Without our Donkey, we felt a little lost and bewildered. We spent our last few days in Cape Town doing a little shopping, relaxing, writing postcards home, and so on. We met up with Ian and Ally for dinner at a Mexican Place out in Table Bay which was cheap and fantastic, but then they headed off to Hermanus, the Winelands and Namaqualand for the spring flowers.

6th September 2006

Soon enough it was time to return home. We flew first from Cape Town to Johannesburg on kulula.com, and as we were taxi-ing out at Cape Town spotted President Putin’s fleet of Russian jets, as he was in town…

Putin’s Planes

On arriving at Johannesburg we were surprised to hear the cabin attendant say ‘be careful out there, it’s Gangster’s Paradise!’, a reference to the fact that Jo’burg is in Gauteng Province and all the cars have GP on their number plates. We were the second people to check in to our Virgin flight back to Heathrow and got exit row seats, which would help stop Sam getting DVT like when we came back from the US once…!

It was a sad occasion as we took off from Johannesburg, they say Africa gets under your skin and you have to return, we would say this is definitely the case. Before we knew it we were back at the old familiarity of LHR Terminal 3, back to reality.

The past year has been a fantastic experience, neither of us would swap it for anything. Was it worth giving up our houses, jobs and nearly our sanity? Of course. Our original plan was to continue travelling some of the other ‘legs’ you can see on our route map, but after a year we want to have a little break and see our families and friends before considering anything else. The travel bug is definitely there though. We aren’t finished with the old Donkey yet.

Thanks for reading and everyone’s support. If you are thinking of following in our footsteps (or tyre tracks, more accurately), stop thinking and start doing! We’ll be happy to help any way we can.

We spent the morning at a craft market, and then headed through the capital of Swaziland, Mbabane, towards the border with South Africa. The border was again straightforward, and we drove up to Nelspruit on our way to the Kruger National Park.

On pulling into the campsite, who should we see but Erwin and Susanne, the Dutch couple we travelled with for nearly 3 months from Syria to near Nairobi. We spent a couple of hours catching up with what each other had been doing since we last saw them four months ago in Kenya (they’ve been living it up it seems, with their families being out in South Africa and taking them to nice places and picking up the bill!).

13th August 2006

After stocking up with supplies, and booking a campsite in the Kruger National Park for a couple of days time, we spent the afternoon repacking our purchases from the craft markets into the car, which we managed successfully and seemed to have more room in the car than ever… is it a Tardis?

14th August 2006

We headed up to Blyde River Canyon, a large gash in the earth’s surface near the Kruger National Park. The view from “God’s Window” was pretty spectacular…

“God’s Window”

We camped just outside Hazyview, near a gate to the Kruger Park which we would enter tomorrow.

15th August 2006

Up at the crack of dawn to get into the Kruger Park, it was a short drive to the gate and within minutes of entering the park we had come across a white rhino grazing just a couple of metres from the road. The wildlife in the park seem to be pretty tame, with the rhino oblivious to us and the other two cars watching him closely.

White Rhino in the Kruger

Next we saw a giraffe with some strange markings, he looked like he had been in a paintball fight.

Giraffe with some unusual markings

Next on the safari were some greater Kudu…

Ears to rival Prince Charles…!

Further along the road we saw elephants in the distance, and then, on a bridge crossing the Sabie River, a huge traffic jam signified that we had stumbled upon some lions, sunning themselves in the distance on the banks of the river. It wasn’t a great view but it still generated a traffic jam of thirty or so vehicles!

A traffic jam for the lions…

Combining the tame wildlife with the tar roads, and excellent camping facilities, the Kruger Park wasn’t anything like any of the National Parks we had been to in countries further north. It was almost like a day out at Woburn Safari Park…!

The campsite was busy, with many South Africans apparently camped out for the long term in the park - the park fees were similar to Namibia and Botswana in that ‘foreigners’ got charged four times what South Africans were - another nationality we need to charge more when they come to tourist attractions in the UK I think! One family, who had bought with them a large caravan, huge awning, two 4x4s (one a Mercedes, the other a Toyota), had even bought his domestic servant with him to do the laundry and look after his children! This apparently is quite common behaviour for those from Johannesburg…

16th August 2006

We got up at the crack of dawn to drive through more of the Kruger Park before leaving and heading towards Johannesburg. First we saw some hyena on a early morning excursion (normally they are nocturnal so it was nice to see them in daylight)

A late night for a hyena

Next was some elephants wandering across the road from having a drink by the river, one large bull elephant took a close interest in a tiny red rental car and for a couple of moments we thought he might just tread on it!

Hmmm, a bit close for comfort

We completed our sighting of the “big 5″ within 24 hours by spotting a leopard and two cubs on a river bank - well, we needn’t have spotted anything because the huge traffic jam at 7am confirmed there was something interesting there, even if it was at a considerable distance…

Not one, not two, but three leopards!

We had met people who had been coming to the Kruger and other National Parks for years, and never seen a leopard, so to see three in such a short space of time, and cubs at that, was a real privelige. We had also seen a pair of leopards in Moremi in Botswana, so we have definitely had far more than our fair share of leopards on this trip.

It was then time to leave the Kruger, our last wildlife reserve on this trip. We drove down the straight and boring road to Witbank, about 120km from Johannesburg, where we camped the night on a freezing cold and almost deserted municipal campsite.

17th August 2006

We headed to Johannesburg and went to see Front Runner, a company in the northern suburbs who make roof racks, fuel and water tanks, and other 4x4 accessories. We arranged to buy a fuel and water tank from them for fitting to the Land Rover, as they are far cheaper in South Africa than once they have been imported into the UK. Somehow a 100 pound water tank in South Africa seems to turn into 250 pounds in the UK!

18th August 2006

After an early morning visit to the barbers, which resulted in a rather short haircut, we headed into Johannesburg to visit the Apartheid Museum, which explained the almost unbelievable history of the policy of apartheid and how it shaped South Africa.

It was a thought-provoking couple of hours, and given the violent and barbaric acts committed by both whites and blacks during the apartheid regime, it is amazing the country has survived relatively unscathed. While things are still far from perfect, with slums around most towns, but also with the situation of blacks being promoted to jobs they are incapable of doing over competent white staff, it is surely far better than the segregation and violence that characterised the apartheid years.

19th August 2006

We got our fuel and water tanks fitted in the morning at Front Runner, then drove out of the big bad city of Johannesburg as fast as we could! The driving standard was aggressive and discourteous, and they had no time for a slow heavy donkey like ours. That night was to be our last night’s camping on the trip, in a small local campsite by the river in Bloemhof.

20th August 2006

We continued to drive west across the flat expanses of the Karoo, stopping briefly in the diamond mining town of Kimberley to discover that the town’s main museum to diamond mining was closed for refurbishment. So we carried on back towards Cape Town, stopping for the night in Beaufort West, a small town with nothing to recommend for it other than a few motels and places to grab a bite to eat. We stayed in a Formula 1 Hotel, just like we had on our first night in France 11 months ago.

21st August 2006

We drove on through Worcester, and around the mountains to the small town of Greyton, where our friends Ronnie and Jackie had moved during our trip around South Africa, Swaziland and Mozambique. The rolling hills, country roads and small cottages in town reminded us of England.

We were pleased to see Ronnie and Jackie and spent the evening catching up with what we had all been up to for the past six weeks or so.

22nd August 2006

The weather even turned English in Greyton, with rain of various intensity pretty much all day. We stayed indoors at Ronnie and Jackie’s, only venturing out to meet Les and Caroline, an English couple (with a Land Rover!) at the local cafe… apparently Greyton is an English enclave in South Africa, and full of Land Rovers too…

In the evening Sam cooked a fantastic dinner of lamb, roast potatoes, vegetables and more, followed by an equally delicious trifle.

23rd August 2006

The rain was continuing to fall heavily in Greyton (we later learnt that there was some flooding there and nearer the coast whole roads were washed away), we said goodbye to Ronnie and Jackie, and we headed down to Cape Town as we were due to get the car looked at in the garage there the next day.

24th August 2006

It was an early start and we headed over to Roverland, the independent Land Rover specialist in Cape Town, to have a look at our handbrake and rear brakes, because as soon as the car returns to the UK we will have to have an MOT, and our brakes aren’t quite as good as they used to be… after a couple of hours adjusting, cleaning and so on, the effect was remarkable and we now have fantastic brakes again.

In the evening we had dinner with Benny and Anya, a Belgian couple who had travelled down the western side of Africa in a big Mercedes Unimog truck, and were shipping out of Cape Town on the same boat as us. Also there were Tom and Janey, another couple of Unimoggers who are driving back up the eastern side of Africa.

25th August 2006

The weather turned out nice, and we headed out to the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens on the lower slopes of Table Mountain for the afternoon. We had a pleasant afternoon strolling through the gardens, with Sam taking photos of the plants, butterflies and insects.

Flowers in Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens

26th August 2006

It was another fine day, so we decided to tackle Table Mountain, the 1000 metre high summit that dominates the skyline wherever you look in the city. There’s no point in going up if the mountain has its “tablecloth” of cloud, but today it was fine and clear so we took the (expensive) Cable car to the top. Sam doesn’t do hills!

The view from the top was spectacular…

Sea Point and Robben Island

The City and Docks

27th August 2006

With the car going in the container tomorrow, we spent the morning emptying everything we needed out of the car, and repacking everything properly.

This task completed, we relaxed for the afternoon, me reading the newspaper and discovering why some people think this country is going downhill… the first article was about the South African Health Minister, who at a HIV/AIDS conference in Toronto espoused the benefits of beetroot and african potato as treatments for HIV, in preference to anti-retroviral drugs! The latter, apparently according to scientists, makes HIV develop into full-blown AIDS even quicker…! This woman is supposedly a qualified doctor, and South Africa has one of the worst HIV infection rates in the whole of Africa - and this kind of quackery makes the country a laughing stock.

The second article was equally unbelievable - someone on the Defence Procurement Committee had failed to disclose that he got a discount on buying a Mercedes 4x4, courtesy of one of the companies bidding for a contract he was deciding. He had been sentenced to four years in jail for fraud, but rather than being treated like a criminal, the premier of the Western Cape province came and gave him a personal escort to jail, complaining all the time about the justice system in South Africa. And people wonder why corruption is so widespread, when it gets support from such high offices…

28th August 2006

Today was the day we were to lose our ‘Donkey’, our trusty load-bearer for the past 11 and a half months. We took him down to the container depot in Cape Town, where after inspection by customs we loaded him into the container for shipping back to the UK. We had to remove the roof tent to get him to fit, but the front roof rack could stay on as we got in with a couple of milimetres to spare.

Loading the donkey…

Hopefully we will see him again at the other end…

Now we have no car, we’re feeling a bit lost. As an old Ethiopian proverb goes, “A man without a donkey, is a donkey”!

I was up early and under the car to change the fuel pump, this job done and breakfasted and showered before 9am, we headed south through Maputo to the Swaziland border. We could have crossed directly from Mozambique to South Africa, but we dislike big border crossings (and there is only one border crossing between these two countries, and it is definitely a ‘big’ one), also the customs people on the Mozambique side of the border on the way into the country stamped our carnet in the wrong place, so we wanted to go back through the same border so if there were any issues at least we were in the same place as it was stamped wrongly in the first place!

The border went reasonably smoothly (other than the long wait to get stamped into Swaziland), and we headed across this small country to camp for the night.