Mapungubwe National Park was the second stop on the Blogitects’ Limpopo road trip. Read about our first and third stops.

I’ve been procrastinating on this post about Mapungubwe National Park because I don’t know where to start. Mapungubwe, which is at the far northern tip of South Africa, across the border from both Zimbabwe and Botswana, was the whole reason we planned our Limpopo road trip; I’d been wanting to go there forever. There is a lot going on in Mapungubwe and it’s a difficult place to explain.

Magoebaskloof was the first stop on the Blogitects’ Limpopo road trip. Read about our second and third stops.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Thorsten and I (a.k.a. the Blogitects) took a 10-day road trip through Limpopo in the second half of December. I’ve traveled extensively in Limpopo, South Africa’s northernmost province, and each time I’m amazed by how much there is to see and how fabulously beautiful and wild it is.

Happy New Year! Thorsten and I recently returned to Joburg after an incredible 10-day road trip through Limpopo province. I have many stories to tell about that trip, but before I get into that I want to write a quick review of my first two months driving Greylene, my new Suzuki Jimny.

I was ambivalent about writing this post. The last time I wrote about Brixton – a cat named after a suburb – was in December 2022, a few weeks after she walked into our lives. Now I’m writing to memorialize her, just a year later, and a part of me feels like it’s a weird thing to do. But even though Brixton, a.k.a. Brixie, wasn’t with us for long, she was special. She had a big impact on our lives. She deserves a proper remembrance.

Some of you might remember a post I wrote last year about bicycle spinning and stance in Soweto. The bicycle stance subculture, which is the art of transforming regular bikes into flamboyant showpieces that ride very close to the ground, stemmed from the car stance culture – same thing, but with cars.

I’m suffering from a creative block this week and couldn’t think of anything to blog about. Then I remembered I have a set of pictures and sketches from my jacaranda walk in Kensington, which I hosted with Johannesburg in Your Pocket a few weeks ago. I never got around to writing about that walk due to the Rugby World Cup madness that happened on the same day, so I’m doing it now.

For those of you who didn’t see on social media already, I bought a car. Her name is Greylene and she is a 2022 [Suzuki Jimny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki_Jimny#:~:text=The%20Suzuki%20Jimny%20(Japanese%3A%20%E3%82%B9%E3%82%BA%E3%82%AD,Japanese%20automaker%20Suzuki%20since%201970.).

I have never been a “car person”. I have never thought much about cars and never understood why people spend such insanely large amounts of money, time, and brain space on cars. My previous car, Henrike – named for the very dear, now-departed friend who sold her to me – was a tiny, no-frills, 2007 Hyundai Atos, and she suited my needs perfectly for a decade.

Last weekend Thorsten and I visited Dolobran, one of Joburg’s oldest, quirkiest, and most mysterious mansions, on a tour with the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation (JHF). Dolobran is unique among Joburg’s “Randlord” mansions (other examples of which include Villa Arcadia and the View) in that it’s privately owned, still occupied by descendants of the original owners, and almost never open to the public. Saturday’s tour was open only to JHF members and photography wasn’t allowed inside.