From the back of the car

Having been travelling now for 24 hours and still on the road, I thought I would start a blog as I am having a break from driving. The flight went well, I was delighted to get a seat at the front of a section so I had lots of leg room. My Fitbit told me I had 1 and a half hours sleep......I thought I had a bit more to be honest.

We were slightly delayed getting through passport control as one of our team felt unwell after leaving the plane, we put it down to the slightly unusual breakfast of chicken pieces with gravy, some kind of omelette and potatoes....a weird mix. Anyway we finally got through what is always a very slow system to find that our bags had been removed from the carousel as that was now in use for the next flight. They were however, all there which was a relief. Hiring the car was the next trial and I. True to form it took twice as long as it needed to and then when we went to pick the vehicles up, the main big van was quite old and had done over 90,000 miles and the rental company decided it was too old to do the mileage that was needed so we had to empty it, redo all the paperwork and take another one. 

We finally got on the road about 12 and it is  now 4.20 as I write this. I am part of the car team, there are 3 of us in the car and we have taken it in turns to drive the 428 km due south.  I am currently sitting in the back of the car having successfully navigated us and the van behind carrying the others out of Johannesburg and onto the N1 down through the orange free state as it used to be called. I am being given the last sting to do to, that means driving over the border and into Beautiful Gate.

It was been a warm and sunny day but now the lightning has come, the rains came and we drove through what looked like snow as huge hailstorms formed and sat on the road around us.  The Lightning is amazing, real fork stuff and against the backdrop of the huge African sky it looks amazing.

We hope to be at Beautiful gate in the next hour and a half where they ieell have dinner awaiting us. I cannot finish this now as I have no internet until the car but hope to post it once we get to beautiful gate and have had dinner and unpacked . Let's hope it stops raining by them....

It's now 10pm and I am in bed. The journey got worse. We came upon a jack knifed lorry which completely blocked our road and had to go off road through mud to get round it....thankfully we made it and then encountered ridiculous roadworks.....bear in mind this was on a road that we were advised to use by big signs, due to roadworks happening on the motorway!!! We got to the border at 6 to find a mile long queue (literally)...moving 1 car every 5 minutes. We sat there for over an hour feeling tired dejected and hungry knowing that less than 10 miles away dinner was waiting for us.  We eventually rolled up at 8 having navigated our way through the border and the unlit streets of Lesotho where they had not had any rain at all!!!

Nightmare journey and I vowed I would never do it again but less than 20 minutes later in the arms of Faith, Mercy and Eli as well as their parents Anita and Bryan who currently run Beautiful Gate and having met their 2 lovely new adopted children, I knew I would!

Now in bed, hot tired and no longer hungry I am going to sleep because tomorrow we are taking the team to Malealea, a day iurite place of mine and I have ageeed to go pony trekking so watch this space.

Thank you for reading this, thank you for your prayers and next instalment tomorrow

Jenny