After a long and enduring flight from Jo'burg via London and Barbados, we finally arrived in Guyana at about 10pm on Thursday evening, 4am Friday morning, SA time.

Herschelle Gibbs Photo CricInfo

We soon discovered that Guyana is not far off from some of the places on the sub-continent even though it is on the northern tip of South America. The reasons being the brown seawater from the adjacent river, the flat and low wickets and that there isn't a wide range of things to do or foods to eat at the hotel.

The fact that most places in the West Indies cater for the American traveler makes this place pretty expensive. An example of this is a plain toasted sandwich in the hotel costing roughly R60 and a 10 minute telephone call back home the equivalent of R600, when the exchange rate is taken into consideration.

We got stuck into 2 practice sessions straight away after we arrived. It was good to hit some balls and get used to the pace and bounce of the local wickets that should be roughly the same all around the Caribbean.

As a team we are realising how hard this tour is going to be. It is not as easy as some people seem to think. The fact that we beat the West Indies 5-0 in SA two years ago and that they lost 5-0 to Australia recently has almost no bearing on how they will perform in this series.

Everyone knows that they are a different team at home compared to when they travel these days. This is precisely the reason we are not underestimating them and we are preparing as well as we can and know we are in for a tough tour.

Another factor that lies a bit in their favour are the wickets. We have to take into consideration the inconsistent bounce and slowness of the pitches that should suit them. This has been very evident in our three-day warm-up match.

So it has been a big priority of ours to try and adapt as quickly as possible to these conditions over here and to come to terms with the pace of the wickets and where to score our runs and vice versa to take wickets.

However, the challenge is there for the taking and a win in the Test and one-day series will be a great achievement for our ever-youthful SA side.

The past few evenings have been spent chatting around the poolside at the hotel with a few of the sponsor's brews, Castle Lager, shared between us. We are taking our security advisers seriously and have not ventured out past the hotel at night.

As for me, dinner over the last few days has been a mix of pizza, pizza and more pizza.

There is a pretty useful gym in the hotel and the likes of Boucher, Neil Mac and myself have spent a few sessions pumping up the biceps. It provides an extra option to keep yourself busy for when you get back to the hotel.

At present I am lying on the physio's table as my back has gone into a severe spasm due to the long flight, the hard grounds and perhaps the very soft "marshmallow-like" mattress I have on my bed.

Until another time, this is Herschelle signing off for CricInfo.

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