Back to the Vaal

Last week I popped down to Bothaville (near Klerksdorp) in the Freestate to visit NAMPO, apparently the biggest agricultural show in the Southern Hemisphere (take THAT Australia) It's not just farming things, though - they have huge halls full of goodies for the farmer's wives to buy too. I however am now officially broke having got the iPhone, the netbook and a new car all within 5 months so all I bought there was a pair of toe-socks for Scientist No 1 that have Diva written on them.
I decided to be really adventurous and visit the boat people on my way home. My sister had surgery on Wednesday afternoon and I wanted to make sure she was OK.

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A hummingbird hawk moth, fascinating little critter and quite prolific at the boat people's house, seems they love the lavender.

The last trip to the Vaal was on Christmas day, when Bob misbehaved by dying at an inappropriate time and we got horribly lost. To make things worse I gave Bob to Walter when I got the iPhone. Whilst I love the iPhone I am not prepared to spend another zillion rand downloading a navigation app (all other technology has software, iPhones have apps) so there was no soothing voice telling me when to turn. This called for courage and innovation.
I prepared very carefully, downloading Google maps and printing out written directions and I was very proud of myself managing to get from Bothaville to Three Rivers in one go. The state of the R59 is shocking and I put the Zambian Fighting Ninja (aka the Jimny) through its paces, deftly side-stepping potholes that would be called tank traps in countries like Iraq, for example.Country music seemed appropriate accompaniment but I couldn't navigate and search radio stations so mostly I listened to OFM.

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Suzuki Jimny. This is not the Zambian fighting ninja, but it could be. It's also not the R59, but some parts look pretty much like this.
 
The timing was perfect - I arrived just after she came out of surgery, and I sat with her for an hour or so before they decided she could go home. This was the easy part, I had a real live navigator in the car with me saying turn here, so we got back to her house with no mishaps where we finished a good couple of bottles of red wine. On the way home we spotted an owl sitting on a fence post, I'm not sure what kind it was - I guess most of them start waking up around dusk anyway. There were also lots of ostriches and blesbok, so I get the attraction, it's just that there aren't any Woolies food stores or signs pointing to civilization anywhere.

In the morning we had breakfast at the local hotel on the hill with great views of the dam

So then I had to head home, allowing at least 7 hours before dark in case I got lost again. I hadn't thought as far as the getting home part so hadn't downloaded those instructions. My sister drew me a map, I think she's quite exasperated that we always get lost. Twitter friends suggested I navigate by the sun and stop every so often to check which side of the tree the moss is growing on to make sure I'm going in the right direction. Further enquiries revealed they also didn't know the answer to that, however, so that wasn't going to work. Plus this is the Freestate, so trees are scarce.
I set off with purpose, 10kg of walnuts and 7 avocado pears my sister pressed on me (I think she thinks we are all starving) and told myself to think of it as an adventure.
Things went well, initially. It's just that after I made the 2nd turn, as shown on the map, which I still have as evidence there was no river to cross, no sign pointing to Henley-on-Klip. I ended up back in Vereeniging and stopped at the first garage I found to ask directions. Fortunately they looked kindly upon me, and I made it back to the highway without any further mishaps.
I do think that the roads department should consider marking the options on the Johannesburg end a little more clearly, however. I ended up driving the wrong way around the city because I was sure as hell not going back to Klerksdorp.

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Note to visitors: This is Shanghai, not Johannesburg - but it illustrates the point. Picture from infrastructurist.com