Ok, this was our last day of 2014... The day before didnt start - TopicsExpress

Ok, this was our last day of 2014... The day before didnt start much better, with me driving and hitting a dog in the middle of nowhere (except for a bunch of African huts). These 3 dogs just suddenly ran out across the road and I could not stop in time to miss them. There were a group of young kids nearby and I think they must have been theres. Looked liked the one dog had a pretty buggered leg and the prognosis didnt look promising. Fortunately a plain clothes policeman drove by (well he flashed some badge) and helped us out. Car bumper had a huge dent, but was ok to keep driving, but we had to go to a local police station to file an accident report. Not sure what happened to the dog, I try not to think about it but it didnt look good. But then the next morning, as we were about to set off on a big 7hr drive, Anna turned into a car that was in her blind spot. Smashed up the other side of our car pretty badly, and renders the other car undriveable. We were in a town so again fortunately a very helpful cop turned up pretty quickly. Poor African woman whos car it was was pretty agitated at first, but over time she calmed down (sounds like that in most of these occasions in SA the other driver just flees). But then things got worse when Budget first told us we didnt have any insurance, and then that we didnt have any 3rd party insurance! At one stage we were looking at having to stay around and pay for all their repairs. Took three hours to sort (and what will likely be a massive phone bill), including spending another morning in a police station to file an accident report. But the good news, we hope, is that we think we do have full insurance coverage (which we always thought but took umpteen phone calls) though we wont be able to be fully confident until we return the new hire car. In the end we left on very amicable terms with the lady and her family (hugs!), they were really nice when they realised we werent going to try and screw them. Our differences in wealth would be massive, so we did our best to make sure they knew we wouldnt let them be out of pocket in any way. So after all this, we still had to wait for a replacement rental car (ours couldnt be driven), which took nearly 4 hrs, so we didnt end up departing on our 7hr drive until 5 hrs after we had intended (and one thing youre told not to do is drive in Africa in the dark - and for good reason with the pot holed roads and wandering dogs/goats/cows/people and kamikaze taxi van drivers - SA has one of the worst road tolls in the world). But having to drive in the dark was inevitable if we wanted to make our destination. Then about 2 hrs out we get pulled over at a police stop. They try to tell us Anna was doing 93 in an 80kph zone, which was ridiculously seeing that we had only pulled out on the road about 200m down the hill. The cop then changed the story to something about crossing a solid white line when we turned in. I was arguing with him about it and finally tried to appeal to him by telling him we still had 2hrs to drive and just wanted to get going - but I think it must have been Annas misery face that convinced him to just let us go. We still had to drive for about an hour in the complete dark on regional back roads. And after I had said earlier well at least its not raining... it started to rain and became foggy. But thankfully that part of the drive was probably the least eventful - though the most tense. We made it in one piece - but with very frayed nerves. Im sure well look back and laugh at it at some stage (once weve got the insurance sorted!), though never the dog bit. Still continues to be an amazing trip, but what a crazy 48 hours!