THE RAINBOW NATION
And so to the hols. Spent most of the team at the in-laws just outside of Johannesburg. The 2 alsations, nightime private security guard, alarmed electric fence topped with razor wire, electric gate, bars on the windows, metal security gates on all the external doors (and a few internal ones too) and my father-in-laws shotgun combined to successfully repel boarders for the duration. In fact I was told by a few people that things were "getting better" crime-wise in S.A. although it shows that all is relative when my sister-in-laws justification for this claim is that “we haven’t been robbed for over a year now”, and while we were there a dispute over taxi / minibus routes in a township resulted in 25 people being shot right in front of the police who promptly arrested no-one. Anyway leaving that aside the high veld winter weather was as superb as it is supposed to be – with clear blue skies and mid 20’s temperatures every day bar one when it peed down and reminded me very much of mid-summer on Mud Island.
We snuck off after a few days for 3 nights at a safari lodge bordering the Kruger National Park. It was a superb set up, safari done properly with lots of very good food, a champagne breakfast in the bush at the end of 1 drive, some superb scenery and views towards the Drakensberg mountains, and most importantly plenty of animals – all the usual were present – zebra, impala, lions, elephants etc etc, plus we spotted 3 rather timid rhino and a cheetah, neither of which I have seen before in the wild.
Otherwise it was fairly uneventful for most of the time with a fair bit of lying around, drifting from one meal to the next, and generally not doing much, until it came to time for the trip back home to the Fragrant Harbour. 4 hours before departure the little charioteer came down with tonsillitis and was given some antibiotics which have a rather unpleasant side effect in terms of filling nappies, and Mrs C and I were struck down with food poisoning. On the plus side we got upgraded to First Class for no obvious reason so we were able to share our misery with several Very Important People (in their own minds at least) for the full 13 hour overnight trip. Bet there’ll be a few complaints to Cathay from them about not being able to get to the loo all flight!
And so here we are again. Not much seems to have changed here apart from the heat being ratcheted up a bit further. At least it gets rid of all the tourists and a lot of the more whingey expats leaving more room in the bar for the rest of us. Roll on summer.
