All good plans……. Having said goodbye to Big Bertha in Durban back in March we were expecting to meet her again in Zarate, Argentina, in early May. Unfortunately, the shipping companies have had different ideas. Big Bertha, because of her size, needs to be transported by a RoRo ship (Roll On, Roll Off). These are normally used to transport new […]
We get asked all the time about the statistics behind our journey. When we started, we made a budgetary estimate as to how much our adventure would cost us and this has been pretty much on target. Budding adventurers may find this very useful in formulating their own plans. These stats do not include our ‘background’ costs such as storing […]
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 […]
Perhaps not the prettiest of waterfalls, but certainly one of the most powerful we have seen, Augrabies Falls was almost at full flow when we visited. Eastern South Africa had experienced very high rainfall (unusually high, locals said) during February and a number of sluice gates on the Orange River had been opened to try to prevent flooding in the […]
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 […]
After the excitement of the new washing machine and a quick detour back to Cape Town (so that we could join the friendly Fish Hoek Scottish Dancing group for a class), we continued our journey north up the West Coast. The village of Paternoster has a laid-back feeling to it and it was nice to see pretty white-painted bungalows, rather […]
“But how are we going to wash our sheets and towels?!” – That was Francine’s first reaction when Dave suggested a life of living in a truck. “Oh, we’ll find somewhere. There are always laundries around, most of the campsites have washing machines and, if they don’t, you can always find someone willing to do your washing for you for […]
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 […]