Mbombela

We were up at 6am and it’s great opening the curtains to see what animals are in the garden. This morning we had a herd of zebra with 2 foals and a bunch of Warthog.
We gave them a huge buckets worth of food and through it out with a big cup scattering it all around the garden. Pretty soon we had a semi circle of zebra completely surrounding us. It was great watching the foals get milk from their mums because they are still so small. The warthog just seem to eat and eat and get lower and lower eventually collapsing to the ground quite content and slip into a food coma for 30 minutes and then start the truffle hunting again.
Our plan today was to drive into Nelspruit. It’s actually named Mbombasa now but everyone still calls it Nelspruit and the shops are still labelled as Nelspruit on google but all the signposts say Mbombasa. We actually had to google if they were the same place, it’s very confusing.
We’ve thought about buying a car here for the last 2 trips but we need a traffic registration number. If we could get that then we could buy a car and put it in storage and have all our camping gear stored in that ready to go. This time we think we’ve sorted out a TRN so we thought we’d give driving into a major city a go to see how we get on.
At 9am we left Marloth Park to take the 65 mile trip to Nelspruit. It wasn’t that bad of a drive, The worst thing was our little camper. It’s really gutless in hills so overtaking on a hill is out of the question unless I can get a good run up first and doing 60mph feels and sounds like your doing 100mph. The speed limit is actually 75mph but that just felt to scary with our tiny little wheels and my hands were hurting from gripping the steering wheel so tight.
We arrived at our first stop right in the city centre just before 11am. The Sportsman’s Warehouse. I’d checked online and this place was like the Decathlon of Sourh Africa selling almost anything sport related from running shoes to tents to bikes and even treadmills and indoor trainers. We were just here to check prices and most things were comparable to home although we did have to check stuff on our currency app. The same indoor bike trainer as mine was nearly double the price I paid. Bikes are between £300-£800 for something decent. And running machines started at £500.
From the Sportsman’s warehouse we headed a few hundred yards on foot through the retail park to our main event of the day. The Outdoor Warehouse. This place has anything you could ever want for your camping or overland trip and stuff you could never think of. There were Pie Irons, Braai stuff you couldn’t believe. They even had a battery powered spit so you could rotate the Braai meat. There was camping clothes, waterproof camping bags of all sizes with hundreds of pockets. They did plastic ammo boxes that lock together for travelling, mattress of all shapes and sizes, camping beds and inflatable mattresses for tents. And the whole of the upstairs was just tents, and I don’t mean that crap you get in the UK. These were proper canvas safari tents of all shapes and sizes. We were in our element just looking at the stuff you could get for camping here. There’s absolutely no need to be uncomfortable camping in South Africa and the prices were comparable to the Uk or cheaper.
Our next stop was Wimpy for lunch which was a real relief because I didn’t think we were going to get to go into Wimpy this time. I had a huge burger because I hadn’t yet eaten and Ellie had the chicken schnitzels.
From Wimpy we were feeling pretty confident. Nelspruit was busy but not crazy hectic and there was enough room in the traffic that if I went wrong I could have changed lanes, so we ventured on and went to another retail park and a used trailer and caravan supplier. This was a great move by us because we got to look around all the different trailers and caravans and the owner showed us what all the trailers did, what was in the drawers and cupboards and how different tent or caravan systems worked.
From GT trailers we ventured further around the ring road and found a road that had all the major car sales places. We stopped at We buy Cars, this I think is the equivalent of we buy any car but here they get cleaned up and sold on. Obviously we can’t buy a car but we wanted to see what sort of prices they were going for and the mileage.
All in all it was a really informative trip and we did a lot of window shopping. We knew how much camping gear would be and where to get it, we knew what to look for if we wanted a trailer and how it worked and we also knew how much cars were going for if ever we do decide to buy one, but most of all we knew we could drive into and out of a city and navigate around and not crap our pants the whole time. In fact except for being in the camper we felt quite relaxed all day.
We left Nelspruit at 2pm and followed the coal trucks back home, overtaking where we could on the duel carriageways and then dropping back down to a speed that didn’t feel scary. We arrived back home at 4pm and the Warthogs were in the garden sleeping waiting for us. As soon as I opened the patio door they all stood up and came up to the patio waggling their tales.
We threw another big bucket of food out and they munched away getting lower and lower until one by one they collapsed content with full bellies. It is a really funny thing to watch.
As it got dark I set the camera up and Ellie put some bananas in the bowl and then I sat there waiting for the bushbaby to arrive listening to the sounds of hyena in the distance in the Kruger.
Then at 8:30pm we called it a night and settled in ready for another early start in the morning wondering who will be waiting for us.Read more