Had to add one more coast shot of the Jeep. This was the coast just off a road through what appeared to be a grassy pasture for local cattle. It's got to be one of the coolest places I've ever seen where you were able to drive right out to it.
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One more from a different inlet where we stopped for lunch. Wild coast indeed. this was just behind a hill from the rocky beach, we were trying to get out of the wind to make lunch.
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An example of the "Trail" this was almost as bad as it got, just a washed out bridge that's now a straight river crossing. If the water had been higher, it could have been more interesting.
This was our final "wild" camp next to the Mdumbi river. We're actually next to a facility that does shellfish research and a kayak rental hut that was closed. We asked permission from the caretaker at the research facility and he was fine with it, so while it wasn't truly a wild camp (Dan always does ask permission when camping near anything that's "settled", though he tries to avoid that scenario whenever possible).
However, it was a spectacular place, even though it was overcast. The tide made a HUGE difference in the river and I actually woke up this morning before sunrise and took a walk to let Dan sleep in more. I was rewarded with one of the most amazing photography outings of my life and got my favorite non-Jeep photo of the trip. Unfortunately, I only had my phone because my good camera was locked up in the Jeep and I would have made significant noise to dig it out.
And one of those photos where you're in the perfect place at the perfect time, when the sun broke through an opening in the clouds as I was walking toward this point into the ocean.
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From the river camp, we headed straight back toward a campground most of the way to Johannesburg because my flight out was the next night. Our tradeoff for taking the time to do the coastal trail was that we were going to have a long road day back to the campground Dan wanted to make. Dan never likes to force himself into long road days and we proved why, unfortunately. We had a lot of dirt/gravel/generally bad road to get through before we got to high-speed asphalt and then we hit separate instances of construction and a traffic accident where a tractor trailer had gone through a guardrail and off a cliff. Our planned 10-11 hour day stretched out to almost 14 and we hit a lot of rain in the second half. We finished well after dark, which sucked for setting up the tent, even though we did it between rain squalls. The bar at the campground had a number of folks still up in it though, so we made some new friends while drinking our road woes away.
Coming up on the tractor trailer accident where we would spend entirely too much time.
The next morning started an insane series of awful days trying to get home. As I said, my flight back was the next night and we just had to drive about 4 hours to get to the city where I had made dinner reservations to take Dan to a really nice restaurant that my brother recommended so that I could thank Dan for the whole visit. Easy, right? Just get up and take our time to get a couple hundred miles before dinner and then go catch my flight...
We hit some of the worst storms I've ever seen with monster hail and Dan was (rightfully) worried enough about his solar panels that we drove off the highway and hid the Jeep in trees TWICE.
I risked getting knocked unconscious to get these pieces of hail to show how incredible this whole thing was. Multiple times we thought the windshield had shattered from the sound of it being crushed by waves of these. Largest hail I've ever seen or want to see again.
So we did manage to get to Johannesburg in time for dinner, which was excellent, and I made it to the airport in plenty of time for my overnight flight to Amsterdam where I'd connect to Detroit the next morning. While waiting at the gate, KLM staff came and cleared out the waiting area, making us line up to get back in. Turned out that they were taking anyone with a connecting flight out of Amsterdam off the plane because weather had caused them to close the airport to outbound flights the next day. They wanted to rebook us from Joburg the next day rather than making us sit in Amsterdam for a whole day.
The most unorganized MESS ensued, trying to get us back through immigration (we'd already "left" South Africa through customs), get our bags and then take us to hotels for the night. No one told us how we were supposed to get our new flight information, when we were supposed to be where, what airline we'd be on, NOTHING. I ended up using Twitter messaging, of all things (no cell phone and only local calls on the hotel phone) to rebook myself through Delta's twitter account. It took HOURS to do but I wasn't going to rely on KLM after the disaster that night.
While I was working on the rebooking and getting ready to shower, I found a tick embedded in my thigh. The little bastard was in my leg GOOD and not wanting to crush it (never good), I realized my only option with what I had with me was to cut around it with my sharp beard scissors. So I washed them as best I could (it was 1:30AM at this point) and proceeded to cut a hole in my leg. I did manage to get him out intact and alive, but that's not something I'll be looking to repeat.
Still attached to the hunk of my leg...
The rest of the return trip story is too long to go into detail, here's the short version:
I got on board the rescheduled flight the following night and it took off on time. We never left Joburg airspace though because one of the landing gear wouldn't retract fully. We dumped fuel in the air and made an emergency landing back at the airport without issue and they put us back into a hotel after going back "into" SA.
The next night the flight left and we made it to Paris, where my flight to Detroit was delayed twice, but finally got me home.
The problem is that all flights from SA headed into Europe leave in the late evening/night, so if you miss it for any reason, you're stuck for another 24 hours.
I was exceedingly glad to be home and was messed up with jet lag for a couple days. I also ended up having to go to the doctor for antibiotics after having a couple swollen lymph nodes from the tick bite/excision. Telling your local doc that you need an appointment from a South African tick bite that you cut out of your leg yourself with scissors is a great way to see people freak out.
All in all, it was the once-in-a-lifetime trip I had hoped for and I developed even more hatred for airlines and long flights.
I am SO effing sick of the photo rotation bug in vBulletin...
Not that I'm aware of yet. I did get the swollen lymph nodes that made me go to the doctor
