At the beginning of January 2002 I travelled to South Africa with a good friend of mine James Gates, the primary aim of the trip was for me to attend the Wedding of Karl Buhr - a friend & former colleague, the rest of the two-week trip was designed to get the most out of such a long-distance journey and get to see a little bit of South Africa. Unfortunately there had only been enough space at the wedding for myself so James would be unable to attend.
Whilst a certain amount of planning was required beforehand we deliberately steered away from having a rigorous plan and leaned towards a more open-minded approach. Before leaving we designated a few waypoints which we must pass through for whatever reason, other than this the places we would visit were not chosen until we had arrived in South Africa. In fact before travelling out we only had one specifically arranged planning meeting. James has family friends out in SA who kindly agreed to put us up in Johannesburg and also arranged a place for us to stay in Port Elizabeth.
The basic outline of the trip was as follows:-
1. Fly to Cape Town.
2. Ash to attend wedding on 5th January.
3. Hire Car.
4. Drive to Port Elizabeth to stay with Ann.
5. Drive to Johannesburg to stay with Anne & Bill.
6. Fly back to Cape Town
7. Fly back to London.
The remainder of this account is assembled from notes made in an A5 jotter,
augmented with my personal memories of the trip.
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