No weddings, no babies and no surprises please!

That was the discussion we had with our children mid way through 2017 when our planning for this trip started in earnest. Our plan was to leave Australia in late February bound for Africa and our intention was to be away for about 12 months. All three told us that no there were no engagements/weddings, babies or surprises planned for 2018. Great………that was until our daughter Jessica and her hubby Andre announced in early 2018 that they were going to have another baby and it was due in May. No problem we will just put our trip back a few months and leave in mid June instead. This worked out well for us because we would never have been ready in time anyway!

So here we are in mid May and Rainbow Baby (the babies nickname) was born on the 11th of May. Serafina Adele sister to Alessio and Nico was welcomed by Jessica and Andre with great joy. Grandma and Grandad have four weeks to bond with Serafina and then it’s over to FaceTime until Christmas when we come home for a month.

At the moment our Landcruiser and Kimberley are on a ship the CPO Jacksonville between Jakarta and Port Klang in Malaysia. On arrival at Port Klang the container will be off loaded and then on the 27th of May put on the another ship the Jogela which will take it on to Durban in South Africa where we will meet it on the 12th of June.

My sister Veronica’s vehicle however is a different story! The ship the Parsifal that was supposed to pick the truck up was held up outside Auckland harbour due to an infestation of Asian Stink Bugs on ships coming down from Asia. The harbour was put into lock down which meant that the Parsifal fell a good week behind time which would mean it would miss it’s connecting ship in Singapore. So now her truck will possibly not arrive in Durban until late July! Looks like she will have to jump in with us and we will do a circuit around Lesotho and then return to Durban to pick up her truck. (As I was about to publish this blog posting we heard the  news that her truck has been picked up by the Tijuca and it left Port Kembla on the 21st of May)