.....and there is our time in South Africa. The Rainbow Nation has fabulous and varied scenery, but is tainted by a crime wave and a people seemingly divided as they ever were! We enjoyed ourselves for about 75% of the time, but would be unsure about ever coming back until they sort out the personal security issues. When visiting countries, we often ask ourselves could we imagine living here? The answer in this case is simple - NO!! In the words that some readers of this blog will be familiar, "we don't live like these people" - behind bars, razor wire [View Full Entry]

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We've opted to view Joburg from a safe distance - approximately 50kms away to be precise from Pretoria. After 11 weeks of listening to horror stories about Joburg and it's crime, we opted for the comparative serenity of Pretoria and it's tree lined avenues and embassies. We are based in Hatfield, which is next to the University and very convenient for the bars and shops. We teamed up with a few other people from the hostel and had an exploration of the area around the Parliament - the extensive Union Buildings, which stand impressively on a hill overlooking the city - [View Full Entry]

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The title pretty much sums up our animal experiences in our second trip to Kruger. Our own excursions into the Park were based near one of the southern camps around Skukuza and this time with the professional, we were further north near Orphen. Whilst we had the advantage of an open game viewer rather than a Renault Clio, if the animals aren't nearby you are going to see them....and most of the big cats remained as elusive as a South African policeman when you need one. There are therefore no lion piccies to add to this page, the leopards were probably [View Full Entry]

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As part of our recent Blyde River Canyon trip, we took the opportunity to venture into Kruger for two days. We made some progress on the Big Five, but sadly the leopards remained elusive. The lions made an appearance inside our first five minutes in the park, but unfortunately it was too dark for anything other than a black blob on the pictures. Four more Rhinos were also viewed to add to our Hluhluwe National Park collection, but only at a distance. The buffalo pictures were rubbish, so we are holding fire on their release pending an improvement. We are now [View Full Entry]

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St Lucia was difficult to leave behind, but we had a cross border mission to accomplish for Fedders in Swaziland. The border was a bit more active than our last excursion into Lesotho, but just to confirm that everything has it's price in Africa one guy managed to gain entry with an out of date passport! We opted to stay away from the bright lights of Manzini or Mbabne in a backpackers within Milwane National Park - very convenient for walking amongst the antelopes and zebras, but a little isolated. However the following day, excitement came to us! At the posher [View Full Entry]

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After another brief sojourn in Durban to drop the car off, we've headed north up the Dolphin Coast. The northern suburbs of Durban make it very obvious to where the former residents of the city have escaped, before the secenery changes to sugar cane and more sugar cane for the next 3 hours. We are now temporary residents of St Lucia - not the island in the West Indies but the town in north east Natal, as even the super efficient Baz Bus doesn't travel that far in 3 hours. However as we 'd only met one other French person in [View Full Entry]

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What more could a girl ask for, even surpassing last year's trip to the KGB Museum in Vilnius...a trip to the battlefields of South Africa!!. In view of the difficult transport issues, we retreated back to Durban to take charge of a Toyota Tazz - brand new, but otherwise known as a 1986 Corolla. The battlefields are about 3 hours north of Durban in Natal Province and we chose a tortureous route through the depths of Zululand, ending up in Dundee - apparently once known as the coal capital of South Africa. First stop on the tour was Blood River, the [View Full Entry]

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After PE, South African cities were not on our priority list of places of visit! It probably didn't help arriving at 11 o'clock at night and it certainly didn't help when the map from the hostel was liberally scattered with shaded "no go" areas. We braved our first bit of South African public transport, listened very carefully to all the advice on where not to go and decided after the sum total of 26 minutes to retreat to the safety of the suburb of Berea where the backpacker hostel was located. Berea was a typical upmarket South African suburb, where the [View Full Entry]

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After the low of Durban, the Dragon Mountains were a high - quite literally! It's all high round here and the primary activities are hiking up various peaks, climbing cliffs and then figuring out the best way down. Where else can you go abseiling for 65 rand? A 25 metre drop doesn't sound like a long way, but it certainly looks it when you are on the edge. Fortunately, we know a man who had another rope just to make sure it didn't end in tears. We have been reunited with the Bavaria girls, who we'd last seen in Cape Town [View Full Entry]

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Another day, another country - a side trip to Lesotho. It was a totally different world to South Africa from the moment we crossed the border. We were in 4WDs, but the majority of the other traffic was on foot or on horseback - in fact we only saw 4 other vehicles moving all day on that side of the border. The roads were like the border post - effectively non-existent - the border post comprising of two abandoned caravans. Sadly, this meant no Lesotho stamp in the passport. We visited a school to which the backpacker hostel was donating cash, [View Full Entry]

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