Gauteng, Kimberley August 2010

Essentially a must-do trip turned into a bit of a nightmare. Gauteng, like India, you need to be ready for and truthfully my head was still on the Zim trip that was cancelled at the last minute. Instead Pretoria, Kimberley, Potch, everything that could go wrong, did. End of winter so ugly, ugly, ugly. Hannes' much-loved Great Dane died. Ash's mum in the spare room, Nelson in Benoni teaching NIA, so a dearth of friends to mitigate the uninspiring weeks. The bottom line was that the Pretoria and Kimberley 48 Hour stories highlighted the disappointing state of tourism in both cities. Between both these cities, the state of the Gauteng/Free State roads was shocking. It's a cliche, but the Western Cape is truly streets ahead of its northern neighbours in all these areas.

Still, Birdwood Lodge in Hatfield was charming - an Arts and Crafts mansion turned into a very efficient boutique hotel (www.birdwood.co.za.) So was The Kimberley Club (www.kimberleyclub.co.za.) which manages to stay classy, relevant and animated despite being in the middle of the city centre, surrounded by a deluge of fast food outlets, bad nightclubs and dodgy Asian clothing shops.

The AA Travel Guides meeting was disappointing too -  no possibility of becoming an assessor, given the paltry fees paid.

So all told a trip best forgotten. So done.