Into Africa...

It was really close. Catching the train in Shrewsbury with 5 minutes to spare after four hours sleep the night before doing last minute preparations..well I hadn't quite banked on that. Still, the train journey went well, even if we both were shattered and couldn't quite believe we were going to be out of the country for six months. Beth and I were both really impressed with the flight out with Virgin Atlantic - not that we ever even got close to the Atlantic. The grub was great and we even managed to get some sleep - nothing short of a miracle for Matt.

We landed on Thursday to a warm slightly misty morning. A nice introduction to South Africa. After negotiating our way through customs and grabbing our bags we spent the next two hours sorting out a hire car. This was made particularly stressful by a blunder from our bank who had unbeknown to us managed to cancel not only mine, but Beth's credit cards too. So there we were at the airport feeling kinda small. Thankfully, as a last minute precaution, Matt stashed an old and rather underused credit card into his wallet which sorted out the car! And here would be a good spot to say a huge thank you to Candida, from our home church, for being on the end of the phone and dropping everything to help us. We didn't laugh much at the time - but hey, this is what adventures are made of!!

The drive to Welkom in our Toyota Yaris (which incidentally has confirmed my fears about company cars!) was through low lying grasslands, slightly undulating just enough so that you didn't despair as you drove along the dead striaght roads. Welkom is not a tourst attraction. It still has a few gold mines in operation and the skyline has terraced platforms of creamy green blue waste pumped out from the mines. It reminded me a bit of the old 'blue billy' contamination I've seen in the UK. And yes, apparently it contains stacks of cyanide!

And then we made it! The Morning Star project. And what a place! But that's for another blog...