On December 17th first Inge (African: In-dje)and Tijn (African: Tee-Jin) arrived in Jozi. With them we did a cycling tour through Soweto, mainly around the monuments on the Soweto uprising of 1976. After refueling with pizza and good wine we awaited the arrival of Jan (African: Jan Japan or ManPower) and Joost (African: Juiced).

That turned out to be a long wait: someone mistakenly took Joost’s bag from the airport. Luckily they got hold of the culprit and were able to exchange the bag the next morning. Then we were all set to go to Botswana!

Botswana: Chobe, Savuti and Moremi

Just before we entered Botswana, they warned us for the heat: it is so warm there, it will kill you!

After an overnight right after the border, we went to Kasane. This place close to the Chobe river was an ideal location to go to the Vic falls and do a tour on the Chobe.

Linyanti

From Kasane, we drove along the Chobe river towards Linyanti. Underway we saw -literally- hundreds of elephants bading, drinking and playing along the river.

 

At Linyanti we had our first camping experience between hippos and elephants without fence. They warned us not to go to the toilet at night and make a fire, which we did. At night Steef saw the hippos come out of the water to eat and stroll over the campsite.

Savuti and Moremi

The next day we left early to increase the chance on animal activity on our way. And we did indeed see a troop of African wild dogs, that went to hide in the bush when we approached. On our way through Savuti and Moremi we drove on the most sandy roads ever!

We spent the night at Third Bridge camp, right next to the Okavanga Delta. Another night in paradise without fences. After dinner we saw the reflection of a pair of eyes staring at us. It could be anything from kudus to hyenas to …  Uuh a bit scary!!!

Maun

The next stop to spent Christmas was Maun, also next to the Okavango Delta.  We did about 500km of sandy roads in 3 days, it was good to see a tarred road again :). In Maun we also went ‘in’ the Delta, with a mokoro (traditional wooden canoe).

X-mas in Maun was probably the warmest we have ever celebrated!

 

From the Amakhosi Lodge near Pongola we first went to the dreary municipal campsite of Bethal and the next day to Johannesburg to meet with Lorna, a former colleague and friend of Stephanie’s.

As our GPS navigation system was behaving weirdly we were sent through various suburbs including Benoni -next to where Stephanie did her work experie Greatnce twelve years ago- and the (in)famous Hillbrow downtown. This was or first Jo-burg ‘adventure’.

With Lorna we went to the up-and-coming Maboneng Precint, an area where food and art culminate in the midst of Jo-burg.

 

After spending some great days with Lorna and David (also a friend/former colleague of Stephanie’s) we went for an overnight trip to Pilanesberg. This National Park is only a few hours ride away from Jo-burg but captives a large density of game.

There we had a great campsite with some of the (less-dangerous) game running past and a fabulous game drive in the morning showing us four out of the Big five, including three lionesses on the hunt. Great adventure!

AS on the way to Pilanesberg we heard a funny rattling from under the car, we decided to have it looked at as well as get the slave cylinder of our clutch fixed. After trying many of the official Land Rover dealers (which come up first if looking for a Landy repair shop) we found “Adventure rovers” not too far from Lorna’s place. So there we went and met Marc who did a great job changing the clutch cylinder and our front propshaft (which happened to be worn after less than 6.000km  🙁

It has been a while sinds we have posted anything and we have been travelling a lot. After the wineries we went via Cape Point to Gansbaai. Jasper did some shark cage diving here! From there we went to the most southern part of Africa, Cape d’Agulhas, for us the most southern part of our trip. We came up with the idea of travelling to the most Northern part somewhere in Scandinavia, although one must have dreams :).

The car seemed to leak oil so we made an appointment at the garage in George. Although it was quit busy due to festive season, they managed to squeeze us in on tuesday morning. We are quite relaxed after a few weeks of traveling now and well waiting for a day isn’t a problem to us anymore…. The car was fixed at the end of the day and we drove to Knysna. We had found a camping just outside the village and again a beautiful place. Knysna is a lovely but touristical place so time for a decent lunch!

From Knysna we drove in 2 days to the Drakensbergen, Sani Pass. On the road to the mountains a guy filled our car with petrol instead of Diesel and a mechanic had to come to let the petrol out. Luckily we we found it out just in time. Time to buy a diesel sticker!

We have spent a few days at Sani pass to do some hiking and drive to Lesotho. Times are changing and the Chinese have paved the roads in Lesotho, incredible!

At the Sani Lodge we’ve met a few dutch group and they tipped us to go to Cape Vidal in the Wetlands. Thx for the tip guys, it do is a beautiful place! Unfortunately those wetlands suffer from lack of rain and the lake is half the size. It looks a bit desolate and it’s a pity to see the effects of global warming and not looking after our planet.

Yeah, time to go to Amakhosi Lodge, our most luxurious and exciting part of our South African trip because we are going to see game with a ranger in this beautiful game resort. They looked a bit confused to see us arriving with a big dusty Defender, all set for camping! Our time at Amakhosi Lodge was fantastic, mainly due to the great stories of the ranger, the game he showed us and the lovely couple we’ve met! Monique and Tal; we do hope we will meet again and the good thing about life is that time will tell :).

We had a great time visiting the  wine capital of South Africa, Stellenbosch and its surroundings. With great weather the views were fantastic, as were the wines 😉

As we heard many of the best restaurants in SA are in this area we set out on a mission to visit some of the top-ten. However, naive as we can be, it turned out that most of them were booked for weeks in advance especially with the festive season coming up. Fortunately we managed to book a few for lunch and combined that with some wine tasting before and after.  Oh, the great spirits!

 

At the same time we noticed our Landy kept leaking oil, apparently from the transfer box where we had a seal changed just before shipping our car. In search for a garage we took a left turn into the centre of Stellenbosch and happened to pass an original Land Rover-Jaguar dealer! The friendly people over there made room to have a quick look at our car and confirmed the oil level in the transfer box was sufficient to continue for a few more days.