Getting it all together

Planning! I always tend to over plan, and nowadays with Google Earth, GIS, GPS, electronic maps of all different types and scales, it can have serious consequences!

My basic idea was to cycle off-road from our northern border with Botswana straight down through the Kalahari, Bushmanland, The Great Karoo and The Little Karoo to my home in Swellendam.

The main difficulty was finding places to stay in the most northern areas, especially above Upington.
Communication to those areas are still primitive, with telephones communication consisting of party lines or "nommer aseblief" (Number please). Having identified a group of farm building, "Swartstraat" on Google Earth 180km from my starting point I set about trying to establish contact with the owner. After a number of days of fruitless research via the police and agricultural officials I finally had the breakthrough I was looking for.
The switchboard operator in Upington, in desperation, put out a general call (one very long continuous grind of the handle) to the entire line through from Upington to Askham in the hope that someone would hear and answer. Well someone from a farm about 40km from Swartstraat answered and it was soon established that the owner, Tienie, lived in Upington and only visited the farm on weekends. Within an hour, I had Tienies number and from then the portal was opened and things started falling into place.


The other challange was to get up to my starting point at Askham, about 250km north of Upington. I booked a place on the mainline bus service running from Cape Town to Upington, and then as providence would have it, secured a lift up to Askham in the postal delivery truck contracted out to the husband of the lady who also ran the BB where I would be staying at Askham!


After this, everything seamed to fall into place and I soon had an itinery, trip profiles, maps, kit lists, etc etc. (For those of you that are interested, I have a spreadsheet containing all my planing details which I am willing to sell to you for the cost of a small Asian country.)