Tour Ending
(Saturday 10th December, 2022)
We broke our fast at 7:00 so we would be ready to depart Kruger at 8:00. This is our last drive together as a group.
It did feel a little sad for me; leaving Kruger, that is. Somehow I felt not quite ready to let that go yet. At the same time, I could soothe myself that there’s more of this type of experience to come in the future. I still did cry a little bit on the inside, and verbally Thorkild and I thanked the park for showing us all it had and giving us those precious memories and moments.
It was a very straight forward drive with just 2 bushy-bushy stops along the way. However, about 30 minutes outside Johannesburg, a weird sound emerged from Amy again. It sounded vaguely familiar, and this time we knew … Another blown tyre.
On this broken tyre we were forced to drive to an auto repair shop nearby. Amy’s jack still wasn’t working, so our guides had to borrow a jack from the repair shop owner.
Amy provided us with excitement right til the very end.
The whole tyre replacement took quite a while, because as it turns out they had to dig holes under the truck to remove the busted tyre and put on the new one. I think we were stationary for 1.5-2 hours at this repair shop. It had a big lot with lots of grass and a house on it, and there were 3 cute dogs on the premises to keep us entertained while we waited.
On the side of the road we could also observe a mixed herd of cattle and goats being managed by their person, as he drove them along the grassy embankments on the roadside.
We finally got to the hotel parking lot, Garden Court, at 15:30. Our guide thanked us, we gave them the 3 envelopes with tips and thanked them another time. We hugged goodbye and everybody very unceremoniously scattered without any grand words or emotions.
Thorkild and I dined at the Irish Pub at the hotel while watching Morocco knock Portugal out 1:0. Again, it was a great mood when that happened. Go Africa! We just chatted about the trip and had a good time, although we did have a bunch of feedback to give Nomad about the trip. I sent them an email.
After that, we just chilled and enjoyed that last day of our holiday which had been an interesting mix of passing slowly, but also being packed with experiences.
Approximate route from Kruger to Johannesburg.
There are 2 more entries to this trip. Want to know my overall reflections? Then read along:
Leave a Reply