South Africa 1 – The North

We are happy to see a lot of you read this website. We found out the past weeks again when we could not write very regularly. Thank you for the comments and emails wondering where we are. Now that the website is up to date again you can read that nothing was wrong with us, we just spent good times in the bush, without internet access.

After crossing the border from Botswana into South Africa we visited the very scenery Mapungubwe National Park, where both countries border with Zimbabwe. Beautiful views of the two rivers conjugating. We drove by a town called Schiermonikoog (where are we?) to meet up with our friend Dave. We first met him in Damascus, then in Egypt again and travelled together with him and his South African Trans Africa group on the boat to Sudan. Now we meet in his home base, Camp Africa in Louis Trichardt/Limpopo. Wonderful to see him again, get to know his son Davy and getting a good feel for this nice camp in the forested hills above the town. Dave is not only the most experienced Trans Africa travel guide we know, but now he also turns out to be a great barman. Together with Lani he knows how to throw a party in the little eagles nest in the camp. Enjoying that a lot. We had to spend a lot of time in the town’s workshops trying to organize an electrical part for the car. Not much fun, but with very helpful South Africans trying to help us where they can. And at night we join in with other Camp Africa visitors for great braai and several beers.   

On Sunday (workshops not working) we made a daytrip with Dave as our local guide, Davy as junior guide and Benjamin, our favourite Braai-Guy, into the Soutpan Mountains. Large forest areas, lush green land and to our surprise also several real nice waterfalls. The goddess of the holy Lake Fundudzi in mysterious Venda-land requests a special type of traditional greeting – see pictures above. Sometimes it felt like being in the forests in Germany, then it looked like southern Tanzania again, but is actually South Africa! To end our wonderful lazy Sunday afternoon drive we spent three hours helping a jeep of a neighbor get out of the didge. They also had a lazy Sunday afternoon drive in mind.

 We are getting in the mood to see an ocean again and will be travelling more eastwards to see it.