Fortuner Friends

Further proof of..., well I guess a bit of a stretch to link this to people's growing confidence in our rapidly improving Odyssey skills and ever expanding kit...

But, maybe proof of the infectiousness of our excitement, is the addition of two more friends to the Odyssey crew. YAY! Hennie and Nerina's Toyota will unfortunately have to cross dress with African'Synchro'Odyssey branding, but I am sure we will all be caught out with strange underwear and mismatched socks during the trip, so what the heck! YAY again!

Trial camp and toffee patat

A trial camp 13 sleeps before D day. We figured out we did not have a mirror in our vast inventory (obvious from the accompanying photo), our sheet was too small for the mattress (good thing we found that out before leaving Gauteng (where extra length fitted sheets are at least attainable at a fee) seeing that sleeping skin on plastic coated mattress is not my favourite thing in the world) nor one or two other essentials. And seeing that it was only for one night we did not try sharing our 6 minutes of warm water shower (fortunately that is not so obvious from the accompanying photo) and therefore avoided tapdancing half clean and cold in self created mud, avoided the 'who showered for more than their allocated 3 minutes' discussion and avoided having to find a suitably close, but sheltered/private location.

I must also admit (this trial is sounding less and less impressive) that we had the privilege of a porcelain toilet seat (flushed with water from the dam), catered scrumptious lamb potjiekos for dinner (no effort by ourselves) and by virtue of proximity: (1) access to kettle boiled water for (and only for) our first cup of coffee and (2) a dstv-projected-against-a-suspended-white-sheet super 12 final (ouch, there goes every last shred of credibility)

I CAN happily report that all the gadgets worked marvelously and the smell of freshly grounded coffee in the Bushveld first thing in the morning (no help from anywhere) convinced even me that the 'gadget slut' status may even be a compliment, something to aspire to :)

One good thing about this trail camp is that we can make believe that we have SOME idea of what we are doing. I am doubtful that we have convinced Adri and Anita of that quite yet, but patience is one of the many things they seem to have in abundance.

For all this tongue in the cheek bantering, I must admit that at this point my stomach feels like a wrenched dishcloth with nerves and anticipation.

On our way home, we presented ourselves, still short of a shower, to the most amazingly generous and dearest friends (and almost family although they may reconsider after Sunday (jammer sussie!)) for a shower, a birthday and oxtail. We left with a wealth of information, a recipe for fantabulous toffee patat, a floral scented softener-refill-turned-car-freshener (clearly our lack of personal hygiene did not go unnoticed), insistence from Carl-Hein that I replace my oxtail recipe with Rita's and contact names and numbers (forewarned of our imminent arrival) of contacts throughout all the countries we are visiting JUST in case we may need assistance (even if assistance means English-Portuguese translation in a difficult situation).

I think, just maybe, we will survive the Odyssey.