Sunday, February 18, 2007

Thanks for reading this blog

This is the last entry in this blog (probably). We've done the Cairo to Cape Town truck trip and it was great.

Thank you to anyone who has taken an interest in my (and truck buddies') travels by reading this blog.

I look forward to meeting up with everyone when I get back to London.

I've just talked to Nicci and she is at the hotel. I am going to meet her now. I'm so excited after four months of missing her beautiful face and sweet voice.

Take care,

Marky

Cairo to Cape Town!!!

We drove to Cape Town to drop off the hire car.

We did it!! Cairo to Cape Town - the Eastern trans-Africa trip. Awesome.

Coordinates

Met up with the couples again. They simply sent us some GPS coordinates and said "meet us here!" It was great trying to use a GPS to find out where our mates were. We eventually tracked them down in a guest farm where they had already booked us into.

This time we made the dinner. A giant braai followed with cake. Yum.

Fish river canyon

We drove to fish river canyon. It was nice. Met up with the truck there for a little while too.


Luderitz and the ghost town

We drove west to the coast. The couple also came after they decided that the ghost town would be fun.

We all met up on Shark Island and had a wonderful barbequed dinner. The fog and bell buoys made it feel like Britain again. Fantastic.

The next day we went to an old ghost mining town. It was ace and really amazing that they could just pick diamonds off the ground.








Duwiseb castle

We went to Duwiseb castle, which is a nice house made entirely from imported brick from Germany. It is in the middle of Namibia in the middle of nowhere.

Once we got there we bumped into the Gary, Duncan, Alison and Robyn who were also there in their beast of a hire 4x4. So we had a bush fire and little party together.



Dune 45

We went to Dune 45 and took some photos. Cool desert land. The dune was so hot you couldn't climb it with flip flops. Gaving managed to climb it by putting my flip flops inside his sandals and then climbing the dune while pouring water on his feet on the way up.




Bush camp gone wrong

We drove down through the Namibian desert heading south from Swakopmund. It was hilarious taking our little car through sand covered gravel roads with hardly a passing car - and still with the spare tyre not working properly.

Occassionally we passed a dried up river bed with dead acacia trees. We climbed them and stripped off branches for firewood. When it got dark we found a good place to bush camp.

We relax and start a nice fire.

Nothing for hundreds of kilometres...

...but then a pair of headlights appears. We watch them wind down through the desert road for about ten minute while it made its way towards us. We were sitting by the fire saying to ourselves, "please don't stop". But that is exactly what he does.

A petrol tanker stops in the middle of the desert, twenty metres away from our bush camp and sits there. The guy in the cab doesn't come over or anything; just sits there. He starts to use his radio. We aren't really sure what is going on.

After he uses his radio we see another pair of headlights come from the other direction. This is too weird for us and we quickly pack our tents into the car before the second car arrives.

We jump in the car and gun it out of there just as the second arrives. The second car turns around and high beams us and then tries to follow us. Too late; I'm topping 110km/hr on gravel roads in the middle of the night.

Afterwards we found a nice campsite and laughed about how silly we were.

The next day I see the petrol tanker parked and filling up the station next to the campsite. I ask the guy if he was the one (as I was quite embarassed that we thought he was an axe murderer). He said it was and he said the second car what the owner of that part of the desert coming to give us a bollocking for being on his land. Lucky that we did a runner.




Monday, February 12, 2007

On the truck - Off the truck

Made it back to the truck in Swakopmund yesterday. It was 4000km of driving fun.

In fact, this part of the trip was so much fun that we've decided to do it again. We're off the truck for another week as we cruise down Namibia and into SA again.

More madness and fun. Yay!

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Windhoek!!!!

So, the main goal of getting off the truck and going it alone-ish was to get to Winhoek and drink a Windhoek in Windhoek. We arrived, checked into our hotel and I am proud to say we accomplished that task while relaxing in the pool at the hotel.





Windhoek in Windhoek - highly recommended.

This city is great! Small, but really lovely. Go there.



Damned speed traps!

Got done again. This time for a 72km/hr in a 60km/hr speed zone. The Botswana police didn't seem corrupt though.

I didn't have any Bots Pula money to pay them so told them I was only going to pay in SA Rand. They didn't seem too happy but I just said that they could take me to a Bureau De Change if they wanted Pula. They eventually relented.

Two speeding tickets in two countries in two days. All the speeding tickets in my life are these two in Africa.

KFC Anyone?

Not exactly the KFC you would expect. We had lunch here.


Ghanzi

Ghanzi - the original destination at the beginning of the trip off the truck. We arrived six days later than expected and took a 1000km flying and 3400km driving detour, but, we finally got there! A few beers were had in Ghanzi that night to celebrate.



The day of the Kalihari Crossing

So the big day of crossing the Kalihari comes around. Hundreds of miles of desert scrubland without water or food, and what happens? Our tyre with the slow air leak is completely down and we have to switch to our spare. So, we now have to go through the desert without a good spare and have to hope that nothing bad happens. This is all taken with a bit of a laugh and while I'm changing the tyre I find I have Kath and Gav laughing away taking photos!

The desert crossing went without a hitch (literally and metaphorically). We had plenty of water and food to keep us going and two eskis filled with ice and some beers and water. It was rather luxurious to be honest. When we stopped we had ice cold water and yummy snacks while land rovers and expedition vehicles occassionally passed by. We often got funny looks while we stood beside our old, little VW Golf - as if to say, "you're crossing the desert in that!"



Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Preparing for the Kalihari Desert crossing

We've been preparing for crossing the Kalihari desert. We are taking the trans-Kalihari highway in our little red Golf. I hope she is up to the challenge.

We are taking 20 litres of water each. I think it is overkill, but I would rather have too much than too little. We are also going to be taking spare fuel with us and we have bought two cool boxes to pack with ice.

The desert crossing we will do is about 600km, about the limit of our petrol tank. Should be fun. Hopefully everything goes well.


South African Policemen

So I'm driving happily along in SA when a uniformed man appears out of nowhere and flags me down in the car. It was the police and apparently I had been naughtily driving along at 92km/hr in a 60km/hr zone. In Britain this would lose me my license or perhaps land me in the clink. Not so in Africa; apart from being a tourist which makes you immune to most things, it is also South Africa and the police are notoriously corrupt.

My policeman was especially polite about the whole thing and being new to bribery, he helped me through it. He showed me the fine I had to pay and then suggested he might be able to help. "Perhaps I could make it only this much sir?" he said. I agreed that it was much better to pay less. I gave him the money and then he asked if I wanted all the forms and paperwork filled in. I said it wouldn't be necessary and he agreed, with both of us knowing that him and his partner would be having a few beers on the cash that night.

Meanwhile Gav and Kath are in the car sneakily taking photos of me getting busted...

Pretoria

We drove into Pretoria and spent two hours in the pouring rain at night trying to find the hostel. It was raining so hard, I couldn't see jack. At one point I realised I was driving on the wrong side of the road! We had to stop several times to wait for some of the storm to pass. Was dodgy but we got there in the end.

Pretoria - one ways roads - boo!

Natal Spa

After such a long drive day we needed to relax. We stayed at a place called the Natal Spa. We had our own self catering apartment where we cooked delicious food and drank nice South African wine. Wonderful. See some of the photos below...







By the way, this place also had seven swimming pools and a 110m hydroslide! We spent the whole of the next morning treating ourselves and playing on the slide. This place rocked!





Michael Kaine - Zulu

We went to a place called "Rorke's Drift" in Zululand. Gavin is a military buff and apparently this is where sick and wounded British soldiers defended themselves against three thousand zulu warriors. Gavin did a tour there and it was quite interesting hearing the stories he came back with. This battle was the one in which the movie 'Zulu' with Michael Kaine was based on.

I did a twelve hour drive day that day - carnage. Two hours was on gravel to get to the field where it all happened. Our poor little hire car didn't know what hit it. We've clocked over a thousand kilometres already!

Swaziland

We drove down from Kruger park into Swaziland. Nice little country. While we were there we stayed at an old run down colonial hotel, complete with an old run down colonial in the bar. It was very strange chatting with him. He had done some very cool things in his life and helped us with getting our driving plans straight. We are now going to go through the Kalihari desert to get to Windhoek as it is a lot faster - more risky, but also more fun.

The hard part about talking with him though was that he referred to blacks as monkeys and whites as humans. He even said the Klu Klux Klan had the "right idea". It was hard to listen to that bollocks, but it is part and parcel of being in this place. Kath helped to make the point that we don't really think like that and I think the guy kinda got it.

Swaziland - pretty


Kruger National Park

We drove from Nelspruit to Kruger National Park and did a self game drive there. We drove through the Kruger in our little hire car. We saw loads of game in the park. A giraffe blocked our path in the middle of the road for a little while and we saw two bull elephants fighting or kissing; we couldn't tell which.





Inside the park they had a relaxation area for day visitors. It had a pool! How cool is that?!

Off the truck - slap bang into luxury

We drove from Jo'berg to Nelspruit and stayed at a lovely campsite called lakeview and even had our own self catering cottage. This was fabulous luxury after sleeping in a tent for three months. Check out some of these photos...


Of mice and men

Okay, so we were supposed to be heading to Ghanzi on the way to Windhoek after we got off the truck, but it seems that we strayed a little from that plan.

We got off the truck today to start our own mini adventure away from the truck. We got a lift into town with another truck because we were drinking with them last night and they said "Cool, we'll give you a lift. No worries".

As it turns out we missed the bus to Ghanzi because tourist information had given us completely the wrong times. We finally found out that the other main bus would go at 4:30 but then Kath found a little bus that would go at two. Sweet, all sorted.

So we then had some time to kill. We decided to walk to the airport for a bit of fun. On the way there we were joking about catching a flight to Ghanzi (where we were headed), but then the conversation turned to doing something silly like flying to Jo'berg because Kath needed to get some money out of an ATM (there are none in the towns we are going through at the moment). We were laughing about it when we got into the airport only to find that the only flight for the day was a flight to Jo'berg.

We were still joking around when we remembered that car hire is a lot cheaper in SA versus Namibia. So, just out of curiosity we asked prices of flights. We previously said if it was 100 pounds or cheaper we would do it. Still laughing away....

....but then she said it was 100 pounds to Jo'berg!

So, we are about to go hop on a small cessna plane and fly from Maun, Botswana to Jo'berg, SA in about 30 minutes! ... And all because Kath wanted to get some money out of an ATM!