Northwards. August 11th

Well, here I am on the bus to Makhado. I feel a bit shitty cause I haven't slept much last night. Niel brought me to the bus station this morning and once again it is tough to see how time flies when you're having fun. Thanks to all of you (including Jinx and Rascal, who really kept me going last night) for the great weekend! I already know that I will miss you a lot should you follow your plans to go to Australia!!

So we just went to have a break at the infamous Translux bus stop by the N1 which has a little supermarket and a Wimpy's inside. The only thing that made it a bit of a cool place today is that they played Aerosmith videos endlessly! I have just burned my tongue when I took my first zip from the crappucino I got there. I can't help but smile because someone seems to sense that I don't really like this place. :) Maybe the bugs I found on the bus are fefugees that abandoned the place, too. Sorry, it just got me.

Should the bus be on time today -which I seriously doubt- then Retha and Ian will pick me up at 14:40 and we'll buy some food at Pick'n Pay or Checkers. We'll drive up to Lajuma afterwards and I'll possibly spend one night there before we'll take off to Kruger for three days. Might be a good thing to get acquainted with those students who are interested to join me for the "big" trip, of which I currently don't know where it's gonna be heading (either Botswana, Namibia or Swasiland, Mozambique and down the South African coast). Hey, that's actually a cool thought. :) Besides Tapio has offered to talk to the guy again who wanted to send me the Garmin Colorado 300. It'd be soo cool to have it here, especially because down here these devices are at least 30% more expensive than in Europe. Which is rediculous if you ask me. So I wonder whether that's gonna work out. Fingers crossed. Everybody please! :)

Well, yesterday, after having recovered from the feast at Godfather on Saturday, Niel went to drive me all the way to Menlyn to do a few errands at that huuuge shopping mall. I now call myself proud owner of a new fleece jacket, a multi-functional outdoor-shirt, a pair of camo-pants, a drinking bottle and some supercool shades! I hope that the shades are my last resort to eventually scare lions away. Unless they can't stand the smell of me after 2 weeks in the bush. Nicolette took care of washing the new clothes and the tumble dryer, which was on in the middle of the night scared the shit out of me and Rascal, who went to sleep on my lap after we had some serious fighting&biting going on. Man...that thing should be called rumble dryer because of the thundery noise it started to make out of a sudden. Plus I only found out that it actually is the tumble dryer that makes this horrible sound after I woke up this morning. I can tell you...the knife was right under my pillow all night. Sheesh...the bald, paranoid German. Hehe.

Back to "the mission"...I have actually planned to spend my last 3 nights in Sabi Sand Private Game Reserve (there is an abundance of leopards, probably the highest density of leopards in the whole world) and I have gotten offers for available accomodation before I went to South Africa. Today I went to call the lady at the reservation office of one of the rather luxurious lodges and out of a sudden she told me that she had misunderstood my email and had given me the wrong price. After approximately 10 emails did exchange. Since I am travelling alone she apparently cannot get me the "per person sharing" rate. So now the whole thing is 25% more expensive. South Africa, what can I say...but I'll see about this since she's going to ask the owner for his opinion. Again: fingers crossed, please! :)

So now that the bus driver has finally switched off the A/C and I don't feel like sitting in a fridge anymore I will try to take a little nap...will keep you posted! Could you tell that the UMTS-card is working? ;)

Cheers and everything so far is chabchab...kind regards from somewhere on the N1!

Stefan