Sandrift Holiday Resort

We were up at 6:30am and once again neither of us had slept great. We had lots to do today including clearing the room and loading the trailer.
Small jobs still needing doing on the back of the trailer and we palmed our suitcase and old tarpaulins off into Duncan’s section for recycling. This was great because over there I found a brand new ground sheet, and some books and maps for Botswana, Zambia, Namibia and Mozambique. These would have cost a fortune. We also scrounged a second gas bottle.
At 11am we were ready to leave and our first stop was to get gas but everywhere was closed as it was Sunday. This was our first rookie mistake of the trip.
Our next stop was Chequers in Malmesbury for our first full shop. We don’t know when we will pass a supermarket again and it could be up to 2 weeks so we really stocked up and when all the fresh stuff is done we have pasta. We also brought 20kg of charcoal for cooking.
Once that was done it we were on our way and it was 50 miles down the N7 and then we turned right into the cedarburg wilderness and we hit gravel. Then it was another 30 miles completely off-road before we got to our first campsite.
Sandrift Holiday resort. I’ll be honest I was dreading this place because anywhere we have stayed that says resort tends to be for the cheaper people looking for a good time with no rules but I couldn’t have been more wrong. We are now in South Africa’s wine region and we had to check in at cederburg wines. After that it was a short gravel drive to our camp and to enter we had to cross over a beautiful bridge that is often submerged.
We pulled up at pitch 14 and the camp was beautiful and empty except for 1 other trailer and a small tent. We pulled the caravan into position and Ellie suggested we put the fridge on electric and I said we shouldn’t have to worry now we have our new stuff and the charger should have charged the battery to full on the way here. I opened the phone connected to the smartshunt and it read 86%. Disaster. It hadn’t charged.
Cutting a long story short I checked everything. I had all the tools out and my obvious guess was I had done something wrong. But on the other hand I had checked it when we left and it was working.
We pulled into Sandrift and set up at 5pm. At 8pm in the dark, I finally worked out it was nothing to do with my wiring and Duncan’s mechanic hadn’t done the positive connection up on the battery when he reconnected it.
I could have cried and I’m not sure if it was anger or relief.
Then it was time for dinner and it was just a quick cold chicken salad and then we went to bed.Read more