Day 136: Piet Retief to Pongola

The end of Mpumalanga! Piet Retief was to be the last of our Mpumalanga towns, another short stage not dissimilar to North West where we only visited a handful of areas before crossing over into the next province. Five provinces and five stages down for The EXPEDITION Project 2012 and it was time to enter Kwa-Zulu Natal or KZN as referred locally.

Day 135: Piet Retief

The last town of stage number 5 - Mpumalanga: Piet Retief. After a drive around the town and a few chats with some locals it was clear that Piet Retief was just another town suffering from the same problems as the rest of Mpumalanga. It may not be crime ridden but things like education and health services are still in need. The town is neat and the locals friendly but sadly the municipality hasn’t as yet done much to bring tourists in, as right now it is still nothing more than a stop over town en route to the coast or Guateng. As it is on the N2 it also is the truckers road and so the main road and side roads are inundated with big tonners.

Day 133 - 134: Barberton to Badplaas and Piet Retief

We left Barberton, the oldest mountain on earth and the home of 'Jock of the Bushveld' for Badplaas ( bad = bath not bad as in naughty - named after the local mineral baths) but not before climbing to heights of about 3000 metres above sea level. The decent took us through forest after forest before wide open fields again.

We had heard that there was a Forever Resorts in Badplaas, and having stayed at Mount Sheba in Pilgrims Rest and having visited Forever Resorts Bela Bela, we gave them a call for a night’s accommodation.  Forever Resorts, once Aventura (a government owned company and part of Protea Hotels), have been extremely welcoming to us and we had no doubt they would support us again in Badplaas. And so they did, with a lovely chalet as well as dinner and breakfast.

Day 131-132: Kaapmuiden to Barberton

After a somewhat noisy night at Pelenechi Manor, mainly due to the ducks and geese quacking all night long, we were up at 6am and on to the road to Nelspruit at 7ish. Chris the car had to go to have a service as he had (as usual) been making some weird sounds and we thought he should be checked out. So we headed to the Isuzu garage and left him for the day while we went to explore Nelspruit.