An Amazing Changeover Day
Good day, February 25th. This is an amazing day because this is going to be our changeover to get to South Africa. And Gertjan and I are making a great team. I do all the driving, but he certainly takes care of a lot of things regarding where we need to go and communication and lots of stuff. So that’s working really, really well.
Getting to the Border
So now the first challenge is to get to the border. Roads, not an issue. We ended up filling up the car with diesel just before the border and got fueled up with coffee and all that good stuff.
The Border Crossing Experience
Well, the border crossing had really one good thing going about it. There wasn’t anybody else there to cross the border, so it appeared. So everybody had a lot of time and it was all relatively easy. Uh, did not need to do anything with the Carnet de Passage because that is good for several South African countries, so Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa. Lesotho and Eswatini. No need anything there, but having a different passport to leave the country with than what I came in with did take some extra time. So basically they had to look up the record of when I came in and make a note of the passport number that I came in with. So they just took extra time, and not the end of the world. It was nice and warm weather, so just relax and accept what goes on.
Journey to Springbok
Then it was on to Springbok, was the intention. And the scenery, again, there’s no explaining. You can only also take so many pictures of what one sees, but it’s breathtaking stuff.
Accommodation Challenges
So when we get to Springbok, we just do the normal thing and try to find a hotel. I try not to always make a reservation ahead of time because I don’t always know I’m going to get there. Well, this case turned out to be a bit of a challenge. As it turned out, the South African government was opening, doing an opening day of some sort, um, in Springbok this coming, the coming few days. And it meant that everybody and his brother had to come to Springbok to attend to that event. Well, guess what? We couldn’t find a hotel room.
We already had done plenty of driving, so that wasn’t part of the planning, but we had no choice but to keep going. So we then checked in Kamiskroon, and same thing. This was another 30, 40 kilometers. Also, people going to Springbok to the event had filled up places there, and there were some nice places that we checked out.
Finding Victoria’s Place
So then it was on to Gary’s, and with the help of one of the people of one of the hotels in Kameskron, she mentioned Victoria. So we found a place that had Victoria’s name on it. And coincidence held that she just was opening the door for something else. And so she had more than one place and we could stay in one of them. So we just had to follow her and ended up in one of, uh, I think 4 apartments that she had in this one place. But there was no name on it. We wouldn’t have found it if it weren’t for her.
A Perfect Ending
So that turned out to be a really, really nice spacious place. Everything working like a charm. Just really, really nice. And she was a great person. And then she said that we could have breakfast the next morning in the official place, which was a place with 14 rooms and lots of nostalgic things in the place. All feel-good places. So we had a great time, and she enjoyed sharing stories with us, and we enjoyed sharing stories with her. So that was like a good, good thing. Nice that things come together after a border crossing and not finding a place for quite some time, but never a thing to really worry about because I’ve always found a place. And I have the backup plan. All works. Thanks for coming along.
