The thunderstorm we had in De Aar a few days ago ripped out the telephone lines to our guesthouse, and ever since then the internet access has been a sporadic affair using borrowed cellphones using 3G .. which yields very poor connection. My apologies for the lack of news from the front - more photos will be coming soon.

After waiting for Telkom to repair the line, they came back to us this morning with the most worrying excuse I've ever heard "Aish. We have no cables. We cannot repair your line because we have no stock of the cables. This is because .. ahh .. they steal the cables. We must order in new cables from overseas." 

What? How's that for corporate planning. You're a phone company and you don't have stock of telephone line? 

After hunting around in De Aar, and going from the computer shop .. No, sorry, you want the internet? No, we don't have it. Try the post office .... Yes, we had internet, but the machine is out of order ... try Henk Smith behind the church .. no he doesn't have a sign on the wall, it's his house but they have a hair salon there too ...

But Henk DOES have internet, wireless internet, so we're back in action in the media office.

But now the phone just rang, the sky is looking epic, and I must go off to fly. We'll try for a 150km FAI triangle today, since the wind is all over the place. Adios.