Places to make plans

We have been spending our Cape Town evenings in the study of my parents' house. It is a room which is now little used. My father's desk, out of the frame to the right, can no longer contain his needs, and he has spread all his work out on the long dining room table, one room over. To my mother's eternal chagrin. So Vince and I have migrated in here, making fires, lighting lamps, sipping drinks, working on our laptops on our...laps, or on that ottoman, covered in books.

On Monday we leave for the Kruger Park, a long sliver of land bordering Mozambique and apparently bigger than Israel. Closer to Switzerland. There is no fence along that border, now, in the spirit of Transfrontier Park stewardship. The rhino horn  poachers and their wranglers have benefited from this arrangement. Because we'll be heading for the less-peopled north we are rather hoping not to run into any wayward poachers.

We'll spend two-and-a-half days driving up to Kruger, sleeping over in Bloemfontein, the city of my birth, in the flat Free State, and then in the small town of Dullstroom, famous for fly fishing, at the limit of the Drakensberg mountain range, in the province of Mpumalanga. From there we'll approach the park, and enter at the Orpen Gate.

There is a great deal of packing to do, and some last minute shopping. My camp packing skills are rusty, but we'll only be spending  a few nights in a tent, in two small camps called Tsendze and Balule. Neither has electricity, and we are looking forward to candle-, fire- and starlight. For the rest we'll be in self catering cottages. We'll take in all our food, and that takes planning. My greatest concern is green stuff. I live sadly without leaves. Enter the unkillable iceberg lettuce!

There will be little posting from the road. We will have our hands full with a long journey, and then we will be far, far from the Internet.

I think we both need that.