21 April Well up and at ‘em! Got to the factory to pick up the trailer and away! I think we left about 11.45am. We are off up towards Kimberly, but will have a stop along the way as it is too far to go in one day. We stopped at a place called Travalia just short of three sisters. As it is only for one night we decided to get a room. We also decided to have dinner in their restaurant as it was easier as I hadn’t got anything out of the freezer to thaw. We had lovely roast lamb and then Martin had cheesecake, whilst I stuck with coffee. Apparently this place used to be a stopping off point for the wagons from Cape Town to Kimberly in the diamond rush days. The story goes that on one of the journeys a man was very ill and couldn’t carry on; basically dying, so he was dropped off under a tree with food and water and left there. Meanwhile bushman had been watching and nursed the man back to health, he stayed on and ever since then Travalia has been some sort of accommodation and restaurant place, even when it changed hands every time it has keep to the hospitality concept.

22 April Today we are off to Kimberly to see ‘the big hole’! We started out on the N12 and en countered road works, so we tried to stay off the main roads, but also encountered road works. Nevermind, South Africa should have some of the best roads in the world by the time they are all finished. We were going to stay in the municipal campsite which is located right next door to the big hole and museum. We arrived around 2pm and there is a huge building construction site right next door. We set up, had some lunch and then headed over to see the big hole. They do tours which involve a movie about the early days and new rush days of Kimberly, then you go out onto a viewing deck overlooking the big hole (which is incredible. Apparently around 22,500,000 tonnes of earth was extracted in the 13 years it took to make this massive hole in the ground. Also around 2200kg of diamonds were extracted and the overall depth is around 1097 meters! There is water in this hole which is natural underground water and now makes this look like a serene deep pond! We then went into an old mine shaft and learnt about how the diamonds were extracted and the conditions that the men worked in – very hard work is all I can say. Lastly we went into the vault and saw all the different type of diamonds that had been extracted here in Kimberly. There are still diamonds, but De Beers does not seem to think it is viable to extract them and since the whole area has become a heritage site no one is allowed to take anything or dig for gems any more. All in all it was an interesting tour and well worth it.