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 […]
Small, but perfectly formed, the Kingdom of eSwatini is bordered by Mozambique to the East and South Africa to the North, South and West. It may not be a destination that immediately springs to mind for tourism, nevertheless it has a number of attractions, including the charming Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary. We were lucky to meet fellow traveller, Ellen, again, as […]
Sometimes we are intent on going to a place that’s off the beaten track and/or difficult to get to and the reward at the end is not really worth the effort taken (“a long walk down a windy beach to a café that is closed”, as comedian Bill Bailey once said). Francine had heard about Adam’s Calendar, a stone circle […]
Bertha had not benefited from so much attention for a long while, as she received at TM Trucking’s “spa” and she made it known that she was not ready to leave soon. Every time we took a test drive, there was some new small issue that needed sorting. A week after our “goodbye” braai (bbq) we were still there! However, […]
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 […]
We had great expectations of South Africa. Whenever we talked about buying bits or getting things done for Bertha (or for us!), we always said “we can do that in South Africa …”, but perhaps what we had failed to appreciate fully were the other reasons for visiting – beautiful scenery, amazing wildlife, friendly people and a rich, if turbulent, […]