From a rainy cape to dusty deserts

Our journey started on 10-10-‘10 in Cape town. Our car was ready and waiting for us and the engine ran right away… The kind people who let us park our car in front of their house for the last two months, Jaco and Lojanka, gave us a bottle of red “from Cape to Cairo” wine. We promised them to take the bottle with us and drink the wine in Cairo (which means we have some smuggling to do in Sudan).

We left right away for the Cape of Good Hope, the most south-western point of the African continent. This is the place where the Atlantic and Indian Ocean melt together forming a dangerous swirl of currents which is why in the time of the VOC many ships got into trouble here. This is where our journey begins, the African part will end on exactly the opposite side in the Egyptian Sinai-desert  - the most north-western point of the African continent.

When we reached the cape it was storming and pouring with rain..! not the thing you expect when travelling to Africa. But anyhow, it was a great place to start our journey and the champagne in the rain tasted pretty good J !

After a few days of buying supplies and preparing the car we went to Stellenbosch, the wine region of SA. Only one or two decades ago SA wines were nowhere in quality vs their French competition. Nowadays you can experience some fabulous wines, so we visited two wineries and bought some bottles. From here we went north. Only five days after the Cape of Good Hope, we drove into the dry Great Karoo, and from there on it became hotter, dryer and more empty with every kilometer. 

After two days of driving we arrived in Upington, in the far North of South-Africa – our last stop before the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park (on the borders of Botswana and Namibia). On a Saturday after 12.00 there appears to be no internet available anywhere (Wikke and Sander, better get used to these practices; deep dark Africa will not become any better…). At once we were faster out of reach than we would have thought.

But where on Saturday everything but the liquor store (6 days a week 08:00-20:00) is closed, the saviour comes from some true African hospitality: an invitation for a “Braai”. There is a popular saying in SA which perfectly describes the braai: “n Braai is een partijtjie waar die kos Half Rou Is, en die mense half Gaar”. No more words about the braai we had; it’s perfectly true.