Day TWO Friday 5th April 2013

The day started well, had a storm over night and Pepi got rained on as the roof leaks, will have to fix that sometime, after finding Lani I managed to heat enough water for coffee and a bucket bath, hit the road and drove on the old 101 ALL THE WAY UP TO Polokwane, where I used to go to boarding school when it was called Pietersburg or something similar. Then continued following the 101 and ended up on the N1 highway, got to a tollgate, which I refuse to use, and had to pay R33 or go back home, that made me grumpy and I was determined not to pay another one, unfortunately, the road led through Louis Trichard and up to the Tshipise turnoff, which is where I was going, but we hit the next tollgate 500m before the turnoff, well if I wasn't already grumpy I certainly would have been now, I fought with everyone about not having an alternative road to drive on therefore they could not charge me a toll, fell on deaf ears, after a long hard day of driving and the dogs not happy, and too many hours in the van with fumes from the engine giving us all headaches, I just got gatvol, told them I'm not paying and drove through with my R32 firmly in my pocket, I took the turn to Tshipise, wanted to go and see the biggest baobab tree in the country, but it was late, the dogs were hungry, I had not eaten all day, and I was fed up, so I took a side road to the dam hoping to camp by the water for the night and try again in the morning to find this tree, which did not seem to want to arrive, and we headed down the worst corrugated sand road I have ever driven on, jolted my poor camper to her very bones, I never saw a sign for the dam, we went 22km in 2 hours, it was pitch dark, nowhere to stop, hot and tired, and irritable, and we ended p back on the N1 just about where we had come out after Louis Trichard and the Tunnels, well was I now pissed off, so badly that I just drove the 30 km back to Louis Trichard, stopped in an empty park and collapsed, poor dogs were buggered.

48 Hours on the road and my headache had reached MIGRAINE STATUS.