Wednesday 22 August 2012

Wednesday 22 August 2012

Dear Diary, I am a new car, my life has changed! Why? Because of the awesome experience of this last week....

Amelia took me down the south coast of KwaZulu Natal this past weekend. The trip was incredible! Yeah yeah, I know in times past with other owners that I have done long distance trips, but this was different. Going the alternative route, stopping to see the sights if that is the whim of my driver, having hip music blasting and pretending to be a karaoke bar, minus the booze of course.



Did I tel you I now have a steering wheel cover?



We took the N2 south past Scottburgh. The cool thing about that stretch of road (even though it is illegal) is all the locals who hang out on the side of the highway selling local fresh produce. At the moment the main thing they were selling was Avocado Pears and Pawpaws, however we saw Pineapples, Sugar Cane sticks, Garlic (!!!) and the most unusual thing we saw was a guy holing up freshly caught lobsters! And dont worry, we did not stop to buy any.

 Then we took the alternative all the way down to Port Shepstone along the coastal road. We stayed for a day at ‘Sheppie’ and then drove down to Uvongo for a couple of days.

 

On Saturday we took a morning drive up to some rurals to preach about the bible, but the roads out there were some scary roads. I’m not sure which was worse, my experience of driving through the super sandy sugar cane fields a few weeks back, or diving through these steep pot-holed dirt roads. But it was fun non-the-less.  

Then Saturday afternoon my passengers (yup, Amelia subjected me the craziness of a bunch of young adults, and guess what, I actually enjoyed it) got out of their preaching clothes and into their hiking clothes and we headed inland. After about half an hour on the main road we took a turn to the right and suddenly the road started descending off of the plateau into the amazing Oribi Gorge! I heard one the passengers say that it is like the grand canyon, just greener. And if I had a clue what he was talking about, I would probably agree. I guess I’ll have to ask Amelia to take me to this Grand Canyon one day and then I’ll be able to know if the guy was right. We stopped plenty of times to take photos.



Looks just like my new friend



Then she did the unthinkable, Amelia left me sitting at the bottom of the gorge and just walked off with her friends. I felt so alone and abandoned. But then I noticed the car parked next to me, a bright red Terios. We chatted the whole afternoon and exchanged life stories. So now I have a new friend, who looks just like the car in the picture. We plan to keep in contact, but we have to figure out how cars that live a long distance away keep road pals, maybe sending messages through petrol stations? I’m open to suggestions. Anyways, we were just finishing hearing each other’s life stories when the group got back from their hike and it was getting dark.



 So we climbed out of the gorge with the setting sun behind us and headed back to uvongo in the dark.

And on Sunday, Amelia repacked me with all her paraphernalia, (Seriously, I don’t know how one girl can need so much stuff for three nights!) and we took a mellow drive home.
I’m as dusty and dirty as ever, and now I really need to go honk my horn until Amelia gets off her lazy butt to come give me a much needed bath.

So, until our next adventure, drive safe people.

27 July 2012

Its been a busy busy week!



Granny checking out my tattoos



On Monday we took a drive to Pietermaritzburg to visit Amelia’s granny. It was a nice drive, except for when Amelia’s dad forgot to close my bonnet properly after checking my oil and water were doing ok, my bonnet started lifting right on the freeway! That would have been so embarrassing to have my engine in full view of all those other cars!  Amelia’s granny came to look at the ceiling inside my cab and loved how Amelia and her mom had tattooed flowers on me. I cant wait till she tattoos flowers on the outside of me too, but she says she has to wait till she can afford it.



The only car in the middle of NOWHERE! Such solitude was great fun!



Then today, well we went exploring sugar cane roads! Have you ever driven down sugar cane farm roads? It was my first drive, and it was such fun! Those are all dirt roads (obviously) and a lot of them have big dongas and some of them have super soft sand. Sometimes there’s a stream under the road, and I’m sure some of them have streams running over the road. Some places we had to reverse out because there was nowhere to turn around, and other times the roads were lined with trees like a country avenue. Don’t worry, Amelia hates reversing, and frankly I’m glad she let her dad do the stretches of reversing and the dodgy road bits, coz otherwise we might have got stuck. And there were a few times I really did think we were going to get stuck! But even though all of that, I kind of wish I was a 4x4 because today was really fun.



Yes, those are indeed my tracks going through the soft sand!

So its been a busy week, and Amelia says we’re maybe going out tomorrow, but she’s first got to bath me because I “look like a grubby child after today’s off roading”.









Pretty tree lined avenues



Friday 20 July 2012

Dear Diary,

Its official, I now belong to Amelia. It is very exciting to have a new owner, and so far she takes really good care of me. She's decided to change my name to Daisy, and I really like my new name.

I now live on a farm with Horses, which is very interesting, except when they come and lick me, eeeuw!

Amelia tells me that she wants to travel South Africa with me, I like the sound of that. Anyways, thats all for now.