Family photo

Baboons to the left of me, impala to the right of me... I'm in Pretoriuskop Camp in the deep south of the Kruger National Park, desperately trying to get on top of my blogging and my writing while the camp animals wander about, chomping contentedly on the lush summer vegetation. But I couldn't resist the temptation to share with you a rare picture of my two Land Rovers and my one wife.

The diminutive Mrs Blog shies the limelight of the blog, but I think she won't mind this rare public appearance with her two children (some would say three).

Here, on our friends' farm (or what's left of it after half was recently taken by a farm invader) somewhere in Zimbabwe are our two children... errr... Land Rovers Tonka (left), who turns 27 some time this year, and Broomas, the baby of the family who was born in 1997.

Tonka is as fit as a 27-year-old fiddle can be. We took him for a run to try and get his rego renewed (we were unsuccessful - this is Africa after all), but we were able to wind him up to a cracking 75kph.

Broomas and Tonka seemed to get on well (neither blew a head gasket or a radiator hose in an attempt at attention seeking) and they will next meet again in February when our intrepid (some would say crazy) friends A and J take part in Operation Tonka's Great Escape. They've agreed to drive Tonka down to South Africa where our friends in Joburg who look after Broomas have agreed to take on the equally adventurous (crazy) task of trying to change Tonka from a Zimbabwean to a South African registered vehicle.

For all its veneer of first-i world civilisation, South Africa has a bureaucracy that, well, makes Zimbabwe looks efficient.

Mrs Blog and I are heading up country to East Africa this weekend - to Mombasa, in Kenya, and Rwanda, in Rwanda. We're off for a healthy serve of seafood and gorillas, respectively. I will do my best to blog live from these corners of darkest Africa.