I'm baaaack!

we just got home from the Kalahari. It's two days early and I must admit, I'm glad that the trip is over, as much as I'm also quite sad. It's always a bit depressing to get back to Joburg to realise that you missed everyuone like crazy, but they carried on living while you weren't there!

The trip was exhausting and hot. Pretty much every conceivable thing that could go wrong did go wrong too, which got really annoying by the time that our car just stopped AGAIN (it died 6 times if you joing breaking down and getting stuck in sand) or the cows attacked our traps AGAIN. At the same time it was really amazing. I've seen more of my country in the last 4 weeks than I saw in the 21 and a half years that I've been living here. It all makes me want to just stop what I'm doing and go exploring all the places we couldn't stop off at and all the places on the East that we never went to. I laso learned that the friendly South African is not as unusual as Joburg has led me to believe over the past few years. I got more warmth from small town people who didn't speak English than I have in ages here (Joburg is rox, I love it to bits regardless!). I also learned that the Afrikaans that I regularly hear and sometimes speak in joburg is very different to the real boere-taal, and so I had to revert back to the traditional Afrikaans I learned in high-school. It was entertaining to most people to say the least!

We also got to see some of the most bizarre town names (Putsies, Lutzputz, Kakamas and Dingleton to name a few) and some unbelievable river names (Volstruisfontein is the only one I can remember at the moment).

On top of the other stuff we had the 'honour' of being the biggest even to happen in a lot of small towns in quite a while. It's a mixed blessing, for example in Darling we had a braai/party thing thrown for us, and in Kamieskroon we were looked at strangely by everyone and a lot of people dropped what they were doing and came to beg from the strangers. Small towns also sell soft drinks at ridiculously low prices. for example you can buy a litre of Fanta Grape for R6, and if you take the bottle back they give you R2. Which is possibly causing the CO2 shortage?

I'm going to go eat some of the biltong I got from Hotazel (say it out loud. And no, I'm not kidding) and go to sleep. In my own bed! And tomorrow I get to drive My Own Car! Score!