Namibia, Botswana, South Africa

Current Location: Mtunzini, South Africa.

15 May 2009 – Present

The last entry perhaps.

As I write this Louise is back in the land of chocolate, corrupt banks and cuckoo clocks, that’s right, she’s gone home and left me here in Africa. There is reason to her madness, cousin, I don’t know his name, and she only has one so I guess it’s fair to call him cousin, is getting married. I’m not far behind her, I hope, still waiting on the shipping lady to put the car on a boat so I head back too.

First let’s fill you in on what we’ve been doing since we dropped the Canadian at the airport in Windhoek. It’s been a bit of a game drive since we left. We stopped in Maun for a few days to catch up with Tony, Denise and all the rest of their tribe, which was a nice break from the road. From Maun we headed south in the direction of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. Stopping off in Ghanzi to allow Louise to have an argument with a useless campsite lady that never sold us any firewood. On the plus side the campsite does have wild dog in captivity, though seeing them through chicken wire just doesn’t do it for us.

Our last bush camp just before the gate to the park was uneventful until we woke up in the morning and discovered that one of our camping chairs had gone missing. Upon closer inspection of the ground the only discernible prints were those of hyena. So now we have been robbed by animals in Africa too, though being robbed by a hyena is not as annoying and frustrating as being robbed by locals.

Kgalagadi transfrontier park is a big sandy place that’s full of predators. We spent a total of 2 weeks in the park and while it is a stunning park, we left early because of the freezing nights (-5°C one morning!), terrible roads and general lack of good animal sightings. It was alot of fun though, we met up with Thomas and Isabella, the Swiss couple travelling in Obelix the big MAN truck. We enjoyed sharing a campsite with them, also using the inside of the truck for dinner was fantastic as the food wasn’t frozen by the time you took it out of the pot and got it into your mouth. The cheese fondue was a definite highlight with everyone standing around in -5 degrees eating melted swiss cheese and drinking lots of white wine and a bit of kirsch!

After leaving Kgalagadi we headed east looking for warmer weather. We finally found it in Pilanesburg NP just a few hours away from Joburg, we stopped at Uppington and Kuruman on the way there. Pilanesburg is a beautiful park set amongst rolling hills and lush greenery. The animal numbers according to the brochures are high, though they are hard to spot due to the dense bush, none the less we did see a brown hyena that didn’t run away for once (he was eating a dead giraffe though...). After leaving Pilanesburg we headed in the direction of the mighty Kruger, stopping on the way in Hazyview. We spent a total of 4 nights in Kruger and do have to admit it’s a love and hate kind of place. The number of people in the park in particular when one of the big cats is around is frustrating, on the other hand the amount and variety of animals you see is phenomenal, while it still doesn’t quite compare with east Africa it comes close.

After Kruger we headed back towards the coast, stopped in Sodwana to meet up with Rene and Andrea for a couple of nights (Rene spoilt us with fried ostrich egg one morning and ostrich egg and sour milk pancakes the next - yummy!), spent a night in St Lucia before finally arriving at our final destination chez Christine and Dudley.

Now I am waiting for a boat to put Edmund on and head home myself.

It’s been a fantastic experience and we don’t think it will be the last of our adventures so stay tuned to www.touringafrica.ch to see what we do next.

To everyone that’s followed the trip online I hope you have enjoyed it and thanks for reading it!

To all the travellers we met on the way, it was wonderful to meet you all and hope to see you again sometime. Keep in touch!

Ciao 4 now

Louise and Milan