Day 3 (Friday, Sept. 8th).

Tswaing to Badplaas

Leaving Tswaing, we made our way into Pretoria for breakfast, and then to the main office of the Council for Geosciences East of town to purchase geological maps. (It was like visiting a candy store for this gang). Laurine Maria, a geophysicist with their geological survey gave the group a quick tour of their paleomagnetics lab located in the same building. Then we made the mistake of returning to Pretoria for topographic maps (which had been lost somewhere along the way). Three vans parked at a shopping mall, while the fourth inched its way back and forth through the down-town Pretoria traffic towards the map office. Ugwhat an error! It took the map gang nearly 2.5 hours to return, but it allowed the rest of the group to replenish supplies, repair cell phones, etc.

At about 2 PM we were FINALLY on the road East to Baadplaas, and were treated to a magnificent view of the Drakensberg/Transvaal escarpment (also known as the great escarpment') and many miles of tree farms. We camped in the caravan park at the Aventura Badplaas Hot Springs Spas, and the group made use of the wonderful hot spring facilities including an outdoor, olympic-sized hot swimming pool and an assortment of indoor hot-spas. It was clearly the best camping place yet.

Written by JLK
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