Executive Summary

- I don't recommend the Audi A4 for its ignition mechanism nor its base clearance

- First lesson of driving in South Africa well learned - assume you will travel the highways at the pace of 40kms an hour and be happy with anything faster than that

- Second lesson of driving in South Africa also learned - these people are crazy

- Music listened to: Crowded House, Ben Lee - which I thought would hold multi-generational appear but turns out it did not

- Animals spotted: Giraffe (concrete), Baboon, Kudu (male & female), Wildebeast, Zebra (distant so they looked like grey horses. Or grey goats. It was really far away), Leopard (no, really!)

- Animal spotting form could stand to be improved beyond shouting 'OOH! OOOH! LEOPARD! LEOPARD! LEOPARD!'

- The Aussies would do well to improve their cricketing form for the duration of my time in SA

Sunday morning after leisurely breakfast in the polo lounge - by the way, the South Africans eat a lot of cheese for breakfast - we got ready to head off east towards Kruger NP. The plan was to stop at another family friend's, Mark and Wendy Astrup, on their farm near Blyde River Canyon, for the evening. Of course we didn't know this at the time and thought we were heading to Bluffelsfontein, which no one had heard of and worried us a bit. But we had directions and a mobile phone, how bad can it be?

We took delivery of the car in the morning, Avis having upgraded our Honda Accord to an Audi A4. All packed up, with several directions and it would be fair to say more than a few nerves about getting out of Jo'burg given our winding arrival experience from the airport. Keys in hand, here we go...

...er...how do you turn this thing on...

After briefly searching for where to put the 'key', we pressed it into the slot and nothing happened. 15 minutes of fumbling, pressing (nothing happens), taking it out, putting it back in, searching the manual ensues. Finally somewhere in the manual, near, I don't know, 'windscreen wiper operation' or 'what to do in a snowstorm' I locate and somehow interpret the German's idea of an ignition instruction and manage to turn the engine on.

For the record - press the break and then press the key into the ignition.

Right off we go then...I'm driving because I have the left-side-of-the-road driving experience. Joburg was actually quite easy to get out of and before long we were on the N2 free and easy and making good time. About 90 minutes down the road, we stopped at a roadside station for a better map and some water -

...er...now how to turn it off??...Dad ends up staying in the car as we couldn't actually extract the key from the ignition this time.

The roads are pretty clear, with the odd person walking on the shoulder, and in good condition. Already we had gone over 1/2 way in 2 hours and were thinking that the 5 hour driving estimate must have been a bit of an overstatement.

Then 4 lanes become 2 lanes and we meet a winding road with an overloaded truck and let's just say 'a few' potholes. For a good 50 kms we follow this truck, a trail of cars in its wake, speeding up when it went down the hill and slowing to a crawl as it went up one. At one point a speeding white merc with a death wish passes about 4 cars and this truck - on a blind corner along the side of a bluff...er...interesting.

Finally a long enough stretch of road to pass this thing and move on. I can enjoy the scenery now too - the flat Joburg landscape had transformed into sweeping grassland bluffs. We all thought, finally, we feel like we're in that magical Africa people speak of. Our excitement started to rise as the trip started to feel more like a holiday.

At one point we turned around a bend and - I'm going to credit mom with this, but we were all taken in - Mom exclaimed 'Look!! A Giraffe!!...oh...wait...no...it's concrete'

Clearly a South African with a sense of humour thought he'd sucker in the tourists on the way to Kruger - yes, we all fell for it.

The potholes became more treacherous for the Audi and this drive was clearly going to take the 5 hours we were warned about - but no worries, plenty of daylight left to deal with.

Arriving at the turn off with about 20kms to go, thinking we were home free, we looked at the road ahead - to call this gravel would be a significant understatement, and the car we were in was not exactly built to handle it. But we made it with a bit of white knuckled driving over the course of an hour, despite a last final hurdle into the driveway and several sickening scrapes in the undercarriage.

Mark & Wendy Astrup manage a cattle farm for Barloworld - a company quite large, as I bought my car from them in Sydney! - and also the adjoining set of guest houses that the company has for employee use. Mark spent 35 or so years as a game ranger in various parks around South Africa so was very much the naturalist and outdoorsman. They suggested an early evening drive to a lookout point before dinner.

Mom & I jumped in the back of the ute, with Mark and Dad up front, and we entered a small reserve which held some animals (but nothing terribly exciting in the scheme of things). Mark mentioned that there had been a leopard spotted on the property, but it was an unconfirmed report because it was reportedly by a tourist and not a credible source.

The first animal we saw was a deer-like thing with koala ears. At least this is how I stuttered to describe it as I motioned for Mark to stop the truck to have a better look. (ahem, female kudu)

We also saw male kudu and a wildebeast or two (which is pronounced 'vildebeast' by the way), as well as some zebra far away on a hill - might as well have been rocks, really, as they were so hard to see.

Driving up the hill mom and I saw at the same time a pair of eyes and we both exclaimed (ok, loudly) 'OOH!! OOH!! LEOPARD LEOPARD LEOPARD!!' Mark patiently stops the car to indulge us (suuuuuurrrre you saw a leopard...you know, there are some cats that can be mistaken for leopard...) and check it out with the binoculars. By this point our sighting had gone from the bush near the side of the road into the thicket, but Mark got a glimpse of it before it left completely - sure enough, it was one.

We returned to the house for dinner, triumphant in our sighting, starving, and settled down to watch the Aussies lose to SA in the 20/20 match.

(I might mention at this point that, lovely as the Astrups' house was, they had a lot of open windows which invited a lot of moths. It was a bit silence of the lambs...When I went to bed I read for a bit and was swatting these things all over the place, ew)