Day 6

Stu - Another 4am start and we set off back to Joburg, this time me in the Atos and Jamie and Sean in the Landie. 1km down the road and Sean pulls over! I was thinking he was already missing the beastly Atos and wanted to change car but after being called over and seeing Sean waving a broken gear stick I soon realized we had a slightly bigger problem on our hands!!!

We locked up the Landie and drove around the small town trying to find out where and what time we can find a mechanic. We ended up waiting 3 hours till 8am for everything to open and after going to every single garage, one of the garage owners kindly towed us to his friend Stanley, who owned his own metal construction business and he was able to weld the gear stick back on. He had a quick check over the car and gave us a jerry can of water to keep the radiator topped up along the way back. As it was a Sunday he said he wouldn’t change us and even gave us the jerry can for free!!

The rest of the journey was OK other than for Sean nearly plowing through a toll gate at 80km/hour as he wasn’t used to the standard Land Rover brakes and Jamie having to pull the handbrake to stop them in time! The 12 hour drive back and the 5 hour delay in the morning meant that we only reached Joburg around 9pm and the ring road to where we are staying was a bit mental with cars flying by either side of us and numerous people flashing us to move out the way.

We were all pleased to get back to the guest house safely and had the best sleep so far that night.