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Published: February 8th 2018
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20180129_081858
B&B breakfast room Fouriesburg was not very exciting, at all , the dinners ok fish but that was all.
the general heading is north towards Mozambique and the Kruger Park so that’s where I went, north towards heat and humidity.
The South African country side went by at moderate speed, why hurry if you don’t have to so I don’t.
If I get to the Victoria falls fine and if not fine as well.
The inn keeper in Fouriesburg told that using the GPS was a very good way of getting lost, so that’s nice to being told something that you more or less new already.
I stopped in The Golden Gate Park and just sat there and thought about the beautiful nature, deep huh?
I decided to go to Dundee and put it to the GPS and of course it got lost but being a bit cunning I used my map and checked progress along the way.
It had been cool but when I got to Ladysmith, whoa, the thermometer took a leap up to 35 C but Ladysmith did not looks if I wanted to stay there so I got out.
It’s a funny
thing about the names of cities, Glencoe, Dundee, Utrecht,Heidelberg, in my mind they are all to be found at their places in Europe, but of course when you conquer a new land you can use names from the countries back home, same as in the so called new world.
I got to Dundee and after having checked out several rooms until I found one, in the Royal Country Inn.
The RCI dated back to the 1880 or so, white a couple of lovely lounges, all furnished in the appropriate British style, and an astounding amount of pics showing British soldiers shooting Zulus en masse.
Dundee lies in the heart of Zulu land and there are many battle fields around where the Brits, Boers spent a lot of time killing each other.
Half the hotel was full of Brits visiting battle fields, knolls and plains where thousands died for king and country.
I should have asked for a Pims no1, but i did not, intend I went to the supermarket and bought tooth paste.
I had a couple of beers and a nice lamb curry in the nice ding room.
I could imagine the
former colonials sitting the with stiff upper lips talking about the kaffirs and having G&Ts, eating appalling English food, made by the inferior blacks.
For most of them it must’ve been heaven, even the lowliest European was someone.
The had a night watchman, with a nightstick and a pair of hand cuffs, the place had loads of charm and the owner lady, an old biddy was almost stereotypical in her long skirt and blouse and low heels.
It took a couple of minutes before the water came out clear from the taps, lots of rust.
It’s a place I’d go back to if I was in that neck of the woods again.
I wanted to go to Nelspruit, a city close to the Kruger Park, so I thought why not go through Swaziland so I did just that, no difference at all.
There was a bit of gravel before the border, dusty but fun, I love the colour of the soil, sometimes it’s almost the colour of dried blood.
Mbabane, the capital, didn’t seem to be a place where I wanted to spend the night os I left Swaziland to it’s own devices.
South Africa welcomed me back with a nice thunderstorm with lots of rain, it’s almost incredible how much the temperature does when it starts to rain, 5-10 C but only gets cool not cold.
Nelspruit, or Mbombola, its new or maybe old African name, greeted me with rush hour and rain, after a bit of searching I found a room, I had to go upstairs to sort out my bill and went up some welded staircase with iffy looking welds and wooden steps, the welds held but one step broke under and I fell down, hard way through the hole I got stuck, there were a couple of meters down to the uneven ground.
That I didn’t leave skid marks in my underwear is a miracle.
Accidents happen fast and the owner was a cripple in a wheel chair…
And all the time I’d worried about animals on the road, I ruined my shorts, and draped my leg and that was it.
The bloke did not charge me for the room and his dad took me down to the shops in the morning so that I could get a new pair of shorts, good
shorts don’t come cheap in SA.
A short trip to Hazyview and yet another hotel room and I’ve booked two days of game drives in the Kruger Park.
That’s going to be nice, and it was very nice, very nice indeed I'd booked two game drives.
The first morning at 5 o'clock they picked us up and at 8 o'clock we'd seen the big five; Buffalo, lion, elephant, rhino and leopard.
And of course lesser animals that are not amongst those that you have to see, i personally like giraffes.
So after having seen all this it got to be afternoon and it got hot, 37C no wind no nothing and the first beer went down as by magic, one moment if was in a tall glass dripping with condensation and the next moment it was gone, empty crying out to be refilled.
The second one was nice but not as good as the first.
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