16/03/18

Well what a day. Delightful start followed by 80km wrong turn, difficulty at the border and crashed the truck. Just when you thought you had done the hard yards.

 After a restless night sleep, those damn mosquitos, I went for a leisurely breakfast and to prepare for the days journey. Today was going to be an easy one as not too far to the border with a quick excursion to the worlds second biggest canyon (not sure about that one, but pretty big anyway) and then over to SA for the final leg.

It all started well enough, it was going to be 100km or so off road so to speak but nothing we haven’t done before. Martin wanted to drive so we duly swapped seats and I took over the navigation. So far so good. As we reached a cross roads and I was unclear Martin confirmed a right turn followed by a left 6km further down the road. 60km later we ended up close to where we had started from. Never mind. Still debating who is responsible. I’ll take the blame.

We then went cross country to make up time and made the border with plenty to spare. Or so we thought.

As we left Namibia, customs departure clearance was getting much easier as when the clerk did not know how to deal with a carnet I was able to tell them.

Entry into SA was going to be a breeze. Urr NO. Customs checked the engine number on the computer and it was showing as a stolen red Chrysler. Ummm. Then the police took us to a search area to check the car details. I knew the engine number was not the same as on the documents as I had changed the engine. My friend Paul the mechanic said if he couldn’t find the engine number no one will. Ummm WRONG. Luckily I managed to show them a receipt for the new engine but no engine number shown. Dry mouthed and worried the car was going get impounded the senior officer smiled and told us we be locked outside the gaol tonight.

OK drama over, or so we thought. The officer in charge, Clive, asked us to come back to police headquarters in Upington so we could give him a lift home as his car was not there. Weird. However, without wanting to upset him we agreed and followed him to the internal police car lock up. After his paper work was completed he asked me to move the truck out of the lock up area and I promptly reversed straight into a steel pillar. DOH.

Having broken the rear light and dented the body work we were then taken to a scrap yard to get new parts, which the officer, of course, decided he would fix and then back to his house to see his hunting trophies and target practice results.  Only in Africa.

OK it was all so surreal that he then had to take us to a guest house, obviously, which was actually quite nice over looking the orange river.

Suffice to say it was blessing to get to sleep.