Today is a day of shopping before leaving

We arrived in South Africa yesterday and we are at Kempton Park near Johannesburg, yesterday we fixed our car, Dr. Livingstone, while today is dedicated to shopping.

Obviously we can't buy everything we need during the trip, the space in the fridge is what it is, moreover some food is perishable, we will have to buy it from time to time during our itinerary; in South Africa there are shops and malls a bit everywhere so it is not a problem, while in Botswana there are fewer, but knowing the country, we know very well where to stop to refuel.

We have a coffee in the room and then we leave.

First we go to the Meadow Dale Center that is located in Edenvale, here, in addition to a series of shops, is Hyper Checkers, our favorite South African supermarket chain.

We do a huge shopping, we buy mainly water, soft drinks, wine and meat and then some vegetables, tins of tomato puree, bread, South African wine and more; we also go to the Checkers Liquor Shop.

In South Africa it works a bit like in the United States, alcohol is sold in a separate shop and not at the supermarket, you have to be an adult to enter here; we buy the Savanna and the Amarula that can never be missing on an African journey.

We fill the fridge and load the rest of the shopping in the car and, since it's almost lunch time, we decide to have lunch here; we go to Roman’s Pizza, a South African chain that makes takeaway pizza but you can also eat at tables that are both inside and outside the restaurant.

Obviously it's not like the Italian pizza, but it's good, you just have to choose the right pizza because on some of them they put the impossible.

We have lunch in peace, we are practically alone, most South Africans probably require home delivery or take takeaway pizza.

After lunch we take our Dr. Livingstone and head to our second stop today: the Stoneridge Mall where Outdoor Warehouse is located, the shop where we go to buy all the things we need for camping.

We park and enter the shop, we already know where we find the things we need and so we go direct.

We have to buy different objects: a cast-iron pot in order to make soups over a fire, in fact normal pots get ruined or burned, they can only be used on gas; we also need some cases to protect some objects, such as pots and grills; we also take a second grill to toast the bread on the stove; finally we take an igloo ground tent of 2.5x2.5x2.5 meters, we don't need it to sleep on the ground but we can use it for eventual guests or to leave in some campsite, where maybe we stop more nights, with some things inside that we can leave there and that we don't need during the day.

We would have liked to buy the plates to get out of the sand, but we should first figure out where to put them because they are a bit cumbersome and then they shouldn't be useful for the journey we're about to take; the only sandy part is between the Moremi Game Reserveand the Chobe National Park, but we won't be there alone, in case they'll pull us out of the sand, so we can wait to make this purchase.

Here at Stoneridge there is one of our favorite bars: Billi Bi, located in the restaurant area, it is a bar that also has a lunch menu but we like it for two reasons: it has a stylish decor and makes a delicious cappuccino that can dwarf many Italian bars.

We sit outdoors and obviously order two cappuccinos, while we drink them we enjoy the climate of Johannesburg, warm but never too much and always windy, but why is there not such climate in Milan?

After paying we get up and do the last commission of the day: we buy the biltong.

Here at the Stoneridge Mall there is a store that only sells biltong, mainly farmed animals, we discovered it last year and since then we always come here because it's really good.

The time has come to return to our hotel, from here it takes about half an hour, net of traffic; we follow our navigator that, instead of letting us take the bypass, makes us take a road that we have never done before and that crosses a series of residential districts interspersed with open spaces, it is definitely much better than the bypass and there is less traffic.

When we arrive at the hotel, we park and arrange everything we have bought in the various compartments of the car and in the ammo boxes, and we arrange better the refrigerator so as to optimize all the spaces; we take a little time but it is necessary to do a job well done.

When we go up to the room, it's about 6.00pm, even today we worked the whole day and we're a little tired; we rest a bit and stay for dinner at the hotel.