August 22nd

Today we are enjoying the morning around the farm. We have come to the conclusion with our friends that it would be better to drive to Johannesburg today rather than tomorrow, the day of our departure, especially since we would like to spend a little bit of time with my friend Paolo.

Around the farm Charles is enjoying himself with toys we could not have in our garden at home. He even gets to do a few jobs. While Esther, Victoria and I have another drive along the Limpopo.

Time to leave Botswana after almost 20 days. It is with a little (maybe more than that) sadness that we say goodbye to our friends and we promise to come back some time sooner than in 15 years time.

We have been advised not to take the Martin’s Drift border crossing as it has become very busy with all the commercial traffic that is bypassing Zimbabwe on its way north. And surly Parr's Halt border post is very quiet. At 2 pm they had seen 4 cars before us.

Back in South Africa and there is lots more traffic than in Botswana, and on the road we stop at what must be close to “biltong” lover’s paradise. Biltong (sun dried meet) made from any animal you can think of, and sure we buy some.

We get onto the highway about 250 km north of Johannesburg, it is now dark and the traffic is dense. After a couple of hours, we are getting closer to Paolo’s place but I am confused as his house is about 3 km south of the airport and while passing by it, the GPS still tells me that we are 25 km away from the coordinates given to me. I am a little concerned, we stop at a petrol station, call Paolo to tell him where we are and that « this GPS thing » is very confusing. He tells us to wait as we are not too far and he will come and meet us. A few minutes later he drives in and we follow him to his house. There he has prepared us some food and we sit at the table and start talking about our trip. After a while Esther and Victoria went o bed, and the boys continued to talk about old times in Zambia, Botswana, and all sorts of things that pilots can talk about.