Shipping: just like another African border crossing.

Current Location: Richards Bay.

Well I managed to get Edmund in a container, while I thought the process would be easy it seems previous training exercises at other African borders paid off.

Firstly I made a mistake by using a shipping agent from Cape Town to ship out of Durban, don't get me wrong the agent in Cape Town was more than competent, but they needed someone on the ground to deal with whatever they were supposed to be doing.

I got a phone call from the CT agent on Thursday saying that customs wanted to see the Carnet before they stamp it the following day, so off I go drive the 2 and a half hours to Durbs in the pouring rain, once I arrive the Durbs agent tells me to go home and show up on Friday morning. So I wasted half a day and had a completely pointless 5 hour drive, it would have been fine if the weather was nice, but it was pissing down, Edmund is a landrover and he obviously leaks.

I was told by Durbs agent to show up at the packing yard at 7:00 the following morning as customs would be there at 7:30. Now as it seems no one in the shipping industry does anything themselves, the packing company was a different entity alltogether. I get there I take a seat and wait, the boss arrives and tells me customs will be there shortly. After a hour or so the boss starts to wonder what's going on and rings up various people and finally we get onto the Durbs agent who says customs will not come until they have perused the carnet, now this was the exact reason for me to drive down on Thursday wasn't it.

10 minutes later Durbs agent is on the phone again telling me that I have to hand over the Carnet to some stranger that is going to pick it up and i'm really not sure what they actually wanted to do with it. So along comes a man on a moped, I was hoping to go with the carnet, figured that I have enough experience with African customs guys at this point and it shouldn't take me more than 15 minutes to get it stamped. But that was not possible. The Carnet dissapeared with a man on a moped. Against my wishes and the advice of the manager of the packing plant.

For the next few hours various phone calls were made but not much progress. CT agent was doing a good job keeping on top of things and trying to keep me calm, unknown to her and probably unbelievable to most people that know me I was actually very chilled. But I happily sat on the edmund's Bonnet, another good reason to own a landrover, it comes standard with outdoor seating, and read a book. I can recommend the book, "shitting pretty" to the unseasoned traveller who is a bit worried about getting god knows what kind of disease on the road, it's written by a doctor but in a light non medical manner.

At about 11 the guys at the packing plant we're getting a little bit jumpy, it was friday after all and they wanted to go home at 2. So they decided it was time to load edmund into the container, even without a customs inspection. I figured they knew what they were doing so agreed. Edmund was all strapped in, it took them about an hour. This is when I realised that if customs had shown up at 7:30 I could have been out of there by about 8:30, 9 latest.

Oh well it's Africa, so that's fine.

Now Durbs agent get's on the phone to me and tells me that customs is on the way, they will inspect the car, take the carnet away, stamp it and then give it back to me after that, i simply asked why they couldn't stamp it at the depot and hand it back to me. He said that wasn't possible, that's fine it's Africa.

Now what happened next is when I decided the Durbs agent should not be in business, also the fact that I did email this company about 2 months ago, when first enquiring about shipping, and never got a response. Agent guy rang again and said they have the carnet and it's been stamped and their driver is bringing it back to me. Ok so customs doens't actually care what's in the container it seems, since they hadn't been there yet unless they have invisible agents. The agent promises me customs are still on the way. I didn' really care, the carnet was stamped and on it's way back to me. But here is the proof that the Durban agent is useless, their driver rings me and asks me how to get to the depot, now even in Africa that is the most absurd thing to do, the local is asking the tourist for directions. I told him to ring his boss, he rings him and a few minutes rings me back saying the boss told him to ring me again. So I spent the next 10 minutes on the phone explaining to this guy how to find me and ended up walking out on the main road to find him.

After getting the carnet back we waited a while for customs to show up, The packing manager rang both the CT and Durbs agents and the decision was made to seal the container and send it on it's merry way. Now we'll have to wait and see what actually arrives in Basel in a months time.

See you all in Switzerland or somewhere else.

Ciao

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