Joburg

The end of January was coming close. We went to a campsite just outside of Johannesburg (Joburg for the locals) to stay for a few days. We had planned to use the days to set up our visit to Uganda in March, to get some administration in order, and to get organized to swap cars.

Load-shedding had moved to stage 6 and we barely had any electricity during the day. The campsite promised wifi but whenever there was electricity, the wifi signal was not strong enough to get a solid connection. We decided to move into a hotel for two nights, to get done what we needed to get done with a solid non-stop internet connection as the hotel used generator power.

Our hotel was close to the Mall of Africa which is one of the largest malls on the continent of Africa. We walked through the mall with mixed feelings. The contrast between rich and poor is so huge in this country, it hard to feel excited about an abundance of shops and restaurants while you are in one of the poorest cities in the country.

We picked up our new rental car and went back to the campsite we stayed at before. Here we took everything out of our Britz truck and into our Bushlore truck.

With the Britz company we could only rent the car for South Africa and its bordering countries. And since we wanted to go to Zambia and Malawi as well, we needed to change rental companies. The Bushlore truck we got was brand new!

After having dropped of the Britz car, we drove north toward the Zimbabwean border. We spent a night at what we called the peacock camping. We had been here once before, just after our Kruger Park visit, and this time again, there were no other guests, just us and an ostentation of peacocks.

At our last campsite in South Africa, close to the border of Zimbabwe, a troop of baboons kept us company ;)