The Beast has been spotted!

Spotted the Beast today. We reluctantly sold the Beast a year ago because it makes more sense as a trip car than a city car. Since then it has done 3 Southern Africa trips and 50,000km - just been sold for another trip. Still looking strong and keeps going back to Allan Venter at AEW Auto for servicing - had the same tires until recently. It was good to see an old friend. If you spot the Beast, let us know.

Afterword

This final blog update has been a long time coming. Somehow, this year slipped past us and we’ve just caught up with it. We will be uploading final stats, West Coast waypoints, and other finishing details in the next few weeks.

Mary: We headed back to Johannesburg with an unexpectedly strong  sense of sadness that the trip was over – I had expected to be tired of it all and ready for civilisation but after we had caught up on sleep and hot showers, it felt like we were missing some part of ourselves not being on the road. We didn’t have too much time to dwell on it though as we headed down to Cape Town for Simon & Jen’s wedding, followed by a hop skip and jump over to Iceland for Karen & Patrick’s wedding two weeks later, and did a loop around the island to explore.

Blue Lagoon

Jokulsarlon

Borin' old geyser :)

Wedding season buoyed us up, it was a busy and happy time. Following Karen’s wedding, we headed back to the UK to try to replenish the coffers a little. We were both lucky enough to get our old jobs back on a contract basis for a short stint. It was great to get back to a real routine, seeing lots of friends in between peaceful days at the office. I had definitely missed the stimulation of the office and loved my 3 month contract back with the old team. Despite worries that we would find it hard to fit back into the regular routines and schedules of working, we both found it really easy. We stayed with Lindsay in Clapham for those 3 months to be closer in to London, and it was absolutely brilliant – the flat was pretty much constantly filled with high volume laughter & skinnering.

That old familiar Canary Wharf...

London friends

Christmas carols at Westminister Abbey

In December we went through that old familiar routine of packing up all our posessions (how did we accumulate that much stuff in just a few months??), organising shipping, and left London for Jo’burg in time for Christmas. We spent an amazing Christmas day with my folks, cuzzies, aunt & uncle in Parkview, delighted to be back to warm Christmases celebrated with braais.

Christmas with family

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Shortly after Christmas, we began loading up some of our stuff into the beast for the great trek south to Cape Town. We had decided to take the scenic route down the coast, via the Drakensberg, where we met up with Mike & Emma for a few days of reminiscing, hiking and having fun. Our trip took ten days, down the Garden Route, and we finally got to Cape Town on Sunday 6 January.

Just like old times

Bonnievale

Brett: On our first day in Cape Town, we checked in at Hotel Martin and headed out on foot to a concert in De Waal Park, where we met loads of new people. The first month was dominated by the search for a flat, which had started online while we were in Joburg and continued with some difficulty online while driving down to Cape Town. Flats in the city bowl go quickly at this time of year – literally within a matter of hours, and it was not long before we got to a point where we said to ourselves that we would just take the next flat that came up in our desired area, if it was reasonably affordable.

Summer Concerts in De Waal park

That decision brought us to a beautiful tiny flat on the side of Signal Hill overlooking city bowl and with a panoramic view of the whole of Table Mountain. On the last weekend of January, I started my MBA at the UCT Graduate School of Business with a day of team building activities, followed by a braai for all the partners & families. The next few months were a blur of studying, presentations, projects and exams.

Mary: I had been looking for a job from the start of the year, but decided to capitalise on the very slow Cape Town job market and write The Book of our trip – my memoir of the previous 14 months of travel. I also took up ceramics and painting, and am still, frustratingly, looking for a job. At the moment there are a few promising options on the horizon, but we have yet to see if they will actually materialise. I am 100,000 words into the first draft of the book and starting to realise what a huge undertaking this is. Brett will continue studying until the end of the year, when he will have the option of doing a three month exchange somewhere in the world.

It has been strange and wonderful and difficult and eye-opening to be back in South Africa. Next year’s plans are far from certain. The thread we have been following for the last few years has started to unravel and there are a number of strands leading out from us in different directions, like those narrow tracks diverging in the jungle in Guinea. As before, we’re sitting on the side of the road under the trees, watching the dust motes falling through the shards of sunlight and trying to work out which way is best. It’s impossible to tell. There is a different adventure down each one.

Honnets at Chobe

Brett: We met Marys folks at Nata Lodge ($12pppn) - it was really great to see them after 1y, 1m and 1w. We had a big steak in the restaurant while we caught up on a few stories and then drove to Kasane in the morning. We had lunch at the Chobe Safari Lodge with its great setting overlooking the river and then headed into the park (a nice treat from the Honnets). The new one way system and the time slots for guided vs private is in place, but most people still seem to ignore it. It is busy and the tracks are one car wide, so it does make some sense. It was really amazing the number of ellies we saw on the river front - we kept getting road blocked by them. There were tons of zebra and buffalo too.

We camped at the brilliant Ihaha Camp Site, which is spread out along the water front. There was as much activity in the camp site as there was on the game drives. On the first night, a large heard of elephants walked through the campsite to our right of us. Chobe is definitely the best place for spotting Elephants. A large heard of buffalo walked through our campsite on day two before sunrise, between and around our cars. The baboons were a bit of a pest in the day and very cunning, watching as you walk away from your car. There were some fish eagles in the trees around the camp. On the second night, a leopard killed a buck in campsite six (a few along from us). On the third night,we heard lions close by and when we woke up, there were lion prints going past our tent, towards the bathroom. On the fourth night, we were chased back into the tent on a loo break by a hyena and then we were woken up by a buck running through our campsite, probably trying to escape from something.

On our last day in the park, we started coming across some soft sand heading up a hill and away from the river and came across a nice Dutch couple stuck in a rental 4x4 (why do they come with such rubbish tyres?). They had been digging for about 2 hours, but we managed to free them in a few minutes with a strong tug.We really enjoyed our five nights of luxury camping in Chobe - they were really relaxing and just what we needed to wind down. We took a boat ride along the Chobe river and saw elephants swimming across the river (amazing!), lots of hippos and crocs. We also ate really well, with the Honnets make up for lost time with great home cooking and lots of braais.

We left Chobe and headed for Woodlands Stopover ($10pppn) in Francistown. The day wasn't too eventful, except that I had to throw my fruit away at the Health Checkpoints - you can't carry raw meat (foot and mouth) or fruit (fruit flies) across the country, even if it was bought inside the country. You also have to drive through a dip and dip the soles of all your shoes. The campsite was nice, but not great to see warning signs on the turnoff from the main road warning guests not to stop due to hijacking risks. The campsite was full of people returning from school holidays - all carrying everything they could imagine.

We left before sunrise the next morning to get a head start (10 minutes to wake up and leave - we are getting good at this). We had 720km ahead of us and we were much slower than the Honnets as we were taking it easy on the car and needed to stop every 2 hours to check radiator water levels. The tar roads in Botswana are good (off-road tends to be hectic sand) and we made good time, although we were in no danger of getting caught in the famous speed traps. The Martins Drift / Groblersbrug border was easy, but took 1h30 because it was so busy. It is weird to have your passport scanned rather than the details be written into a log book. It was good to be back in South Africa. The traffic in Mokopane was hectic, taking about an hour to get through - parts of town also had a pretty seedy feel. The rest of the route along the N1 to Pretoria was easy, although we never really moved from the slow lane. We were driving extra carefully to not strain the engine up all the really steep hills through Pretoria. We stopped at a Shell Ultra city in Midrand, next to a taxi with its music up loud and all the passengers dancing to celebrate a football win and then just as we reached Joburg, the Honnets caught up with us. We drove back to their house together, hooting as we entered their street, just as we did when we left. Getting back was really surreal - Mark and Dom were standing in the driveway, just as they had done when we left - the only proof that we had been away a while was baby Murray in their arms. Even more surreal was the welcome back party the next day, which was pretty much exactly the same as the one we had when we were leaving.

Okavango Delta

Brett: We crossed the Mohembo border quickly with no searches. Road tax was $15. After a long day of driving, passing through the foot and mouth areas twice, we reached Maun. Maun is much more developed that we expected, but we really liked it. We stayed at the Audi Camp ($10pppn) and treated ourselves to Oxtail Stew. We cycled into town the next morning (12km each way) on our little folding bikes that refuse to give up. We picked up our tickets for the next morning, caught up on internet and found the Nandos.

We caught a taxi with a really cool taxi driver recommended by the Audi Camp. The airport was tiny and I had to stop Mary asking our young pilot how long he had been flying for (or even worse, how old he was...to be fair, he did look about 15). We took the little 4 seater plane north over the Okavango Delta - it wasn't as wet as the year before, but it was spectacular and cool to see giraffe and buffalo from the air. We landed on a dirt runway where Bate the game ranger picked us up and took us to Kwara Camp. The Okavango Delta had been near the top of the list for trip activities and we decided to splash out. The tracks in the delta are deep, soft sand, with the game drive vehicles spending most of the time in 1st and 2nd gear. We took a boat ride through the delta, seeing rare Sitatunga buck, Tsesabe, crocs, hippos and water lillies. The water was shallow and the flat bottomed boat kept touching it. The lodge was very nice and the staff were singing and dancing for us before we ate - awesome.

On the morning game drive, the highlight was a pride of 6 lions. There were also some buck in the water and it was really cool to be on a game drive, driving in a foot of water and crossing little wooden bridges when it got too deep. We had a siesta and then went looking for wild dogs in the evening. We saw lots of birds and we saw the wild dog's den, but they were out hunting.

We had a choice of activities, so on the last morning, we choose the game drive over the mokoro (which looked fun, but had less chance of seeing game). We found a pack of wild dogs (another first) - there were 10 adults and 10 puppies. They were fantastic and we spent an hour watching them play. On the way back, we saw 3 cheetahs posing (and completely ignoring us), a lion and lots of elephants wading through the water.

We had originally booked in at Moremi 3rd Bridge (which turned out to be close to Kwara anyway) but we were feeling exhausted so we changed our booking for Nxai Pan ($19pp entry) as it was less out of the way. There was about 35km of deep soft sand into the park, but we managed ok - we also passed an anti-poaching army tank with a turret gun and gas launchers. We camped at South Camp ($22pppn), which was great - we had the campsite to ourselves except for a very large elephant that came to visit in the night - he knocked down a few trees on the way into our campsite and passed about 3m from the car - he was tall enough that from the roof tent, we were still looking up at him. In the morning, we were surrounded by 2 dozen horn bills - not shy and looking for food and then met the really great site keeper. There was a lot of activity around the one waterhole, but the rest of the park was quiet. We got out and tried to pump up the tyres which we had let down to get through the sand, but there was a loose connection, so we drove really slow on the tar to Gheta where we found an mechanic/entrepreneur with an air pump that could help.

Etosha

Brett: We left later than expected and were rushed getting to Etosha National Park and to our camp before the gates closed. We saw elephants, but couldn't stop for long. We camped at Halali, which was nice (but very full) and had a massive braai. The first day, we explored the park to the west of Halali. We saw black rhino crossing the road right in front of us, which was awesome, and some secretary birds in the morning. We saw very little game in the afternoon and was I starting to feel exhausted from moving so fast and having to continually watch the temperature gauge. Our second night was at Okaukuejo, our last night with the Kerrs as they needed to head for Windhoek to sort out a few things on their car. The Kerrs made us a cake at dinner using their Hobb oven - we took it down to the fantastic water hole, where we saw two black rhinos in a stand off - they were literally singing to other - very strange. In the morning, I heard a lion killing something and rushed down to the waterhole. It was just before sunrise and the lions were just finishing eating by the time I got there, although it was still difficult to see in the low light. We said goodbye to the Kerrs and headed out on our morning game drive. The Kerrs had been desperate to see a male lion with big mane, and as we headed towards a waterhole near Halali we saw two female and one male lion lying under a tree. We texted the Kerrs but weren't sure if our message got through. A few minutes later they turned up anyway, got a perfect spot, and just then the lions all stood up. The male lion seemed to have a horrible taste in his mouth, and was yawning and licking his lips and showing his teeth - the Kerrs were going bananas at the thrill of the perfect massive maney lion doing a series of classic Lion King poses - a first for them!

With 10 minutes to spare before our permit ran out, we spotted Mike and Emma in the car park at Namutoni. We had last seen then in DRC before they headed to Kinshasa for repairs, and they looked a little disheveled  We got a very short version of their hectic two weeks in Kinshasa, getting the car fixed and getting their Angolan visas. They had a very tense argument to avoid a big bribe at Matadi, which sounded terrible and not something Mary would have coped with, and they were then rushed through Angola with a super-fast police escort (even though they had a letter in Portugese to say they didn't need one), and narrowly avoided a massive accident with a truck which probably would have written them off. They had been camping at police stations along the way, where exhausted, and hadn't showered in a week or so. They were really excited to be in the land of plenty and were busy enjoying the magnum ice-creams at the camp shop. We really wanted to change our plans to spend the evening catching up with them, but we couldn't make it work - horrible to be on a schedule.

We drove on to Roys Camp (north east of Grootfontein), which is a great spot with cool decorations. We treated ourselves to the buffet dinner at the campsite - bobotie, sweet potato mash, chicken wings and many different types of salad (for Mary) and mavla pudding. Yum! If you're ever in the area and need enormous portions of delicious food, it's definitely the spot to go. They had the radio on a local station playing Afrikaans "treffers" so we got to listen to a few classics that we recognised (thanks Simon!) as well as some new ones that were actually quite catchy....you know you've been on the road too long when you're bopping along to Kurt Darren's "Grooter as Groot".

Mary: I woke up with a sudden urge to get rid of clutter, so we left our rubbish TentCo awning on a table in the campsite with a note if anyone wanted it - it just took too long to set up, and couldn't cope with any wind. In Rundo, someone decided to help us with the mission by breaking into our car and stealing our kindle, broken laptop, sat phone and all our chargers - not really the stuff we were thinking of getting rid of. We were parked at a busy Engen petrol station, right in front of the door to the shop, and had popped in for less than 5 minutes when it happened. We had locked the car and Brett had checked out the window twice. Someone had broken into our car with a screwdriver and knew exactly what they wanted to take. Brett reacted very quickly when he saw the door was unlocked, but the security guards, staff and other people around pretended they hadn't seen anything. We were able to disable the phone and kindle and the laptop was broken, so they got nothing of value, but it is really irritating, expensive and inconvenient to us. What a welcome back to Southern Africa! For the next trip, we would design a padded charging box for our electronics, with a slam lock.

There was more nothing we could do about it, so we headed for Ngepi Camp ($23) near Divundu on the Okavango River in the Caprivi. It is a proper backpacker place, with funny signs and nice campsites on the river. We made a bonfire and listened to the hippos close by - by this stage of the trip, we got over the loss quickly - it really is just stuff (and Brett has 2 backup copies of the photos hidden in different places).