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So the receptionist at Hans Merensky gave us directions from the Polokwane side instead of from the Phalaborwa side, bypassing them by an extra hour. Despite Heather questioning her directions and despite me talking to her in Afrikaans, she stuck firmly to her directions and we made the mistake of believing her. We were so upset we decided to press on. Hans Merensky lost out on our two night booking – they didn’t even phone to find out where we were.

We stopped at a roadside fruit vendor to get our bearings, and Heather bought a huge box of avo’s for R15 from a road side trader. Very friendly people who were most surprised that we sometimes pay R10 for a small avo in Cape Town.

We ended up staying in self catering accommodation for R600 per night at a forested place called Penny Father in Haenertsberg. This is an old gold mining town founded in 1885. Other activities include hiking and mountain bike trails in an indigenous forest, or visits to quaint little shops and monuments dating back to the Boer War. Our accommodation was in a zinc house inlaid with pseudo-wood (nutec) on the inside, polished oregan floors and finished with authentic solid wood furniture, some of it possibly quite old (no pine!).  On the walls were framed original gold mining claim certificates and photographs of prospectors dating back to the 1850’s.