We all had a restless night, in part due to the frequent roaring of lions in the vicinity and the owls that kept lading on Chris's tent. We had a long drive ahead of us, so we were up at 5.30 and left the campsite at 6.45.
A final wildlife sighting as we left the camp, a group of bat eared foxes were crossing the pan just outside our campsite.
We exited the Khutse Game Reserve, then followed the sand road 102km towards Letimakeng. The road changed to gravel and we continued for another 62km to Malepolole, where we continued to avoid cattle, donkeys, dung and dung beetles, and forded a few streams.
When we reached the tar road we stopped for coffee and to pump the tyres up then followed the road towards a border crossing into South Africa south of Garbaronne. The skies got darker and darker and Chris had some updates by phone from his wife that the weather in Johannesburg was dreadful; very heavy rain and traffic accidents everywhere. 30 km from the border we came to a halt where the rain had caused two rivers to overflow the low bridges. The first would not have been a problem for us in our 4x4 cars, but a bus had been swept away on the second bridge and they were still trying to rescue the passengers.
We turned round and headed north towards Garbaronne and away from the worst of the weather we hoped. The rain grew heavier and there were signs of floods all around. We slowly crossed Garbaronne, a low city, full of traffic lights, and finally reached the border crossing at Kopfontein. More rain, and we were now not expecting to get to Johannesburg until 8pm, about 4 hours later than we had planned. Just north of Johannesburg we stopped for a burger at a Wimpey, at around 7pm then drove on towards Chris's house, and our long lost suitcases.
A quick, but sad farewell to Ossie at his hotel, then we reached Chris's, repacked all our belongings into our suitcases and got a taxi to our booked apartment in Sandton, a suburb just north of Johannesburg centre. It was very sad saying goodbye to Chris after our fantastic trip, and we would certainly recommend travelling with BlueRhino to anyone wanting to see more of Africa!
We got to our apartment at 10.20, and collapsed into bed. We had been on the road for 13 hours, 12 hours of them virtually non stop!
Our total mileage in the 4x4 was about 3500 kms.
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