Day 9 Exam Results and Busch Gardens Full Report!

Sarah was up and about early this morning - too nervous to sleep I think.  Today is GCSE results day.  Grandma and Grandad stayed out our house last night to be able to collect them from school on Sarah's behalf.  We were waiting til it was 7am here (12 noon at home) to give them time to get back from school.  Grandad did a fab job of taking pictures of the sheets that were then uploaded to Dropbox so Sarah was able to see them just before we phoned.  Great results 6 A* and the rest A's.  Well done Sarah! Excellent results!

After we had phoned Grandma we got ready to go to Busch Gardens.  We ate breakfast before we left the villa, last nights cheesecake!!!!

On entering the park our first stop was at the tour centre as I wanted to book us onto the Serengeti Safari tour.  We were booked onto the 11am tour and given directions for where to meet the tour guide.  This left us about half and hour before we needed to be ready.  We wandered in the general direction of tour start and stopped to look at the alligators, otters, tortoises and hippo enclosures. 

There were only 8 of us on our tour, us and 2 couples.  Norman, our guide, took us over to the truck.  We also had a photographer on board with us.  The tour took us up close to some of the animals, impala, black rhino, zebra and off course the giraffes.   One of the giraffes, Cupid, started to follow the truck as soon as we got close to them. We parked up and Norman took a large lettuce and started handing out leaves for us all to feed her.  She was very gentle.  It was a lovely experience.  Even Keith enjoyed it and he's quite nervous of giraffes.

We wanted to do some of the things we hadn't done last week, so our next stop was Walkabout Way.  2 staff members were just coming out with a parrot and an owl which we stopped to look at.

Then it was on to the Kangaroos.  We all loved this last time and we weren't disappointed this time.  Such fun.  Food for them was $5 per small cup which I did think was a bit steep.

From there we headed for Lori's Landing.  Again another old favourite, when we had walked past last week we had noticed that the birds didn't seem hungry so were a bit worried, but we needn't have been, they were keen!  We had great fun in here and lots of laughs, especially at one bird who didn't appear to want to leave Keith!

As we walked past the tiger enclosure, we noticed that there was a female out with 3 cubs.  Sooo cute.

Needed to get out of the heat and sun for a while so went to the dining/theatre in the Timbuktu area and had some lunch.  Also watched the show again here while we ate.

We all rode Sheikra (approx half hour, hot, wait) but only Keith and Sarah did Kumba.

On the way to Montu we stopped to order a photo cd of our Giraffe tour.  Weather was suddenly very hot and humid and there was thunder rumbling.  As we approached Montu we realised we hadn't seen it running recently.  It hadn't, all rides had been suspended because of lightning in the area!  It was 3.15pm and we had hoped to spend an hour or so doing some rides before watching the 4.30 castaway critter show but with the weather looking ominous we decided to call it a day and head towards Clearwater and our hotel.

By the time we got to Clearwater the sky was black and there was loads of lightning.  We didn't actually see any rain until we got almost onto the beach area.  Luckily we got into the hotel just in time - within 10 mins it was hammering down.  Don't think the kids had seen quite soo much rain before. 

We checked in to the hotel (Holiday Inn) and were in for a surprise.  We had booked with Keith's priority club which he gets for staying there for work, so the rooms were free really - we had booked 2 standard 2xqueen rooms.  Sarah and I took room 607a and the boys took 609a.  On opening the door Sarah and I were a bit confused as we had a large room with 2 sofas, and dining table,a kitchenette and bathroom but no beds!  There was a door - not knowing whether I should try it or not I gently opened it to find another room the same size with 2 queen beds and another bathroom.  The boys had the same.  Wow - hit the jackpot.  We had 4 bathrooms, 4 queen beds, 4 tv's and 2 balconies with sea views between us.  We chilled for a bit while the storm passed and Sarah caught up with her friends (free wi-fi!) to chat about exam results.  Keith and I dodged the rain to run to the garage nearby to get some milk - can't have a kitchenette and not use it, even if only for a cup of tea!!

Not sure where to go for dinner, we got back in the car and drove around to see what we could find.  The Kids both fancied pizza but we couldn't find anywhere we liked the look of.  Keith and I had looked at the menu for the restaurant hotel and I knew they served pizza so we ended up back there.  Lovely food, really pleased we went back.  Keith and I also had a free drink courtesy of his priority club membership so we were able to have an alcoholic drink with dinner without having to drive back.

Back up to the rooms and we all sat in the "girls" room for a while before bed time!  Both the kids were well taken with the suites - they couldn't get over it!

Another fab, hot, day.  Shame we had to cut Busch gardens short but we had done nearly everything we wanted to really.