David’s Perspective We planned to stay two years, then Covid happened and we finally left 3½ years after arriving in Namibia in August 2019. In that time we have visited eleven countries and have driven 62,434 kilometres. Its very difficult to nominate ‘the best’ country, as each has different positives and negatives. However, if pushed, my favourite would be South […]
Leaving the baking hot Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park behind, we made our way to Durban, where we readied Big Bertha for shipping to South America. On the way we visited Kimberly, home of the ‘Big Hole’ – a huge diamond mine, our friends Johan and Lyn, Terry (our champion mechanic) and the Drakensburg mountains. Here we are with Johan and […]
On the way across from the West Coast to the Kgalagadi National Park we camped for a night at the Kalahari Trails Meerkat Sanctuary. Aside from a very nice welcome from Richard, a fellow Brit making his home in South Africa, we were treated to some fun encounters with their resident mob (yes, that’s the correct term) of meerkats. We were first […]
Big Bertha’s tyre’s cost Big Bucks! And failure is either due to punctures or blowouts, which are normally caused by running an under inflated tyre at high speed. The set tyre pressures are governed by the axle weight, speed and surface types – all taken from the Michelin tyre data sheet. Dave fitted a tyre pressure monitoring system (TPMS), with […]
Big Bertha is a complicated beast; our hot water and radiator heating comes from our Alde boiler. We can heat that water using gas, electricity (when we are plugged into a shore supply) or using the engine heat (when driving). You can imagine the plumbing involved! And you can also imagine our dismay when we discovered a puddle underneath it […]
The Garden Route is a famous route in South Africa and it didn’t disappoint. For us, the coast and inland areas just got better and better as we approached Cape Town. We were lucky to be able to stay at some of the more popular campsites (Storms River and Nature’s Valley) before the busy Christmas period started. From mid December […]
Having left Lesotho behind, we headed for the foothills of the Drakensburg to meet up with our friend Bud and go hiking together. The scenery in the Garden Castle was spectacular, but the weather was so-so. Good enough to hike though. From the Drakensburg we headed towards the Wild Coast. Our first stop was the remote coastal village of Mboyti. […]
Landlocked by South Africa, Lesotho, an enclave, is situated in the Maloti Mountains – the highest mountains in Southern Africa. Crossing at Foriesburg in the north we immediately realised we were back in the ‘real Africa’ – mud huts, outhouses and donkeys. We were initially disappointed by the copious amounts of rubbish strewn around – but this got better as […]
Between eSwatini and Lesotho are South Africa’s historic battlefields. the Zulus vs the Boers, the Boers vs the British, and the British vs the Zulus. But not necessarily in that order. We first visited Isandlwana – the site of the first major encounter in the Anglo-Zulu War between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom on 22 January 1879. 20,000 […]
Big Bertha is around ten years old now and, given the next leg of our journey will be in South America, where there is no MAN presence, we decided to treat BB to a top to bottom full service. Choosing the right garage that would not treat BB as just another truck was not easy. However, I asked for recommendations […]