Before leaving for our trip around South Africa and Swaziland it is essential to shop here in Johannesburg, where there is practically everything.

To tell the truth some things we have brought them from home, such as the Aperol, that here is hard to find, but it is essential to make the spritz in the savannah, now a great classic of our African travels.

This year we also brought the wine, we have three bottles of our favorite winery in the Oltrepo Pavese: the Casa Montini; we have two whites and one red: a riesling, a chardonnay and a croatina.

They will make us feel a little more at home during this trip and will keep us company while admiring the sunset after a day spent in the bush, looking for animals to observe and photograph.

This morning we have breakfast at the hotel and then we take our Dr. Livingstone and we leave, we have downloaded on Google Maps the offline map of Johannesburg and we also have the Maps.me app; it would be impossible otherwise to orient ourselves in such a large city.

We are headed to the Stoneridge Mall, that, more than a shopping center, is a shopping city.

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Our first stop is the Outdoor Warehouse, here in Stoneridge there is one of the points of sale of this chain of shops specialized in camping products; it's a huge store and very well stocked with anything that can be used for camping.

We take a tour to see what they offer, we would buy everything, but the space we have available on our car is limited; however, now we understand why the South Africans, when they go on safari, they also bring the trailer, it is because they buy all these things and then do not know where to put them in the car!

Outdoor Warehouse sells all types of refrigerators, barbeques of all sizes and shapes, tents from the smallest to the large ones as big as an apartment, sun beds, mattresses, pots and other items for cooking and canvass cases to cover anything; there is also a part dedicated to clothing.

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We have to buy two collapsible foam mattresses, so we put them on top of our mattress, to sleep even more comfortably, and two ammo boxes; the latter are rigid plastic boxes, closed with an airtight lid, they are stackable and comfortable to move, they are perfect to keep in the car with food or other objects that must always be at hand.

We take a ride and buy a new teapot, blue and all in metal, to boil the water directly on the fire, a new pan with its canvass case, so we replace one of ours that is a bit ruined; we also found the metal plates and, as they are more comfortable than ours, we buy them, we also take a new grill for meat and two pink metal wine glasses, to give a tone of color to our table.

We would spend an entire day at the Outdoor Warehouse and a lot of money, so it's better to go as we still have several things to do.

We stop at a very nice bar the Cafe Billi Bi, that is located in an area where there are also several restaurants, we take two cappuccinos; but how good, they did them really well!

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We continue our tour and go to the supermarket, here is the Spar, we have to do some shopping.

If we had all the necessary space we would buy everything in Johannesburg, but in our car there is not enough space for everything we need for the whole trip, so, in addition to shopping for the first few days, we buy everything that is not perishable, while the rest, like fruit, vegetables and meat, we will buy them during the trip.

We also take several containers for food, it is very convenient to arrange the pantry and to prepare lunch the night before when we will be on safari.

At the end we fill a cart of stuff, maybe we have exaggerated a bit but somehow we will make it to fit everything inside the car.

As the last stage of shopping here at Stoneridge Mall we go to Biltong @SA, a shop that sells only biltong and wors, we buy something we will eat during the trip, we would buy everything, but then where do we put it?

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We load all the shopping in the car, turn on the refrigerator and then, since it is already lunchtime, we decide to have lunch here; we go back where there are restaurants and bars and go to one of our favorite chains in Africa: Ocean Basket.

Ocean Basket is present in several places in South Africa as well as in Nairobi in Kenya, here the fish is good and fresh, it is both raw and cooked in different ways; as soon as we can we always come here willingly.

We are happy because we managed to buy everything we need in one morning so we have some time to go for a ride, we have not been going to Rosebank for a while now, today is the right opportunity.south africa sudafrica exploringafrica safariadv kruger lion safari travel