A Breakfast run

On Thursday morning Grant and I got onto the motorbike and rode to the city to buy treatment for my ponds which had collected algae in the three months we've been away. We decided to make it a "breakfast run" which means you ride to a restaurant of your choice, stop and have breakfast and then you return home. (Although this time we continued to a garden centre a few kilometers ahead and made our purchases)

We had breakfast just a few kilometers outside the city at Engen One Stop. Wherever we travel through the country, we always have breakfast at the Wimpy, (which is affiliated to Engen One Stop) a fast food franchise that has been around in SA since the late sixties. You are always assured of the most delicious Wimpy coffee (though I have rooibos tea) and a well-presented and reasonably-priced meal here. Grant normally has the English-style breakfast called Double Up which consists of two rashers of streaky bacon, two eggs (fried to your specifications) a pork sausage and a slice of toast with  butter and jam on the side. I enjoy the Shape breakfast of fresh fruit topped with yoghurt and muesli and a drizzle of honey. At the Wimpy they have a pen for the city children who don't see/know  domestic animals. This one above had goats, including kids, geese and donkeys. Here these very woolly donkeys (we've never seen this type) flea each other

After breakfast we rode to a large garden centre to buy "Pool clear" for our ponds and a few toys for Shadow (we left all his toys except for Shaun the Sheep and Morris, Norris and Horace the mice in Khartoum)

As we passed through the toll gate on the return trip,  we stopped for a drink of water (we brought bottled water along in our luggage). I was horrified to see this whole area littered with bottles, plastic bags and other rubbish. There is always litter in South Africa (in Africa for that matter) where there are humans. Sadly,  many of these bottles and cans above had contained beer and stronger alcohol before they were thrown in the grass. Because of the loose-alcohol-and-road-rules in our country, people drink and drive causing many tragic and often fatal accidents on our roads. Though I don't like to generalize, the most common traffic which stops here after the toll gate,  consists of long-haul truckers. Therefore it can be taken as fact that many of these huge trucks on our roads are driven by people who are under the influence of alcohol

Sadly these are more beer bottles thrown in the grass beside the road

We bought Shadow a smaller harness as he managed to get out of his blue one while I was walking him on the lawn! I don't think he realised he was "free" because I manged to scoop him up into my arms and hustle him inside to safety. More about Shadow's walks in the garden in a later post