Road Trip Day 1: Cape Town to Colesberg

Finally, after all the time I spent researching and planning, the road trip finally started.  I somehow got up at 5am, but I am not going to lie ... it was a struggle. But we made it on the road just after 6am so we were right on schedule. Today we drove from Cape Town to Colesberg:

First leg: 788 km

This was me trying to work out how to take pictures in the dark. I have about 20 pictures like this until I finally got it right.

Ironically, once I worked out how to take pictures in the dark, I only took this one.

The dreaded Hugenot Tunnel. Well, dreaded for me anyway. When I was a child, I was convinced that the tunnel would not hold up the mountain. My mom tried to explain to me that the mountain would not collapse on me, but even though I am all grown up and should know better, I was pretty much holding my breath the whole way through.

Once we made it out the other side, the sun had started to rise. I was kind of excited to take some pics of the sunrise...

...except we drove straight into mist.  That didn't deter me though. I have hundreds of pictures of the mist.

Misty mountains and road

In between sections of mist

Misty field

More misty mountains

Finally we made it through the mist. But the sun was already up, so I missed the sunrise.

The road somewhere

Some snowy mountains near Ceres

After a while, the scenery all started looking the same. Like this.

And occasionally like this.

The trip took almost 10 hours.  Not because we took long pitstops. Mostly because we hit about 10 or 11 stop/go roadworks ... I know I am prone to exaggeration, but Anton was with me and he can verify the accuracy of this number.  We spent about 10 minutes at each one, so you can imagine how much time that added to our trip ...

We finally made it to Colesberg and checked in at Ebenezer Guest House. The room is very nice ... although there was a slight hiccup with the bathroom.  We have already eaten supper, showered and are ready for bed .... at 7pm. It's been a long day and we are up early again tomorrow, although tomorrow we should manage to get in a bit of sightseeing.

One last thing:

I don't know what this truck was transporting.  This was the only signage on the truck, otherwise it was just a white refrigerated truck.  Kind of weird though right? Any ideas what it could be transporting?