Truck Day 6 – Tshipise to Johannesburg

The campsite at Tshipise has a large resident monkey population and we went to bed slightly anxious that we might have visitors during the night. Casper & Rimson frequently remind us just how smart the African primates are including the ability to open a zip of a tent. At 3am however our biggest concern is that we’ll end up either in Kansas or a dry tree branch will crack and fall onto our tent as the wind blows a real hoolie. Brownie gets up to retrieve our by now very dry washing. Heaven forbid it gets blown away and scattered across the camping grounds. We suddenly have visions of the monkeys modelling our clothes first thing in the morning.

We wake at 6am thankfully unscathed from an extremely blustery night. Makes a nice change to have a lie-in. We always remember to take the small wins where we can when we’re on the road. Rimson cooks scrambled eggs and bacon a great Saturday breakfast. Our last one on this particular truck as thus afternoon we’re headed for a hotel in Johannesburg prior to joining the new truck for the next leg of our trip to Eswatini, Mozambique and finally back into South Africa.

Today’s leg is around 500km from Tshipise to Jo’Burg another big driving day. It’s a road day and a boring one at that the scenery is drab and we spend our time staring out the window, sleeping, reading and snacking.

We repeatedly pass Heymanns Kole trucks from Harare on the road a reminder of the huge mines we passed in Zimbabwe. It’s cooler today and we need to add another layer after the 32-35 degree heat that we’ve had in Zimbabwe all week. It’s very irritating as we’d got used to hot sunny weather whilst in Zimbabwe.

We arrive at our hotel at 2pm to be advised that we cannot check in as the system is down so we adjourn to the bar for £2 pints of lager and Crystal Palace on the tv. We eventually get to our rooms for the longest shower ever. We have an early dinner of copious amounts of meat and chips and retire to the biggest bed with the crispest whitest sheets we’ve seen in a long time and sleep like babies.