---

Our holiday has finally started! Well it may seem strange hearing that after several months already in Africa but the fact that we have now hired a car from our final leg of the journey through South Africa is making it a breeze. Not having to get up at dawn with our thumb sticking out towards the road is something that we are not really going to miss at all and it has been a tiring experience but when we look back is will be something we appreciate that.

Our last hitching experience was to get to Cape Town from the Namibian border. The moment we have crossed Namibia/RSA border we felt quite unsafe to stand on the road without to have a shelter. But we don’t know if the horror stories about this country we have heard along the road from the locals and tourists have influenced our well-being at this moment. We had originally planned to catch the bus to Cape Town as everyone had told us not to hitch in SA as it is way too dangerous but as we were dropped off at 1pm and the next bus ‘maybe’ leaving at 11pm that night, sitting around the town and waiting didn’t sound all to fun either. Instead of hitching we thought to ask a few locals in the petrol station if they were heading south and after about 30 minutes of so a nice couple said they could take us all the way to Cape Town but staying overnight in a town along the way which was great for us and made our trip very enjoyable. Knowing that the whole way was sorted was such a relief and for once we could relax all the way to our hire car.

The town we stayed in for the night en-route was somewhere close to Trawel and we got dropped off at a camp site for the night and they will pick us up in the morning. The couple has been amazing as they made sure that we’ll have a great evening in this isolated place. They left meat for BBQ and all what we needed for the night. Well we felt welcomed by South Africans from the beginning. Also we were greeted by the owner of the site (which was pretty much a fenced of area on his land) and started to have a nice chat and he told us properly the worst thing you could ever tell guests staying by themselves in that area. He dropped the line that overall the past couple of week’s two girls had been raped and murdered around this area but we were FAIRLY safe here… So here we are in middle of nowhere, no tourists and we could just hope that our lift will come next morning and if not so it would be a later problem.

So after a sleepless night we were back in the car (they turn up with big smiles on the face) and made it to Cape Town and stayed with a wonderful family for three days. Our first plan was to head straight up the N1 with Kruger booked five days later which gave us plenty of time to have a decent look around and we did see some wonderful things during the first three days. If anyone is going to go between Cape Town and J’burg we highly recommend making a detour to Price Albert and then do the Swartberg Pass before going to the ostrich farms at Oudtshoorn and taking the N12 back toward N1. This road was amazing, more like a stair case going up over the mountain range and it made for some amazing views. We wish that we had some extra time to spend quality time in this area… it is just breathtaking.

Where the N12 meets the N1 is the city Beaufort West which makes a great base to spend the night so you can head into Karoo NP early the next morning. Karoo is not just about the animals but also the great scenery also. We still got to see plenty of wildlife (no big cats, Rhino or Elephants though but they are in the park) and the mountain backdrop made it such a pleasant drive and we only wish that we had more time to explore more. But we needed to keep moving along and for once follow a sort of plan as having the car is making life easy!

---