After that great night, we woke up just before 9am. We packed up our bags and clean washing thanks to Lishane, and sat outside with uncle Nigel for some coffee and tea before he headed back to work. I made us some toast and scrambled eggs for breakfast, before we headed out for one last drive before leaving. We drove back to the squash club, to have a look at it in day light, past the Phikwe riding club again to take pictures and went back to my old house to climb the kopjie again. There used to be a cave up there where Jessie and I would play, that had a couple of rock paintings in it that I wanted to see again. She gave me a really good idea of where to find that cave and after a bit of snooping, and finding a giant snail that fascinated Dan, we found the cave.
The paintings are still there just as I remembered them, and look brand new even though. Know they are at least 14 years old, which was the last time I would have seen them. While I was talking pictures of the paintings Dan heard some people climbing up the kopjie, and because there were homeless people's clothes in the cave we scarpered out of there really quickly. I'm sure we were over reacting and that whomever was climbing up the kopjie had a legitimate reason for heading up there and were harmless but we didn't want to find out for sure half way up a rock hill! We headed to the main street to draw money for the journey and drove home to pack up the car.
Nigel came home again and we drove over in both cars to the Lester's for a last cup of coffee and to say goodbye. They had spent a long time cleaning up the tiles that the worker had messed up and spread grout all over, so thankfully they looked a lot better and Di was a lot happier :) Alex's phone kept going off with the chi gong noise that uncle Nigel really wants, and so I promised to try to find it for him. We left shortly afterwards and on our drive out of town two cars in front of us slowed down really quickly in front of us, so needless to say we followed suit, enjoying the current shape of the front of the landrover.
They were waived on by the police man who had stopped us all, but we were pulled over. He then proceeded to tell us that we were in an 80km per hour zone and we had been doing a speed of 102kms. This we know to be a total lie becaus there is no way we could have slowed down to a stop as quickly as we did if we had have been going that fast! The police were adimant that they were correct so wrote us out a ticket for P540!! For 20kms over the speed limit?! That's about 12miles per hour, it is a ridiculous fine. Thankfully the useless piece of paper told us we had 14 days to pay and the joke is on the police men as we will have left the country by then and are not coming back! :D
Our drive continued without much excitement. The stop at the police speed checkpoint had put us a bit behind schedule. We thought that the Dobrowsky's business closed at 18:00 and our ETA was about 5 minutes past 18:00. I sped up and drove at 120 km/hr (this time in a 120 zone :D) to try and arrive before we missed our hosts. About 50 km shy of Gaborone we had made up most of the time and were on track to arrive just before the business closed. It was then that things took a horrible turn.
Doing the full speed limit of 120 km/hr we were passing most other cars on the road. Jenny was busy writing an earlier blog post while I was focusing on making up time, and about 300 meters ahead of us was a small moving truck. I watched in horror as the truck drifted off the left side of the road in front of me. The driver must have fallen asleep and upon being jolted awake ripped the wheel back to the right and jumped back onto the road at a 45 degree angle. The front left tires of the truck dug into the road and the vehicle overturned. It crashed onto its side and continued rolling down the oncoming lane of traffic. Once it had finished a complete 360, thankfully without hitting any other cars as the other lane was empty, the truck came to rest laying on the drivers side, facing the wrong direction in the grass next to the road.
I had shouted to Jenny as soon as I saw the truck roll and she immediately started shouting for me to stop the car. It was an incredibly petrifying sight to behind, for both of us. I pulled off the left side of the road and we jumped out of the car without even turning it off and ran across the road towards the overturned truck. There were bits of debris all around it, including wing mirrors and items from inside the cab. The front windscreen and both side windows of the cab had shattered, but not broken and there was dirt and grass stuck all over the vehicle.
I arrived at the crash first and started shouting to whoever was inside asking if they were alive or hurt. Through the broken windscreen I could see there was movement, so I climbed on top of the cab and managed to get the passenger door open. Inside I found a very confused, and somehow miraculously uninjured, Chinese man. His English left something to be desired but it became quickly apparent that, amazingly, he had survived almost without a scratch. By the time I managed to get the driver out of the truck about 5 other cars had stopped to see if they could help. Somebody that stopped just after us phoned emergency services thanks to Jenny's frantic hand gesticulations to him whilst we ran to the overturned truck. That would have been our first task, had our phone been working in Botswana.
Jenny managed to communicate with the man and determined that he had phoned the company he worked for and someone was coming to pick him up and that he didn't need any further medical attention. When we had done all we could do we wished the man well and got back on the road to Gaborone. We also hit some really bad traffic on our way into Gabs, so arrived at the Dobrowsky's printing business at half six, and found out that they were long gone. Thankfully two of their employees, Grace and Dudu, were still there and we're able to give us directions to the house. It turned out to be quite far away and our map consisted of instructions such as go over a big bridge and turn left, drive past a police shack and turn right and lots of 'go straight'. Thankfully their instructions were perfect and we arrived at the house just after seven.
Unfortunately Karin had misread my wall post and thought we were arriving tomorrow and not today, because she had misunderstood the word 'tomorrow' in my post I had written the day before. It all worked out ok though as the guard went and got the maid who let us into the house, and phoned Karin. I made Dan and I some pasta with bacon for dinner and we relaxed with a few necessary drinks in front of the tv after our harrowing driving experience today. Kingsley and Karin arrived home just after 10:00pm from their dinner in town and we sat with cups of tea and chatted for a while before all calling it a night and heading to bed for some well earned rest.
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