Arriving at borders, shell shocked from a night's bus travel, has a surreal feel. We arrived at the border of Namibia and South Africa just as daylight was dawning, after being on the bus for some 10 hours. Get off the bus, out with the passports - fill out the declaration forms - go through the leaving procedures. Then it is back on the bus, over the bridge of the Orange River and off again, and go through the passport, declarations, etc all over again.We w...

First thing we were at the tourist office to buy our train ticket, but a slight hiccup, the train is booked out. Change of plan, we'll drive to Zimbabwe, but a phone call to Avis also put paid to that plan, no Avis rentals are to cross the Zimbabwe border. Frustration, so more discussions with the lovely tourist girl led to a 1.15am bus being booked from Pietersburg South Africa, across the border to Bulawayo in Zimbabwe. As we were leaving she asked how we w...

While we were having the breakfast (including fresh squeezed guava juice) the owners of the Blue Cottages discussed with us our plans for our remaining time, and as they had lived in Zimbabwe were able to provide us with some good direction, in particular mentioning to include in our itinerary the Great Zimbabwe Monument, which was unknown to us.Hoedspruit is near the top end of the Drakensburg Range which stretch south into Lesotho, our goal was to reach Sabie b...

As Nelspruit is close to Kruger National Park we were near to the front of the queue of cars waiting to enter at the Malelane Gate. For the locals it was not as simple as just buying a ticket they also had to present their firearms to be cling wrapped, we felt a bit naked as we seemed to be the only ones not getting guns sorted. Our plans to stay the night in the park were dashed as all the accommodation was booked out, and to further squeeze things we were warne...

Next morning we had a look around Bulembu and purchased some souvenir's something we rarely do. We still have a lovely print (by Tony Hudson) of two Swazi women sitting with their pottery, hanging on our wall. While we were parked checking maps we noticed this amazingly bright flowering tree, possibly a breed of flame tree. I asked a local women walking past what type of tree it was, and she motioned she would write it down, so we handed her a pen and paper, ...