South Africa was a bit of a blur.

     My KLM flight to Cape Town, via a twelve-hour layover in Amsterdam, left on September 16th, 2001, five days after The World Trade Center attacks. The San Francisco airport had opened several days before I was scheduled to leave, but international flights were not being allowed in to the country until the airport of origin could demonstrate to the FAA that they were up to security standards. Schiphol in Amsterdam was approved just in time to get a plane out and in to San Francisco just in time for me to get out on; I believe I was on the first, possibly second, international flight out of San Francisco that had been allowed in after the Trade Center attacks. It was a very weird time to be leaving.

     I arrived in Cape Town, not surprisingly sleep-deprived, jet-lagged, generally deranged, and not at all sure what I had gotten myself in to. At the time I didn't know anything at all about the "overlanding" industry. I didn't know that it was an industry at all. As it turned out, my signing up and pre-paying non-refundably for a seven-and-a-half month end-to-end trip through Africa via overland truck was a very expensive mistake. And by that I mean that I learned that travel by overland truck is A) Not what I had imagined or expected it would be and B) Not at all for me. For others it's a great way to see a place, and I'm not saying I don't have plenty of fond memories of my days on and off the truck with some my overlanding companions. And the leaders, John and Tony, were top-notch - really knew their jobs, and were great guys. But the first five-week leg of my trip, Cape Town to Harare via Namibia and Botswana, although I did not know it at the time, would be my last. Leaving the trip set me back about seven grand, but it was a sunk cost; I wasn't going to stay somewhere I didn't want to be just because I'd already paid to be there.

     At any rate, I was only in South Africa for a week or so. A couple of days to get my bearings and hook up with the group, and then four days on the road. We made our obligatory stop at the Cape of Good Hope, camped for two nights in a very nice glacial valley the name of which escapes me, and spent a night in Springbok before moving on to Namibia. I might have done more than pass through South Africa, but not much.