Day 51 We woke up as damp as we’d gone to bed, my feet particularly seemed un-dryable. It made me think of the 1st world war and trench foot and made us all even keener to get well out of Mozambique! We didn’t leave our campsite until 8 because we wanted to get into Maputo in time for the opening of the banks so we could all change the Mozambique Metical we’d withdrawn back into Rand because once you get into South Africa they’re a bit sniffy about excepting certain currencies. It took us a good hour anyway to drive back [View Full Entry]

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Day 50 Another disaster day…our second proper one of this trip. We left Swaziland at 10 and drove to the border crossing with Mozambique; it was our first bad border crossing since the one into Zambia - no proper queuing so everyone was pushing and shoving, inept officials who took ages over everything and a visa we had to buy which meant that after giving our passports in we had to wait another hour to get them back. Add to all this the fact that it was raining like nothing I’ve ever seen before, proper monsoon rain. We finally got into [View Full Entry]

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Day 48 We left Coffee Bay at about 9, after buying a really yummy breakfast of Alpen, Yoghurt and Fruit, followed by a full English fry up. We drove through more of the boring scenery which seems to epitomize the Transkei, getting lost once in a town called Port Shepstone. Finally at about 5 we reached Durban, fining to our horror that the two places recommended to us in the guidebook were already full. By this point we were all starving so we went back to an Indian Supermarket and Takeaway that we had passed for a spot of supper - [View Full Entry]

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Day 45 It was a shame to leave the cosy and hospitable hostel, but leave we had to, so after a good breakfast of free toast (during our stay we must have got through at least four loaves of bread…!) we set off in the direction of a hippy retreat called Coffee Bay which is well celebrated in our guidebook, Coast to Coast. It was quite a long and dull drive through Zululand, an endless sequence of bare hills, dotted by houses and some cultivation - we saw no trees until the last 50km of our drive. We stopped briefly in [View Full Entry]

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Day 44 We left our hill campsite rather later than we’d intended as the boys (Seren and Robert) were gripped with excitement at the imminent and humiliating defeat of the Australian cricket team by the South Africans. I have been told to mention this otherwise I would have passed over it. James says the Australians will get revenge in the next test… Anyway, we left Wilderness at about 9:30 in the end and got back onto the Garden Route, enjoying the really good scenery of rolling hills, vineyards and the Indian Ocean stretching out along the horizon. We stopped once in [View Full Entry]

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Day 42 We had more pancakes before setting off on the road once more. The first part of the drive before the Garden Route officially starts was very dull and unattractive - a seemingly endless succession of murky industrial areas and slums, interspersed by a few farms. We stopped briefly in a town called Mossel Bay, which is on the border of the garden route and according to the guidebook is a real hot-spot for surfers. We had previously thought it might be a good place to stay but on looking around the place we decided not - it was dominated [View Full Entry]

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Day 40 The boys spent the morning playing golf with Ross on the Steenberg Golf Course, where the Jones-Davies live, whilst I sat writing postcards and reading and watching BBC World News…the first time I’ve watched or heard news in nearly a month and a half. It was Caroline’s (Ross’s mum) birthday so in the evening they invited us to join them in a birthday supper with some of their other relatives and friends. It was a really great evening - Bob cooked fillet steak and boerwurst and speeches were made by Ross and his younger brother Andrew to celebrate their [View Full Entry]

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Day 38 On Tuesday we decided to make a visit to Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope so we set off on the road south, which took us past Fishhoek and our lovely beach from Saturday. After an hour in quite heavy traffic we reached a bay called ‘Boulder’s Bay’, where there is a nature reserve which is home to a massive colony of African Penguins, so we stopped and spent an hour there appreciating these beautiful but rather ridiculous birds, which do remind of butlers in tail coats. They look so bizarre waddling around on the sand but [View Full Entry]

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Day 35 Seren and James had got in touch with our school friend Ross Jones-Davies the previous night, so at about 11 we headed over to his parents house. They have a really beautiful house on the other side of Cape Town to where we are, on a very attractive Golf Course and they were very kind in inviting us to spend the day there. After drinking some Champagne to celebrate our arrival in Cape Town, we had a very delicious lunch in the golf course, and then headed down to a beach called Fishhoek, where we played Frisbee, and even [View Full Entry]

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Day 33 Since the border lies only 15 minutes away from Noordoewer, we had a lovely, laid-back last morning in Namibia, drinking coffee and eating Pocho Porridge (sadly something I don’t think I shall ever learn to love, it just tastes too much like Ugali, even when you add milk to it…). We got to the border at about 11:30 feeling relaxed, only to discover that the South African border is not a relaxed place - straight away we were pulled over by two cross policemen and told off because Robert was not wearing a t-shirt. Our passports were then demanded [View Full Entry]

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