Hi,  This is the first time we've had internet since Joberg so here goes.....hope it all makes sense but no photos until Cape Town as internet so weak here........we love to hear from you so keep the comments coming...sorry we can't reply to you all but internet very limited here in SA....M & F

Saturday 5^th July, 2014….We had a pleasant end to our stay in Joberg…my cousin in Australia arranged for us to meet her cousin in Joberg, Sandy so after our Soweto trip Sandy came and picked us up and we went to the Sandton Mall for a wine…Sandton is a very nice suburb of Joberg and the mall could be any big mall in any of the world capitals…nice shops and restaurants and people well dressed…also in the square there is a great big statue of Mandela….on a bill board in the square is one of Mandela’ s statements….”You always think it can’t be done before it’s done”  then we went to Sandy’s home and then she and her husband, Nicky took us to Montecassino…this is a fabulous place…Italian architecture and in side there are hotels, shops and restaurants but there are windows and pillars inside the building thus buildings within buildings and all very Mediterranean…very much like the Venetian in Vegas, USA…..so it was a fitting end to the day as we also had settlement on 218 Rangi Ave that day!! And so we were up at 5 am for a briefing at 6.30 am and then we left at 7 am…been driving most of the day….just one other thing to note about Joberg which fascinated us is that cell phone towers are built to look like a tree…they built a fake trunk around the pole of the tower and then bury the top part in fake greenery, thus you hardly notice them as they blend with the vegetation!! Leaving Joberg we were soon outside the city as the motorways are very good but oh the tolls they pay…you seem to be always going through a toll gate…so dry and barren and so much land but so much unusable because of previous mining in the area….at times though it could have been an Australian landscape as it was so dry and gum trees…we  passed 3 big coal mining areas for power stations and they were really polluting the environment and in the vicinity of the mines there were the squatter camps for the black labour….miles from anywhere and nothing for these folk to do when they don’t work…..very sad as today we have seen so many pockets of these areas where people are miles from anywhere and you wonder how they survive….lots of pine forest, corn growing and dairy farming but the latter all done with irrigation…even some poultry farms…also a lot of cactus growing which they grow for the prickly pears….we made a toilet stop after a couple of hours…just like the road side stops they have on the motorways in Europe but we couldn’t believe there were 5 black rhino in the paddock outside the road pit stop…who needs to go to a game farm…then we came off the motorway and took the back roads, still sealed but oh the pot holes, real break your axle sort of stuff so it made for a slower trip….the first village we went through called Belfast…apparently an Irish guy settled here and farmed but now it is a trout fishing area but they still make good cheese there we were told…the next village was Dunstroom and the Dutch settled this town…..this is the main trout fishing village and real touristy but lovely shops and really busy this Saturday morning….would love to have had a fossick around here but the journey had to continue….we climbed to 1,770 metres and then stopped at a place called Pilgrims Rest which was literally another Arrowtown….the historical village of Pilgrims Rest in Mpumalanga is the site of the first major gold rush in SA and also saw the birth of the organised gold mining in SA in 1881…lovely shops but all very touristy…we wandered and by this time our guide had our picnic lunch ready…not bad but hopefully his dinner tonight will be better….our guide and cook is a big local SA….and our driver is also a local SA….our vehicle is a truck with 10  on the trip...2 German and one girl from Sweden (originally Ethiopian orphan) (we witnessed the adoption of children going  to other countries from Ethiopia…sadly,big business in Ethiopia).. and a Belgian family of 5 so there is not much English being spoken…. After lunch we were back on the metal road and what a rough metal road it was and so to Blyde River Canyon…a little controversy as to where it stands in world ratings size wise…..but 750 metres deep and 27 kms long we were told and it was very colourful…beautiful rock….then we went to Gods Window which is another lookout point looking to Mozambique 250 kms away but a bit hazy to really get a clear view…and so to our lodge at 5.30 pm …Mogodi Lodge at Graskop….comfortable and clean…nothing like our Sopa Lodges in Kenya and Tanzania but we knew this was going to be more challenging…wine so cheap here….got a super Pinotage today and all good wine seems to be about $7 a bottle and all their wine seems to be 14% to 14.5%....just going to enjoy some now after another long day….M & F.