Hi Stephen,

Tap from Elanadela said to say hello.  We got to see both a female and male white lion while there.  We actually got a little too close to the male and he came toward the jeep.....Tap just put the jeep in reverse and we backed up and got some awesome photos of the male with his full mane as he walked us back down the road.  It was a magnificent experience!!! 

 Also went on a walk with Yvonne, Rocco and the two white lion cubs......Yvonne felt very badly about our bus trouble and missing over one-hour of our evening game drive.....walking with the cubs was our consolation prize and it was also amazing.....wonderful photos of cubs, even got to pet them!! 

In Kruger we did see a huge elephant up close and personal, zebra, kudu, impala, crocodile, hippo, water buck, water buffalo, lots of birds and a magnificent sunset!!!  Same day we saw white rhino at Elandela, so we saw four of the "Big Five", just missing the leopard.....never did see one!

Overall, we spent a lot of time traveling between sites.  In retrospect, we would have preferred going to Shakaland and then on to Elandela for an extra day and skipped Swaziland all together. 

 Perhaps if we saw something in Swaziland we would have felt differently, but were stuck with broken bus for three hours, made it to hotel after 7 pm and never stopped at candle or glass factories.  

 Stanford the driver from the broken bus could not have been nicer and accommodating through our ordeal.  He thought he would meet us at the hotel later, but when the bus could not be repaired and arrangements were made for another company to transport us; we never got to thank Stanford for his assistance and we felt badly about that. 

The tour guides who picked us up after the bus broke down, Lyn and Bev, were quite nice, but did not know they would be taking us from Swaziland to Elandela until we were on the way to Lugogo Sun.......they did not know how to get to Elandela and relied on GPS which was not accurate, so we were over an hour late getting there.  Missed an hour of the game drive. 

 Again, we thought they would be staying overnight at Elandela with us, but evidently the company that they assisted by driving us would not pay for their accommodations at Elandela and again, we did not get to thank them for their assistance as they left while we were on the game drive.

Yvonne did arrange for us to go out on one last game drive the morning we left and that is the morning we saw the white lions.....we did leave Elandela an hour late, but made it to the airport in Johannesburg in plenty of time for our flights.

I would definitely go to Elandela again.  There is an airport right there with flights in and out of Johannesburg, so that would have been better than the four hour drive back.

Thank you for your assistance with the tour, a local Thomson agent called me while we were driving to the airport and told me you were working on a refund for the inconvenience of the bus breaking down and missing parts of our planned tour. 

We all look forward to hearing back from you on this.  Will send you the white lion pictures when I get home in another week.....I am continuing with one more week of vacation in Rhode Island.  All in all it was an amazing experience seeing the animals and enjoying the African culture.  Thanks

again!

Tina