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5th february - 13th march

Overlanding across Afica in our Land Rover Defender: South Africa 1

Andy Lees
2006-05-16 13:55:49

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experience in africa had taught us that when someone wants our attention, one way or another it's usually because they want our money. and yep, sure enough they all wanted to get in the car and guide us to the campsite, for a fee, not out of kindness. it was too hot and we weren't in the mood for having someone hanging off the footstep directing us to their preferred locale for our overnight stay. we hadn't been expecting to get lost at this late stage, and certainly weren't prepared for the shouting that accompanied our progress. we decided to cut our losses and head for sodwana bay.

by the time we reached sodwana bay, the afternoon clouds had developed into towering stormheads, blacking out the horizon and billowing visibly upwards, moving closer. not many places look appealing in the rain and sodwana bay certainly doesn't. at the campsite's toll-booth style concrete entrance gate the warden was aghast that we hadn't booked. he seemed reluctant to let us in, but did so anyway. inside, it was difficult to spot the four or five other campers amongst the four hundred available sites.

we saw a dutch couple we'd met in swaziland, their day had been similarly fraught and it was good to see a friendly face. then the storm broke and after spending all day driving, the front of the land rover was the only place to shelter from the rain.

northern drakensberg - 21st february

we left sodwana bay the following morning. the weather was still foul and we had no inclination to be on the beach. heading inland towards the drakensberg mountains, we took the most direct route, traversing some of the few remaining dirt roads in south africa. on these backwaters there were no supermarkets or flash 4x4s, just tumbledown shacks and beaten up pick-ups. it could just as easily be any road in east africa. for the first time we could see the poverty in south africa that the shopping malls hide.

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