Post via email from Lake Shore Lodge.. I hope this works! :o)

We got up at 10h00 after going to bed after midnight last night. Tania took the better part of three hours to upload the blog-post as the data signal is very weak. It is getting more and more difficult to get good internet access so please bear with us…

We decided to have lunch at the lodge (beef burgers, potato wedges and brownies for desert) since we are running a bit low on supplies after having only a cucumber for breakfast!

We were stuffed afterwards. I think our stomachs must have shrunk. We realised again how excessive Western society has become and how many options and choices we have in South Africa. This was also very evident yesterday in Namanyere (a small town we passed and where we’ll travel through again tomorrow) where the small shops had crates of empty Pepsi and Coke bottles, but laughed at me when I asked to buy some cool drinks. They are all waiting for the next truck to bring new stock. You can get tomatoes everywhere though.

Since we had the day off Tania did all the washing and I cleaned the Motomias’ air filters. I also got rid of the wind screens. I have wanted to do it for a while because they had some sharp edges after cracking when falling over, but they work so well and looked good so I kept putting it off. Today though I saw Tania’s screen mount had sheared off from the falls and subsequent rattling on the corrugations.

Both our rear lights don’t work anymore and my main beam in front is also out due to the shaking of the past two days. I decided to spare my front bulb for the tar road. We’ll do the same with the rear lights, but replacing them will require removing the PVC pipes that house our spare tubes and rain coats, since the screw driving cannot get to the light cover with them in place. Oops, I didn’t think of that when installing the pipes. Before taking a quick nap late afternoon, Tania made some notes from the East Africa Lonely Planet guide. The further North we go, the less options of accommodation we have so it helps a lot to get as much info as possible.

As the sun set we walked down to the lake shore for a photo shoot. What an amazing view! We are going to miss the lake, but in just over a week’s time we’ll be at Lake Victoria.

Unfortunately the weak connection won’t allow more than a couple of images and I will have to post via email, so it might not look so good. We’ll try to make up in the next few days (if possible). We are aiming for Mpanda tomorrow after making some roosterkoeke for padkos.