During our 6 months of largely being stationary during the COVID Hard lockdown phase we didn’t bother with recording our feelings as each day pretty much felt like the next and the entries would have been too depressing but we are trying to get back in the habit now..
16 September: Back on road after exactly 2 months at Zimbali, even though only did a shortish drive into Southern berg feeling quite tired. Will be early to bed.
17 September: The beauty of gas showers, instant hot water when its a little chilly outside. Sometimes the simple things in life are the best.
18 September: Settling into the routine, did our first “on the road” training session of the exercises Tania learnt during her biokinetics time.
23 September: Have had a wonderfully chilled few days until today when it appears the fridge/freezer may have packed up. Lately we have just seemed to fix one thing after another and it is becoming tiresome and we are both ready to bite something/someone! On the plus side after a number of failed daily practice attempts Tania did get her Flaming Orange device to work with no incidents – Hoorah.
26 September: Spent most of Stuart’s birthday driving back to Johannesburg so that we can get fridge repaired. On the positive side are getting to see his folks and spend time with them while the fridge is repaired.
29 September: Frustrating morning, drive all the way out to our old mechanic hoping to get a few more technical repairs done which we had discussed with him yesterday but today he didn’t have capacity due to staff restrictions thanks to Covid. Then stopped at licensing department to try change Mr Jones address only to find excessively long queue’s (Covid again). The final frustration was a quick stop at the shops were the tills appeared to be on go slow, grrrrr!
30 September: Much more successful day, got all the above done and helped clear stuff from folks garage roof.
9 October: Fridge has been with National Luna for nearly 2 weeks and still no end in sight, at least we have managed to get a loan one from them in the meantime so we can get away for a few days to the Waterberg.
14 October: Andante game farm is nice enough but reality is we are really just killing time while we wait for the fridge repairs so both feeling more than a little frustrated. Added to that Garmin have been next to useless with regards the issues we have with our new and very expensive “Overlander” GPS, in the latest saga they say they can’t assist because we are in South Africa!!
19 October: In a very long ongoing saga, and after another 4 hours using the “support centre online chat Stuart finally lost the plot with Garmin today and the very sad part is we are just the little person and can do practically nothing about it. They have no concept of what it means to be a global brand and have global customers who may have issues in a region other than the one where they first purchased the device.
20 October: Got the good news that fridge will be ready for collection tomorrow so have a big day of errands planned which means an early start for us so that we can drive the 200km into Jhb and get it all done.
22 October: Busy day yesterday but we got everything done as planned (Fridge, Garmin swop, Bolt supplies, caravan supply store & grocery shopping.) plus spent a lovely evening with Stuarts folks and some of their friends. Now back in the Drakensberg and holding thumbs that we can have some uninterrupted travel for the next few months.
24 October: The caravan park really started to fill up yesterday, we had forgotten that it was the start of a short school holiday break. We are going to have to get used to the fact that South Africans like to travel locally and thus we will have to start planning and booking places around busy periods.
25 October: A chance WhatsApp picture from friends meant a change of plan so we could stop past them for a visit while they are on holiday. Ended up staying the night.
29 October: Have had a couple nice mornings on the beach with some okay surfing. Weather is still very iffy with wind most afternoons, now it looks like rain and grey for the next few days.