A Winter's day on the South coast

Well we don't want to 'rub it in' but this is what South Africa looks like on a winter's day! 

As most of you will know by now we have had some sad family news in that our Granny B has had a stroke and is quite poorly. We have spent the last two weeks in her cottage in a retirement village on the south coast and have cleared her house and settled her into a care home. It has been difficult to decide how long to stay  here but we feel that she is now relatively stable and are looking to set off next Sunday. Our first stop will be with Alistair and Joy in Zimbabwe.  

We still don't have a 'proper' route planned but we now know that we will no longer go through Egypt or come up through Europe. The main reason is that it is incredibly complicated to take a vehicle into Egypt. We would have had to deposit eight times the value of our car and leave the money locked up without earning interest until the end of the trip. If the car was to get stolen in Egypt we would not get our money back and to make matters worse you cannot get car insurance for Egypt. As things stand we will go as far as Ethiopia and perhaps into Sudan depending on the situation when we get there, then head back south but take a more western route. The advantage of this is that we will be doing a lot less driving and spent more time in each destination. 

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