[imagesource: YouTube / The Ladysmith Gazette]

All those adoring Hoedspruit fans no longer get to be graced by Tom Cruise’s presence every morning as he takes off in his helicopter for a day’s work.

He had been in the small Limpopo bush town shooting scenes for his next film, Mission: Impossible 8, and local residents had created a little daily routine around his coming and going.

But now he is doing business in Ladysmith, KwaZulu-Natal.

The Citizen reported that Cruise landed at the Ladysmith Airfield on Monday morning with all his crew members, as well as “an impressive entourage of six helicopters and three planes, including a Boeing Stearman”.

He had arrived to scout out film locations in the Drakensberg, which it appears he will do while piloting his own helicopter.

Before boarding his chopper, the 59-year-old action star said a quick hello to the fans who had come to see him.

Some of those fans caught the moment on video:

I particularly love that moment the video frames a burly guy in a Harley-Davidson T-shirt and backwards skull cap as Cruise blows a kiss.

News24 reported one local fan saying that “it was such a pleasant way to start a Monday morning, to think he stopped in Ladysmith”.

Having been in South Africa for over a month, Cruise said that our country is “incredible and amazing”, even going so far as to say that it “would be nice to live here permanently”.

We are still waiting for him to make his way to Cape Town, though, at which point we know he will really settle in.

[sources:citizen&news24]