Let the fun begin
Now the fun really started. I had no boss, or rent to pay and my diary was all my own. I had nobody to answer to. I still had a lot to do to get ready, but I knew that no matter how much I planned I would still be figuring out a lot while I was travelling.
So I did the simple thing again and decided to plan as little as possible. The only thing I really did any planning around was how to get out of trouble. I needed to know how to get to safety if something goes wrong, and there were definitely going to be breakdowns. All I could hope for was that there would be nothing worse than a few minor breakdowns and that there would be no injuries to me.
The first thing that I had to do was get from Cape Town to Johannesburg. But this was easy, the only hiccup was that I was doing the drive on Easter weekend. Everyone was taking the nice long weekend to go away, so the roads were a lot busier than expected. This was really noticeable at the fuel stations and toll gates.
The toll gates were the most frustrating because there was no easy way to get through without having to sit in the queue. The only thing that I noticed that made it quicker was that sitting in the same queue as the trucks was the fastest and everyone else avoided it for some reason. The trucks were all well practised with getting through the toll gate as quickly as possible so sitting behind them was actually a no brainer.
Once I was in Johannesburg I had a bit of a list of preparations to get through but I had more than enough time to do it now that I did not have a day job. The installation of the solar panel was relatively easy and was actually pretty fun. It was a very weird look for an old car to have a solar panel mounted to the roof but who cares, it worked.
The rest of the packing was definitely a bit chaotic. I had a vague idea of what I needed but no real list to work off. So I would just go to the shops and do it live. This was a good warm up for the rest of the trip.
The simplest way to describe the first week of the trip is being chucked into the deep end of it all. There was not really an easy way around it.
The first day it was absolutely pouring down with rain and I had to get out of Joburg (had seems very strong here, but it was my birthday and I was adamant to start the fun then). And it is never fun driving around Joburg in the rains especially when driving a 50 year old Land Rover.
Because of this I decided to wait as long as possible before leaving, hoping for a decent gap in the rain. Sadly this did not happen so I just decided to leave, and hope for the best. (This “hoping for the best” happened a lot during the trip).
The first day was surprisingly enjoyable after the stress of all the packing. I was finally on my own and the trip I had been stressing about was finally going. I was now definitely in the deep end.
The one thing that caught me off guard in the first few days was finding a place to sleep. A lot of the campsites in the Northern Cape are only open from November, and don’t even bother opening when there are no tourists around. So I had a few panicked afternoons looking for a campsite in the first week.
Luckily the difficulty in finding a campsite didn’t mean that I had to sleep anywhere dodgy while in the Northern Cape.
The first night I decided it was best to sleep in a guest house because of the rain and this was actually a really nice soft landing. Luckily it was very easy to find a place to sleep for the first night. The lady in charge was even nice enough to let me use the main kitchen. Again a very nice soft landing.
The next few days were a bit more eventful. From struggling to find a place to camp because most campsites were only open in November and December. Luckily I found a campsite in Postmasburg, and little did I know that this was a very lucky break and that I would be spending more than just one night there.
This was also when I realised that I would be the only person in the campsite very regularly while travelling around south africa. This was definitely one of the perks travelling in the quiet season.
The first night of camping was surprisingly nice, a bit cold but a lot more comfortable than I expected. The next day I was planning on driving through to Kalahari Witsand Nature reserve on the recommendation of a lady that walked past my campsite the night before.
This was the first day that I was going to spend a lot of time driving on gravel instead of tar and I was looking forward to it. It was a lot of fun and there were a lot of opportunities to take pictures and stop to take in the view. Unfortunately I had a bad puncture after about 40 km of driving.
It was easy enough to change the tyre and I was on my way again. After driving a few more kilometres I decided it was a better idea to turn back to Postmasburg and get everything fixed there again.
The driving across the gravel roads was a lot rougher than expected and while getting the tyre fixed I saw that the spare wheel rack was also broken. So I went back to the same campsite I slept at the previous night and spent the rest of the day fixing the spare wheel rack and repacking the Goose.
It was a really nice way to spend an afternoon. Again a reminder that I did not have to rush anywhere and did not have a deadline to be anywhere.
That night while I was braaing the same ladies walked past and the one reminded me about her husband who was also Land Rover crazy (she told me about him the previous day but I could not find him the next day, after driving around for a bit). She gave me exact directions this time, and later on sent me the exact location on WhatsApp. There was no way I was not going to find him the next day. And this was another very lucky thing.
The next day I found him and had a really good chat. He had at least seven Land Rovers and his goal was to own at least one of each version of the Land Rover. He was super excited about my trip and offered me any assistance if I needed it along the way. I don’t think he realised how quickly I would actually be calling him. He probably thought he would never hear from me again.
The next day I just stuck to my plan from the previous day and had a nice short drive to Kalahari Witsand Nature reserve. It was an absolutely brilliant drive and the first time I drove a long distance on gravel road. It was absolutely great.
The roads were smoother than some tar roads without any corrugations. Little did I know how much corrugated gravel I would drive over and how uncomfortable it would be.
The night spent at Witsand was another amazing night. It was the first night that I would spend without any cell signal. It was strange at first, but once I realised that my phone would not magically have reception again if I checked it multiple times an hour. I started to relax and actually just enjoy my time there.
