And we're back...

Above: the N2 today, traveling towards Caledon en route from George. Just our fifteenth day since leaving Cape Town, and I feel as though we have been away for months, sometimes to another planet.

Where to begin?

We have taken not hundreds, but thousands of pictures. My camera fell on its head (strap broke). Not good. Shall have to address that soon. But much time will be needed to sort, delete, edit, process and post the pictures that made it.

I have seen flowers whose names I can only guess at in places I have never been before, and beautiful beyond my imagining. We climbed to the top of the passes of Lesotho, were almost swept off the mountains near Rhodes by cataracts gushing over the edge after thunderstorms, sweated at night in the hot Karoo to the sound of yipping jackals, rode horses through the tall green grass of the eastern Free State, had a fight in the post office in Nieu Bethesda, and fell asleep to crashing waves at Storms River Mouth.

But for now I will probably return to daily posts from Cape Town, and save the trip just completed for when I have more time for research (flower ID) and photo-editing.

But I might not be able to help myself and perhaps a post about montane grasslands or rain in the Karoo will sneak in.

It was a wonderful time. It left me impressed by the truth that you cannot know a country until you have traveled across it. It has left me hungry for more. It was moving, inspiring, troubling, uplifting, and most of all compelling.

The challenge will be to tell it like it was.