Fred and Barney Flinstone invite us to their place

Day 10

We leave Agatha Coach House and continue driving through mile after mile of farmed forest offering some stunning scenery.

We arrive at the only time trial of the day, this is on a red dirt track through bits of forest and logging areas. I must confess not feeling 100% after all the excitement of yesterday, but we line up, the count down begins 5,4,3,2,1 and we are off against the clock. We come across some pedestrians and a local car driver, who was not impressed to see us belting along in the other direction but on his side of the road. We decide that all things considered we should back off and eventually cross the line outside of our allotted time. We now have 1 penalty point and are no longer in the joint lead. But if you read the results carefully and with a bit of party political type swing, we can still say we are in joint second place :)

We arrive at the recommended lunch stop to find that the Bel Air has hit a Guinea fowl and smashed its windscreen, the Guinea fowl was not so clever either.

Scott and Salome have had terrible luck with their car.  The master brake cylinder went going down the Swartzberg Pass not a good place to lose your brakes, they bought a brand new one, unpacked it, fitted it, and it didn’t work!

As they live in Johannesburg when the windscreen broke they were able to have a spare windscreen bought over to them, 5 hours later they were back in business.

Tonight we are staying at a place called Mapungubwe, I expect you have heard of it. It means ‘city of gold’. Hmmm!

Our route book says ‘ there is a serenity you cannot ignore’ I think whoever wrote this must have had extensive training as an estate agent. 

The serenity is absolute, mainly because we drive along a rough dirt track for 40 min to arrive at a group of round brick built, thatched buildings and no people, nothing. Its a bit like Fred and Barney’s houses in the Flintstones. You keep expecting Dino to coming jumping out at you. (hope you remember this cartoon ;) )

The route book again says ‘your lodge hosts will have details for you'. What hosts? It suddenly feels like "I am a rally driver, get me out of here”.

After a while we do find two ladies who helpfully advise that they don’t know anything about our supposed BBQ and sundowners experience.

One of the crews phones the organisers and things start to become a little clearer, basically don’t panic it will all be fine.

Our homes for the night are actually really comfortable, the outside shower is brilliant and at 7.00 the BBQ is in full swing and everyone is having fun.

The huts are set amongst some incredible rock formations which glow in the bright sunlight, maybe this is where the city of gold phrase comes from. Some of the rocks are balanced on top of each other as if they have carefully sculptured, but it's simply nature that has created these incredible balancing acts.

This location does turn out to be quite special, and one i would come to again preferably driving a 4X4.

All the cars are still going well and everyone is having a fantastic time, but I do wish the other crews would stop asking how Molly is doing with her new body design and such comments as ‘David try turning the steering wheel before the bend, not after it’ are not really appreciated it. We are still going and have had no mechanical issues at all, Go Go Molly.