We entered South Africa, aware that the main chunk of our trip was now over. Ahead of us were roughly 1000km to Johannesburg, where we were headed to return our trusty car/home. First stop over the border was the town of Upington, in the Northern Cape province. Here we found a nice and extremely cheap camping site, on the banks of the Orange River. In the evening we headed into town and had a rather fancy meal in a very nice restaurant on one of the main roads. Although the town itself seemed deserted, we nearly crashed into a car whose driver decided to speed through a red light. Our light had just turned green and thankfully we were going slow. It does make you think though, how a fraction of a second can make such a big difference.
After a rather cold night (worse for our hitchhiker friend John who didn't have a mattress and duvet like we did), we drove off to Kimberley. This city was the heart of the diamond industry in its heyday, and it's where De Beers originates from. Although we were on a tight schedule to head back to Joburg, we stopped here for a tour of "The Big Hole". A 450m wide, 200m deep hole, it was dug using picks and shovels by thousands of miners who migrated here in the late 19th century. The museum shows how mining conditions were at the time, as well as a chance to see some of the precious stones inside a tight-security vault. There's also a platform that allows you to see the actual hole from above.
It was in Kimberley that we said bye to John, who was hitchhiking his way down to Lesotho. We instead were heading on the opposite direction and the plan was to drive as far as possible, to anywhere that brought us a bit closer to Joburg. The place ended up being Wolmaransstad, a small nondescript town where we found a comfortable lodge. Here we had some food, re-packed our stuff and cleaned out the car, which, after more than 30 days serving as our home, really needed it.
Thankfully our whole experience driving in Africa had been problem-free, so it was a bit ironic that our only issue happened as we entered Joburg, arguably the biggest city of the continent. A policeman stopped us for what looked like a routine check, as other cars were being stopped too. Kai handed him his German driver's licence, the guy looked at it and claimed that to drive here we needed a temporary licence (whatever that meant). We told him we were sure that we could drive with the one we had. I think he realized that we knew what we were doing, since he then moved on to ask us for something for his lunch. We refused to bribe him so openly, but when he asked for money for a cold drink, we handed him a bottle of Coke and drove off.
Rather than heading straight into the car rental office, we couldn't help ourselves to a last glimpse of the king of the jungle and stopped for a visit to Joburg's famous Lion Park, to see a few last furry animals. Here we had a chance to hang around with lion cubs, petting them and obviously taking advantage of the great photo op. In our many safaris/game drives in three countries we got amazing chances to see lions in the wild. Seeing them in the lion park was clearly not as impressive, but they are still magnificent animals to look at. And getting a chance to play with the cubs is just too cute an opportunity to miss! On top of that we also saw meerkats, which I had been looking out for all over Namibia to no avail, and got a chance to hand-feed a giraffe.
After that is was only 50km or so to the car rental station where we arrived an hour before closing time. Having done around 8500kms across 5 countries in 31 days it felt strange to give the keys to our trusty companion to a stranger, and we left the place with mixed feelings, reflecting once again on the various highlights of the trip and discussing how our last remaining days would be spent.
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