The last few weeks before our departure.

Well about a month before our intended departure date of the 11 March 2007, we discovered that we were short of a few visas. We had intended to arrange visas as and when required at the border posts or in the neighboring country. This, we discovered would work all the way up the east coast of Africa, except for Uganda, and only up until Egypt. From Egypt and over the top of Africa we needed to pre arrange visas and we needed to do it in South Africa before we left! The next problem was that most countries only want to give visas 3 months prior to arrival and we would only be in Egypt in about 5 months time. So we started… first, Ugandan visas – R300 each and courier our passports up to Pretoria and wait to get them back. In the mean time I wrote a letter to the Egyptian Consul explaining the situation and he agreed to accommodate us! We got our passports back and decided to do our Schengan visas for Europe next and to do them via the Italian Consulate as they are in Durban. I, Beryl, have a British passport(as well as my SA) so I did not need the Schengan visa and in fact Dave got his Schengan free by virtue of being the spouse of an EU citizen! Next we had to work on Libya – they wanted us to contact a Libyan travel agent in Libya and arrange it through them. After attempting to phone them in Libya and not being understood, we decided to email them in the hope that someone in the office would understand English! Jackpot! Ten days later we had a reply saying that all could be arranged via Wings travel agent in Libya and we could do it on route as long as we gave them a months notice of our date of arrival and of course at a cost! A Libyan escort has to meet us at the border and accompany us in our vehicle the entire time we are in Libya until we leave the other side to Tunisia. Tunisian visas can be organized at the border and then we plan to go via ferry over to Italy. So at long last we were home and dry and we departed on Sunday 11th March as originally planned although we did have to wait in JHB for a couple of days to collect our Egyptian visas. This was not a problem as we stayed with our son, Daryl, who was delighted to spend some precious days with us before we left for the year!



Packing began in earnest in the last week. I arranged for the vehicle windows to be tinted with a plastic film which also acts as a protection against smash and grab. The vehicle received its last service, almost new tyres fitted with two spare tubes, one spare on a rim and one spare tyre off a rim.
We had a number of farewell parties, starting with a weekend in the berg with Mike and Wendy Brown, and then the main one which was kindly arranged by Guy & Zane Dreimeyer at Sierra Ranch. Thirteen couples spent a lovely weekend of the 2 March 2007, with much partying and we were given a lovely pair of Bushnell 16X50 binoculars. The weekend ended with a few tear jerking last farewells. Then we had a number of smaller home dinners, a function at our home on Friday the 9th and rugby and another farewell at Guy’s new home on the Saturday!
On Sunday we had breakfast with our parents and finally the last goodbye to our daughter Carmen-Jo. She has been burdened with all the administration of our properties and general finances of our home. Without her, we would not have been able to undertake this trip. We left at 10:45am with the Adnams & Schreuders escorting us up to Hilton on motorcycles. We were on our way …….