same night porter, housekeeping team, tracker, guide, waiter, bartender, etc. throughout the entire trip.

For every meal, you ordered from a menu. But you ordered whatever you wanted. Since all meals were included, you just did your thing whenever and however you wanted to, 24 hours a day. If it wasn't on the menu, then they'd make it for you. I love that!

Exhausted (remember, we had arisen at 5am that same morning and left the comfort of the Saxon in Joburg), we ate dinner and returned back to our room at 10:45 to find all the bugs had been swept away and the room cleared. We fell into bed, knowing that we had to awake at 5:00 the next morning.