Exactly 7 days before our flight out of Cape Town we entered South Africa from Swaziland. Much to our surprise, we received a 90 day visa without any questions or hassle..... So, in hindsight, rescheduling our trip was unnecessary. Anyway, we felt no regrets, as we met nice people and visited beautiful places, which we would not have if we would have have gotten a 3-month visa in the first place. South Africa remains undiscovered by us, this we have to do on our next trip.

We planned to drive straight through to Cape Town in two long days. The first day we drove about 990 km along scenic but good roads following the border of Lesotho. Endless stretches of roads, on and on, with little traffic. We stayed overnight in a small B&B in Colesberg, a no-name village somewhere halfway between Jo'burg and Cape Town. At our B&B a guy named Eduard showed interest in our Disco, or did he show interest in Peter, as ‘his pendulum swung the other way', so to say.... He never called, so we never know. The second day we decided to take the highway, as this would be less distance. This was true, however, we encountered a number of one-way roadstops where they were re-tarring the road and that slowed us down a little. Nevertheless, we arrived in Cape Town around 5 pm, after having driven another 800 km's, well before sundown.

It felt a bit like coming home to us, arriving in Cape Town after 4 months. We went by to Lena to get the key to our apartment and drank a beer with Lena and Gregor. On our travels through South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland and back to Cape Town we drove nearly 15.500 km, without any break-down or trouble with the car. Not bad. Along the way we used a little over 3.000 liters of petrol. Not (so) good. Our last week in Cape Town we stayed in one of Lena's very nice apartments, and spent most of our time with washing, sending stuff home, re-packing our rug sacks, doing some last-minute shopping and, of course, selling our Disco. We went to Top Gear, the car dealer where we bought the car from. The guy we dealt with was not working there anymore. They offered us a mere 39.000 Rand, which we refused. Later they called us saying a ‘third party' would be interested and offered 45.000 Rand. We negotiated a bit with Top Gear and were led to believe that the mysterious third party's best offer would be 47.000 Rand, which we accepted. The deal would go down on Thursday, our last day in Cape Town, but this gave us the opportunity to visit Hermanus, a town at the coast where you can do some good whale-spotting.

The day we went to Hermanus was very rainy, but we did spot some whales, amazingly close to the shore. No nice jumping, unfortunately, and no nice pictures, unfortunately. On our way back we came by a colony of penguins, which made us think about our first day-trip to Cape of Good Hope, where we also visited a colony of penguins. We noticed that were sort of closing the circle and saying goodbye to Africa.

Then our last day in Cape Town had arrived, time to sell the Land Rover. We were in for a sad surprise. Top Gear called that the mysterious third party had let them down, and that the deal was off. Naturally, Top Gear was willing to ‘help us out', against their best and final offer of 40.000 Rand. There we were, kept on a line for three days by Top Gear, no other options left and our plain was leaving tomorrow. We had no choice but to accept the offer. But this was not enough, no, Top Gear waited until the very last moment with handing us the bank cheque, and we just made it in time to cash-in the cheque and have the money transferred to our Dutch account in Euros. The latter required us handing over proof of buying and selling the car, complete with visa and banking statements. These were supplied by Peter's niece Ineke, and all went very smoothly at the bank.

We celebrated with a nice drink and having dinner with Lena and Gregor at our house. Claudia cooked a very nice curry, and after dinner we downloaded lots of videos and spoken books from Gregor's hard drive. All food-stuff that was left over we gave to Lena, along with some stuff we were not going to use or send home anymore.

Last day, a bit nervous, taxi showing up a bit late, but we are well in time for our flight. One final round over Cape Town, so as to allow us one last look, and off we went, heading for Singapore and then on to Bangkok. About 20 hours travelling joy laying ahead of us........