Breadcrumbs

Thrifty Car Rental catalogue of errors

We had a few problems with the car hire. This is the with hindsight collection of those problems.

Picking up the car from Thrifty Car Rental

No handover.

No advice about tyre pressures on dirt roads

No instruction about hub locks or transfer box. (Instructions for transfer box later found on driver's sun shield)

No car manual / instruction booklet

No advice about 4x4 high at all times on dirt roads or if this damages tyres and transmission. Apparently some people are moving over to continuous 4x4 H instead of only in bad conditions with 4x4 Low being used when stuck. The always engaged 4x4 of the like of Range Rover and Volvo have very sophisticated power monitoring and sharing.

We have also learnt that Thrifty's contract with Your Safari, the actual hirer of the car, includes tyre and windscreen protection. As they knew it was hired through Your Safari, as confirmed in conversation at pickup, why did they try to sell us cover that was already in place. How many other times was this successful?

 

 

Brandberg White Lady Lodge

Start

The biggest sand dune in the world

After another leisurely breakfast, we set of from Tsauchab River Camp towards the sand dunes. But before we go there let’s talk about that breakfast. It was buffet style with a cooked segment to order. Nothing special about that as a concept. This however was different. The whole of the buffet was laid out on our huge table for two. Orange juice in a jug, fruit salad in a glass, a selection of cereals, a big bowl of yogurt, and a plate of cold meats and cheese. Scrambled eggs and bacon brought latter. Even the scrambled egg was served as a cylinder shape. All very pleasant. Still not quite ready to leave though. Time for a lovely glass of homemade lemonade sat out on the veranda looking at the green lawns and pool, watching the birds fly around, gathering food for their chicks. It was only after a while that I realised that I had parked myself on a lounger immediately under a cup on the wall that had been requisitioned as a nest. Spoke to Nikky, our host, about how we appreciated the grit around the chalet being raked and brushed smooth every day. In the morning you can see the footprints of all the nocturnal visitors. Not all of them announced their presence, most came and went silently in the night with only the tracks to tell of their presence. Not so the Kudu, a loud staccato, barking type noise woke me up in the night. We were told before bed that if we were lucky we might get a visit, and we did. I didn’t wake up enough to try to see it. Before breakfast, as we woke up there were a pair of birds calling to each other across the dried up river bed. First a load call close by, followed by a feint reply. A wonderful start to the day, out in the secluded wilderness of the desert. Whilst eating our splendid breakfast, we were treated to the sight of a woodpecker which had made is whole in tree near the window. Then it disappeared into the hole. Into the car and down the drive festooned with art sculptures and on to the road again. TRC to S Now we know we are in Namibia. Yesterday there was tar roads and traffic. We drove through Windhoek and there were other towns on the way. Traffic lights and speed cameras, taxies and buses. All the attributes of a conurbation. Today, we start in the wilderness, by a dry river bank, and end the day by another dry river bank, which perhaps flows, on the surface, every four years. Vast distances, all on gravel roads, except for the S Park. There are magnificent mountain ranges on each side of the road, and very occasionally, one of them gets in the way of the straight road is forced to have a bend or two. In England, we would be stopping to take photos of such sights every few minutes. Here it quickly becomes the norm, or you don’t get to the planned destination, and you miss out on something even more spectacular. The roads are wide and generally straight, with little traffic, so in European terms there is less to concentrate on. However, the surface is continually changing, which puts the concentration back up there plus some. Concentrating so much makes it easy to miss things off the road field of vision. One trick to help with this is to look at other vehicles if they are stopped. Why have they stopped? What have they seen? On instance of this was a heard of Onyx resting under a tree. We quickly landed the car, and turned back. Sharp breaking on corrugated roads is generally to be avoided. It looked not unlike a farm in England, cattle around food with a water trough nearby. However, it was in the desert and the cows were Onyx. Just lazing in the shade of a big tree. As we watched they all got up and dispersed, back to the task of grazing in the bright sunshine. S We arrived at the main gate and were somewhat confused when asked where we wanted to go. Were there options? What were the options? We just wanted to find out about the national park. Apparently we wanted to go to reception. Registration and name noted and we were allowed through the gate, and 100m later arrived at reception. There was an adjoining camp site shop. A big fridge of water provided us with 2 five litre and 2 one litre bottles of water for a reasonable price. The permit to the park was purchased at reception, and we were ready to explore with a rudimentary map in hand. First though, the task of eating the ice creams bought from the shop. Ice creams eaten in the car under a tree for the welcome shade. There are birds in the tree so of course the cameras come out. Right, trip to the loo, adjacent to the reception and café, and we are actually on our way. We did not make 200m before it was time to stop again. To our right was the campsite. To our surprise there in the middle of all of the human activity of a campsite was a solitary Onyx just wandering through.

Oyster Box Guesthouse

Start

Noordhoek beach seen from Chapman's Peak Drive
Noordhoek beach seen from Chapman's Peak Drive

The Cape of Good Hope

Here we are on 27th October 2016, our first full day in Cape Town. We have spent months longing for this day. It has arrived and the Sun is shining with hardly a cloud in the sky. It is warm, just into the 20s C. What a great start. So much to see and do in such a short time. 

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News Flash

Change of host Sept 2023

 

Change of host Sept 2023

 

In the begining of August 2023 I transfered my ivanhurst.me.uk sites, including this one from 123-reg to IONOS. It was meant to be a simple task. However, that was to to be the case. The reason for the move was primarily the hugh increase in price that 123-reg was applying regarding email boxes. Previously, the upto 500 of the boxes were included in the various hosting packages I had. Now they were going to charge for each mailbox based on size, and as far as I could make out, this was going to cost me nearly £2,000. This was not acceptable, and I did not get satisfactory answers from support. So I turned of all the auto renews and stated to move sites and domains accross to IONOS.

Travel data problems

 

Travel data problems

This is where it starts to get a little technical.

The site is built on a content management system, CMS, using Joomla. Joomla is moving forward and version 3.10.?? is being discontinued. Future developments are for version 4.??

Similarly, PHP 7 is being replaced with PHP 8.

Part of the migration is relatively simple, I have already changed to a new template which works on the new platforms.

However, some of the helper applications, which work within Joomla are not yet ready.

Fabrik is one of those applications, if fact a significant 'Joomla Custom Website Application Builder'.

Refresh 2021

 

Site refresh Easter 2021

I decided to give the site a bit of a refresh over Easter 2021 and install a new template and some additional functions. One of the things I didn't like about the old site was the delay in text appearing which probably meant some people left before the content appeared. This has been corrected now.