We departed from Johannesburg at what seemed like the crack of dawn, 07:30, and drove straight out of Johannesburg and neighbouring Pretoria, having immediately handed over USD 800 to the guide, Paul. Tonight we camp at Machete Farm, the drive to which was fantastic. A lot of dozing 'though on my part. The land surrounding us was very barren. We stopped at Pietersburg for lunch, supplies and a wander around. Ian and I must have looked a little out of place as we received a lot of gazes from the public. En route to Machete Farm, situated in the northern part of South Africa, we were fortunate to have sightings of wildlife in the latter part of the 500 kilometre journey. I saw warthogs, baboons and goats all by the roadside or trying to cross the road and a zebra as we entered the Machete Farm boundary. Considering our guide does the Johannesburg to Nairobi tour very regularly it was a surprise when he drove straight past the camp entrance and had to reverse back!
At the camp we had a short walk to some bushmen paintings in rocks. I managed to take plenty of photographs including one of an ancient board game. A short walk around the corner Ian spotted a gecko and we sat and filmed the sun setting while listening to a baboon calling.
We finished off the day with a traditional braai (barbecue) and an introduction to each other. The group consists of our guide, Paul, the Germans: Heiko (who sounds a bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger); Markus and his partner Kerstin; another Heiko (apparently a German translation for Henry); Connie and Katja and her Romanian partner Osci, the Dutch: Rolf; Paula and Jos, the Canadians: Rich and his partner Deb; Tracey and Terry-Lynn and Norwegian Kim.
Tracey asked Paul when we would get to sit on the seats on top of the bus. There was a quick response to this, mostly consisting of the very final statement of 'it's a truck, not a bus.' We were also informed that the tour would be detouring through Botswana instead of Zimbabwe due to the country's current state and that the roads would be bad and we would definately bounce inside the truck!
Copyright 2002 Helen Fuller. All rights reserved.