Justin, Anthony and their friends decided to spend New Year's weekend at South Africa's 7th largest dam, and we were invited. A dam in South Africa is probably a bit like what we would call reservoir and this one is known locally as Theewaterskloof (tier-varters-klurf).

We drove there in the Bacci (backie) aka pick up truck with Justin and Claudia. The back was full of stuff including a mattress that was to be his and Claudia's bed for the next couple of nights. We were also towing Justin Schultz's speedboat (Justin is a friend of Justin's and with Justin Roylance as well that means there are 3 of them!). Schultz wasn't towing his own boat as he had to tow his Dad's caravan instead.

The drive took about an hour and a half and was very scenic as we drove up through the mountains and past the beautiful tourist town of Franschoek. The mountain road was like a test route on Top Gear, I wished we were driving some top notch sports car instead!

The plan was to stay for 2 nights, Friday and Saturday and return on New Year's Day. The first day we just relaxed after putting up tents and taking turns on the boat. Justin cooked an excellent braai in the evening and we noticed that he always seems to be the one who ends up cooking. Not that we were complaining as his braai's are very good!

Ant's was flying back from Port Elisabeth having raced that day and would drive straight from the airport to meet us later that evening. He eventually arrived around 10.30pm.

Sarah and I slept on the floor of the tent for the first night having completely forgotten to bring any kind of mattress. We had tried to buy an airbed in a local shop but were unsuccessful. It was very uncomfortable and neither of us slept very well. Ant's ended up in the tent with us but he got up really early and jumped in with Justin and Claudia just so he could get some sleep for a couple of hours.

The next day we went to the local town to stock up on beers and food for that evening, it was very busy as everyone else appeared to be doing the same. On the plus side we managed to find a shop selling blow up mattresses so made a good investment on one of those!

During the afternoon we drove around on Schultz's boat, had a go on the tube he had brought to pull behind it and messed around with a rugby ball on some far remote beach. Once again Justin was in charge of the braai before we all headed into the local club house where there was a bit of a party going on to see in the New Year.

In our group Roxy, one of Ant's friends, had brought her younger brother with her and his friend is into body popping in a big was and has obviously been doing it for years. There were a couple of young boys in the club house who were also body popping, they were probably not even 10 years old. A little competition started up between our guy and the kids and everyone stopped to watch and cheer the younger boys on which was really cool. They enjoyed it and so did their parents.

At midnight Ant's and a few others arrived with bottles of champagne and most of the group probably don't remember much of it. Sarah spent a lot of the evening dancing with Roxy and her friend Storm (yes those are their real names).

At the end of the night we all headed back to camp for a few more beers before going to bed having had a good New Years by the dam.

Adam