Friday 28 May 2010 - Home! - Johannesburg, South Africa

We arrived home to a South Africa much cooler than what we had had in the last few weeks in Portugal. However, this was offset by the warmth of World Cup fever which was already gripping South Africa in our absence and certainly came to a head in the days leading up to the opening of the World Cup on 11 June 2010. It was also great to reconcile with family and friends, although even this is not yet complete... still many to see.

The return of the Beast was a little delayed compared with what we had expected, and the Beast only arrived in Durban on the 22 June 2010. But the process took longer than expected. While it was quite quick and easy to identify the container at the SA Container Depot, and even organise the supervision (by Customs) of opening the container and checking the Beast (it was surprisingly much faster than expected and took only a few minutes), the paper trail took much longer to organise. The Beast was finally released on Tuesday 29 June (John had to spend the week in Durban.... shame). Thank you to Leesh and Hayley for having John with them for the entire week and assisting with transport to and from the container depot.

Both Handsome & the Beast (didn't think "Beauty" would go down well with John) were home by the afternoon of the 28th.

The Beast had travelled extremely well with no after effects at all, and started first time in the container.

This is a bit late to be remembering some of the "left behinders", but there are two whom we would especially like to thank for their contribution, from Johannesburg - Trevor Day (son) for organising some of the extra spares for the Beast and tyre repair kits whilst we were in Ethiopia and Lance de Ruig (son-in-law) for a multitude of organising including tasks we left behind for him to do, looking after the house, the couriers and getting the shock absorber down to Durban for onward forwarding to us in Nairobi. Also to Lance for being such a great personal assistant/secretary to Marina in her absence and keeping the property side of things going.

A final thank you to all our avid suppporters and followers for your encouragement and messages on the blog. It was great to have you with us.

So.... now what next? Now that the Beast has been serviced, shock absorbers replaced, rooftop tent repaired, we feel we are almost ready to go again!

There are some ideas germinating.... look out for the next blog!