Well, after Cape Town we went on to Cape Agulhas the southern most point in Africa, over 27,000 miles from our start point in Frome, Somerset.



The van had performed spectacularly with only a few problems and nothing that stopped us in our tracks. Lucy’s inspiration with a coat hanger when the gearstick came off in Tanzania was the only real drama, with everything else we were able to limp on.
We spent the last week with an old school friend Roddy and Nicola his wife, in Somerset West and then drove on the beautiful route 62 through the Klein Karoo, which is Afrikaans for Little Karoo with its mass of flowers and Ostrich farms. We went on to Storms River Mouth to meet our friends Larry and Sharon who we had met in Addis Ababa they were heading north on their BMW motor bikes when we first met them

and we were heading south. We went up in their microlights…now that’s something to do when you get older instead of golf!



and stayed with their friend Johan who runs an amazing hunting business….. Hunt Africa
We have now put the van on a boat home from Port Elizabeth.
Next stop California for Christmas

11 months, 18 countries and 3 revolutions later we have finally made it to Cape Town.
We had a lovely few days with Tom and Victoria in Constantia, Toms company
Avoova makes the most wonderful Ostrich Egg accessories and furniture…think everything from tables for an Oligarch’s yacht to gorgeous picture frames.
We spent time in Stellanbosch drinking wine and eating far too much and then wound our way down the coast to Cape Point. We stayed with friends Connor and his daughter Slaney in Camps Bay and had our first “English… (oops Irish) dinner party” for 11 months

After the luxury of Okonjima we returned to Windhoek to stay in a backpacker hotel called the Cardboard Box…all of us in a family room but we did splurge on a meal at the famous Joe’s Beer House!

After dropping the children off at the airport Lucy and I set off towards South Africa we stopped at Duwisib an extraordinary pseudo medieval castle in the middle of nowhere built in the 1900’s by a mad German aristocrat who went off to fight in the Great War and was killed at the Somme two weeks after joining up. He only lived in the castle for a couple of years and his wife never returned after he was killed.


We also stopped off at the hot springs at Ey Eis where we bumped into Charley Boorman and his team on their way to Vic Falls. Lots of motorbikes but I think some of them were jealous of the van.
Then on to South Africa and the fabulous flowers in Namaqualand which stretch for miles and miles




and of course the beautiful town of Darling and its vineyards.
for those that dont know Darling is Lucy’s maiden name so it was a must do!

a small family business!

George,Fergus and Pippa all arrived with their luggage (unlike Tangier) on Saturday morning and we set off north towards Okonjima, home of the Afrikat Foundation
We are lucky enough to be staying at the most wonderful house Grand African Villa what a wonderful climax to our trip, thank you James and Sam for sharing your lovely home with us.



We had the most wonderful game drives with AJ and saw Cheetah




Leopard


and Lion

and of course a huge variety of Antelope, as well as the Giraffe, Warthog, and Zebra.




We climbed to view points and drank G&T looking over the plains, enjoyed the pool and the animals by the waterhole and saw some of the work of the foundation and the rehabilitation process.
Martin, Johanna and Maria looked after us in the Villa like royalty…..and we ate and drank like Hollywood celebs!

After our drive along the western end of the Caprivi strip, so called after Heligoland Zanzibar treaty of 1890 whereby we (theBrits) gave Germany access to the East coast of Africa along a thin strip of land along the Zambezi in exchange for their rights to Zanzibar and Heligoland in the North Sea. We headed south to Windhoek and the Villa Verdi Hotel for a couple of nights to celebrate my birthday stopping off at the Hoba Meteorite the largest on earth.

Lucy on the meteorite

We arrived at the hotel clutching our “voucher” and confirmation…….but no room. Lovely conversation with Cathy in the USA who apologized (unheard of in customer service and admitted the error …again unheard of ) and offered us a room at the Hilton at no extra charge. Result…… and well done Hotels.com we will use you again and certainly recommend you to anyone who asks. Mistakes happen and its lovely when they are sorted efficiently and apologies made.

From Windhoek we took the Trans Kalahari highway to Swakopmund

Long drive through miles of nothing but along wonderful tar roads, we stayed the first night in the concrete jungle of Alte Brucke which was a building site, before moving to the much nicer Desert Sky. We had lunch at the Tug restaurant oysters and wine…. and did some tourist shopping drove down to Walvis Bay and past Dune 7 ( apparently the highest in the world but looked fairly tame compared to some of the ones we saw in the Western Sahara …must be how they measure them)

From there north via two lovely new friends Herman and Elna in Henties Bay who we met in Zambia and who told us to get in touch when we got close. We did and had a lovely Sunday lunch with them. Then on to the seal colony at Cape Cross …apparently one of the largest seal colonies on the planet. Certainly the smelliest!




Amazing to see hear…. and smell… I can see why there is such controversy about culling seals they look gorgeous, Cape seals have lovely little ears but adults consume 250kg of fish per year and there are hundreds of thousands in this one colony and the water for miles around is brown/green with shit. Cant understand why they dont spread out, must be the animal equivalent of Mumbai which is apparently the largest city in the world by population density rather than Tokyo which has the most populous urban area!
We saw the beautiful colours of the lichen fields which are an amazing example of symbiosis between two living things an alga and a fungus.The fungus absorbs moisture from the air and the alga contains the chlorophyll …


How anything can live in this desolate environment is a miracle!
And of course as it was the Skeleton Coast we saw the ship wrecks.

Decided after our flight over the delta to do a boat trip and see everything from another perspective. We saw the most gorgeous bird life but no game

We also followed our noses to find a wonderful ceramic studio in the middle of the bush.
Okavango Ceramics and got ourselves invited to supper by Jan and Virginia when we got lost!
Uneventful drive north along the delta towards Namibia but lots of flooding and apparently the water level is still rising. Our last night at the Maun backpackers saw two houses flood and a 4×4 go into the water on the causeway to the campsite. (suspect the driver was worse for wear!)
We were lucky enough to see the most wonderful herd of elephants stepping over the fence and looking both ways before crossing the road right in front of us just before the border.


We spent a wonderful few days by the river at Mahangu Safari Lodge where we bumped into an English Village in a van. Quite literally 19 friends from a village in Kent had got together, hired a van and driver and come to Africa!
Chillenden Village… in a van!

Spent a wonderful few days at Maun Backpackers and managed to get a group together to share the cost of flying over the delta in a private plane. (Thank you Sara and Laura) Amazing.




We saw masses of game in big numbers moving across the ground and their tracks through the swamps made the most beautiful patterns. It really was one of those experiences we will never forget.

We met up again with the Dutch couple Charis and Jarijn who we had met in Bulawayo and they decided to come with us to Chobe just across the border into Botswana. Did you know that Botswana has only 1.9m people that’s the same as Portsmouth whilst London has nearly 8 million!….and its the same size as Texas which has 24m! We stopped for a couple of nights at Kasane at the Chobe Safari Lodge which was a beautiful campsite with amazing facilities. We did a wonderful fishing trip on the Zambezi where Charis caught a tiger fish…..

but it wasn’t enough for the BBQ that night and we had to resort to the local supermarket! We travelled on together towards Maun and stopped overnight at a quirky campsite at Gweta called Planet Baobab before making our way to Nxai Pan National Park the next day. We saw a lot of ostrich

and some rare hunting dogs as well as the famous group of 7 trees called the Baines Baobabs,

and of course, the Nxai Pans.

In the middle of bloody nowhere the leaf springs at the front of the vehicle went again. So we limped back at about 5km an hour out of the park and on to Maun.

Stopped off in Bulawayo to see the famous colonial club full of mementos from past British royal visits with a huge portrait of Cecil Rhodes in the main sitting room. But at $250 per night for non members we thought we would stay in the van….
Victoria Falls was fantastic, the town a bit of a disappointment with constant tout hassle, but the campsite and the Falls themselves were wonderful. We walked to the Falls for the full ‘in your face’ wet weather experience and were grateful we had our macs.


The Falls are 108m deep and 1.7km wide…dropping one million litres of water a second over the edge so we got very wet from the spray! We went to the truly colonial Victoria Falls Hotel for ‘sundowners’. The following day we spoilt ourselves with a helicopter trip over the falls to get the full perspective. Mind blowing!




We saw some elephants crossing the river just up from the Falls and a host of smaller game in the savannah as we flew over.

The day ended with another ‘sundowner’ watching the game gathering at the waterhole below Victoria Falls Lodge. A tough life!

Waterhole at Victoria Falls Lodge

The word Zimbabwe is derived from the Shona words dzimba dza mabwe meaning house of stone…..named of course after Great Zimbabwe! It was originally thought to be a Phoenician city or maybe part of the empire of Sheba or King Solomon…..the basis for this was no more scientific than a belief that Africans couldn’t possibly have built anything so sophisticated.



Well they could and they did, and at its height in the 15th century it housed over 25,000 people. The great enclosure alone has over one million stone bricks and the walls are over 6m thick at the base and 4m thick at the top the whole site is split into 3 parts but defenses to all are a series of concentric paths and narrow passages.


Amazing to think there are hundreds of sites like this in southern Africa.