15 May

15 May 2011

Thanks Ian and Maria for a wonderful evening at your home. We had a typical South African braai and it was great to talk about South Africa!!  We were really international group, 4 South Africans, 1 Finnish and 1 Bulgarian / SouthAfrican. Lots of Meat, salads, beer, wine etc!!

The forecasted rain started about 10mins after we got back to the campsite after our braai.  We had packed everything away carefully, so we just snuggled down in our sleeping bags and listened to the thunder and rain.  The forecast said rain for the whole weekend!!  But luckily when we woke on Saturday morning the rain had stopped and we could pack our tent in relatively dry conditions. 

We headed the 50km towards Aarau where Marius and his family live.  The roads are good, very little open space and so our travelling was very slow through all the villages.  The GPS took us to the correct address on the outskirts of town.  Sleepy Swissky had only just climbed out of bed and it was really great to catch up with him again.  The Hochstrasses have really made us feel welcome and we have been properly spoilt.  Marius has just finished his final written exams and just has the oral exams left and then he goes into the army where he has to complete 300 days before starting university.

Ring Ting is still leaking water, we went to a BMW dealer and we were told that they don’t repair parts in Switzerland, cost of labour is too high so they just replace!!  The cost for a new radiator is CHF750, about R6000, fitted.  Thanks very much but no thanks so we went back to Marius’s house and Larry had a good look and it seems that the radiator is not leaking but it is leaking from the seals around the water pump that were replaced in Italy but the leak is so small that we will wait until we get to Germany where there is a big second hand market for bike parts.     One of the mechanics at the dealer said that he had just met up with two Germans who had also travelled through Africa – Holga and Anja so we now know that the world is very small!!

Yesterday we went shopping for a while – got new jeans that fit a bit better!!- and had a look around the city centre.  Very interesting to see the architecture, and layout of the old city.  Then we had a dinner at a local “farm” style restaurant, which was really nice, and experienced some Swiss cuisine.  Food is very expensive here – we would have to live on bread and water to survive!!