6 January: End of a fantastic time at Clifftop lodge in Welgevonden. As South African’s we often take the bush and wildlife for granted so it was so wonderful to experience it through the eyes of “first timer” especially with the Elephant sighting in a total cloudburst on the back of an open game drive vehicle.
7 January: Dev & Hannah have flow off to Cape Town for a few days and we drove back to Durban today where they will fly to after CT.
8 January: Got our booster COVID shots today. One more thing ticked for international travel.
10 January: Got some more quotes for RORO shipping. Uruguay and Argentina are still imposing quarantine restrictions on Africans but we are hopeful this will drop away soon and so are starting to prepare. We are hoping to get a sailing date for early Feb.
14 January: And just like that the family holiday is over. We have been a bit scratchy the last couple days without realizing it, no doubt because the holiday was coming to an end and having the knowledge that it will be a while until we see each other physically again.
17 January: Installation of the replacement flexi solar panel is complete on Mr. Jones and we have started to make a security partition for the likely RORO shipping we will do to Uruguay.
24 January: Frustratingly, there are no RORO vessels for February so we have decided to go away down the south coast for a bit. As one last job before leaving Stuart decided to swop out the coolant temperature sensor as the “overheating” gauge is still acting up. Murphy would have it that the sensor had seized in its threaded hole and snapped off, thankfully it was so well seized that there seems to be no coolant leak. Bush mechanic decision has been made to leave it “as-is” and just use the digital readings we have from an aftermarket sensor. This seized sensor is probably the cause of the recent headaches…
28 January: The South coast is lovely but we both feel like we are slowly dying inside and totally lacking stimulation of any travel so with the prospect of the earliest RORO vessel being only mid-march a quick decision was made today to go to Mozambique for the month of February.