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Posted: December 10th, 2010

I've been away, but I'm back.

No clock!

That's the most annoying thing about the basic model of the Chevrolet Spark (1.0l) Jordan and I rented for our jaunt around Cape Town and South Africa. But it did take us just around 4000km - so we became rather attached to the little thing. This is a blog post dedicated to Sparky.

We didn't actually nick-name it Sparky.

The £6,000 car has novelty wind down windows, rather than the usual electric ones. That's OK for cruising around Cape Town, and we had no need to exercise our arms too much on account of the air conditioning. It took us to the beautiful beaches of Camp's Bay and Clifton, where it blended in with all the other Audi R8s and Ferraris. We drove it up Signal Hill above the city skyline and watch the sun sink down into the sea somewhere the Atlantic and Indian Ocean meet. The handling was demonstrated to be excellent as we wound around Chapman's Peak Drive to see the famous Captonian wind whip up the sea into a spray, and then blow a forest fire across the hill side.

Being a white the car, it felt very much at home on the streets of Cape Town - most of the other cars were white too... (insert astutely observed observation about the political and social make up of South Africa in here)

Then we decided to test the speed and headed out of Cape Town. Jordan's mate Nick lives in Jo'Burg so we basically aimed to give him a lift home. Hours and hours of driving passed by broken only by the beauty of the scenery and the need to refill the HUGE 20l tank. Dodging animals and people wandering aimlessly into the motorway, the little beast took us over mountains on to Plettenberg Bay. There we viewed the worlds largest aviary, home to Zamatt: the notorious necklace thief. Previously owned by Simon (Nick's cousin) but donated to the sanctuary, the bird still remembers his previous owner. To our wonderment the cockatoo came flying out of nowhere, landed on his shoulder, bobbed his head in acknowledgement and then flew off with his new feathered mate - a pink headed cockatoo.

Pothell.

The car came into its own on the drive from Plett to Coffee Bay. All eleven hours of it. Stopping off briefly in the preserved colonial town of Grahamstown, we needed all our strength from Steers burgers to tackle the potholed ridden HELL that was the road down to the coast. We had an unsavoury brush with some less than trustworthy fellows at the filling station. Jordan then did a marvellous job of navigating the moon craters on the way down the seemingly endless road to Coffee Bay.

Coffee Bay is mostly full of hippies and German backbackers. There is a hike you can do to a place called Hole In the Wall, where the attraction is: a hole in a wall. We found out that unfortunately people seemed determined to con us out of money on this part of the trip.

Unsatisfied we braved the only road back out again. Luckily Nick's wonderful holiday home was only a few hours up the coast. There we could enjoy a good braii, swim in the sea and get our washing done by the maid.

A few days later, refreshed and raring to go, we drove up towards the St Lucia coast to see some wildlife. We spent a couple of nights at Isinkwe backbackers surrounded by electric fencing - which meant the omens were good. Next door to the backpackers was a big cat rehab centre (not an Amy Winehouse style rehab centre for cats on crack) where we could get close to and cuddle some cheetah. We also took a boat ride on the lake at St Lucia to watch the hippo and crocodiles wallow in the shallow waters.

A 'journey'

The car hit it's 3000k milestone inside the Hluhluwe-Imfolosi game park. It carried us over some authentic dirt tracks and we did see some prettyawesome animals. In the dark I could see the eyes of hyena lit up in the brake lights. We were never sure if there was an elephant, or ajourney of girraffe around the corner. I mean, how many rhino does it take to get bored of them? The answer is many!

So leaving the game park behind (without seeing any lions), we hit the final leg up to Johannesburg. This was to be a simply blast up the motorway...until we encountered the hundred or so miles of road works that seem to be a hangover from the World Cup. Instead of just restricting traffic, they chaotically hold up a whole line for up to half an hour and then let you drive over the untreated road surface for miles on end. What should have been a breezey 4 hour drive took us at least double that. And it was stressful avoiding all of those potentially deposit losing potholes. I was paranoid that a knock sustained in a ditch in the game park had sprung a leak under the engine compartment.

Eventually we made it to Nick's family home in a lovely part of Johannesburg. We swam in his pool and gave the car a deep clean inside and out to shed the dust of 4000 kilometers. It was sad to let it go at the airport, it had served us well over 3 weeks. Let's just hope that no speeding tickets come out of the blue in the next few weeks...