At the start of this journey, any casual observer could easily have spotted that we were not exactly travelling light. Indeed, rolling out of Cape Town we would have struggled to find room for an extra Swiss army knife. As a result, opening the vehicle doors at any new destination we often resembled some sort of spring-loaded travelling jumble sale.

And so, while visiting family over Christmas we took the opportunity to lighten our load for the onward journey. We are now a considerably leaner outfit and after some truly ruthless decision taking, we have departed with the absolute bare minimum of only eight face creams. That’s right; now we are really roughing it in Africa. In some ways it’s a bit of a shame, as the last two months of practice manoeuvring items into footwells and strapping whatever remained on the outside, now seems like a waste of time.

After a slightly longer than planned stopover for the festive season – on account of a virus you may have heard of – we are pleased to be back on the road and heading north. Our first stop being the famous Zulu battlefields of Natal. 

We have spent a fascinating couple of days being educated on the Anglo-Zulu battles of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift. Although described as the greatest defeat in British colonial history, it does seem that these battles – which took place on the same day in January 1879 – didn’t appear to work out particularly well for either side; with both ultimately retreating and carrying massive loss of life. By all accounts the Brits seemed to have quite significantly underestimated their enemy here and this error in judgement gave way to the legend of the Zulu Warrior. Our stay with Nicky and the team of excellent guides has certainly given us plenty to ponder during the kilometers ahead of us into Zululand.

Finally in mobility news; since our last post Harriet has graduated to swimming without the need for armbands, which gave us one less thing to worry about. Though Juniper is now walking, which has given us one additional thing to worry about.