Back to beautiful S. A

14/08/10

Sitting outside on a veranda with a private garden in the corner of a beautiful sprawling Italian style villa farmhouse. The sun is going down, the crickets are singing, and there's a lovely smokey smell coming from our freshly lit braai. Being back in South Africa is such a relief after the frustrations of Mozambique. The weather failed to changed and we didn't have the time or the patience to wait it out. It became depressing sitting around and not being able to go out. There was so much to see out there, the ocean was just too rough to go out.

After the slightly terrifying journey up to Tofu with our two French friends, who became our very entertaining campsite neighbours for 4 nights, we decided to catch the organized tourist shuttle that runs between Fatima's Tofu and Fatima's Maputo. We paid a lot more to go on this bus than the local chappas, but thought it worth it to have a little more space and comfort for the 8 hour journey. We had to get up at 3.30 am to catch the 4.00 bus. There were so many people waiting I thought they must have overbooked. Obviously not as everyone was squeezed on, some riding on top of the huge amount of tourist luggage. They had a person on every seat and each person had a big bag. Picture this and you'll work out this is not going to leave much space or comfort options. It was so disheartening to see how money grabbing the backpackers could be. Sadly it seems to be standard in Mozambique.

After our experience of Maputo Backpackers we decided to splash out and stay in the Ibis. At the backpackers we paid $40 for the both of us to stay in a dorm. At the Ibis we paid $65 for a double with bathroom and breakfast. Sounds like a deal right? Our room was on the eighth floor and soon after we arrived the lifts stopped working. Our key card wouldn't work and it took 4 requests to get a replacement. Our room was set up as a single. When we went down for breakfast the only thing there was cereal, without milk, ham and cheese, without bread, fruit juice but no coffee. We were then told to hike back up to our room and get our bags as no one was willing to go and get them without the lifts working. The ultimate annoyance was that the lift engineers were all taking their time waiting for the breakfast as it slowly emerged from the kitchen. Excluding the hotel, the food in Mozambique is amazing. It's just finding a stress free sleep that seems impossible.

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Just crossing the border into S.A, what a relief. When we go back to Mozambique, as we must, we'll need to be a little more prepared for all the challenges.

Back in S.A we picked up a car from Nelspruit and drove through the Drakkensberg Escarpment to Graskop. We stayed in a beautiful backpackers called Valley View. This welcoming place is run by Andrew, a young guy with such constant frenetic energy he appears to bounce like Tigger. At Valley View we got a unit with bathroom, kitchen, double room, bunk bed room and our own sun deck all for the same price of the dorm in Maputo... not to keep bringing it up or anything. From Graskop we went on a day trip up to God's Window, Blyde River Canyon and the Three Rondhavels.

Rip off Maputo

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11/08/10

Our easy option for leaving Ponta didn't quite work out. With the excessive amount of luggage (not just ours), and the fact that the family we were supposed to be squeezing in with were actually all adults, there was no way we were ever going to fit in the van. Instead we dropped back at the border to get one of the more frequent local chappas. Having wasted an extra day trying to avoid it, we were back at square on.

With the help of someone with better Portuguese skills than us, we secured the back row of the minibus. I was really grateful for this forward planning as when it came to boarding the bus, it was really little more than a scrum. With so many bags there's no way you can just push your way on like everyone else, and you would just find yourself at the back of the line for every bus. The cramped bus filled with 22 people, only 2 of them kids and many of them with big bags that then had to be balanced on laps or wedged in any available space. These then continually fell on people throughout the journey. Our bags filled more than half the back seat. Once you are wedged in you can't move an inch. Each part of your body slowly goes into cramp and there's no way of stopping it. Regardless of this people take it all in good humour, are friendly and considerate of each other. The guy in front of us made himself extra uncomfortable by holding some strangers child, twisting himself to stop the sleeping kid's head from bouncing on the window, he then used his arm to prop up another guy. People who have little experience of the many small luxuries in life, the things that we take for granted, have developed a nature that is often overly generous.

When we arrived in Maputo we had to take a ferry across a bay to get to the centre of the city. There we took a taxi to the backpackers. The taxi that was willing to take us without ripping us off was a rust bucket with a windscreen that was a jigsaw puzzle of cracks. We had to be push started to get us going, then trundled across the city in 5^th gear at 20 km an hour. Accommodation in Maputo is limited, and also at the time very full. Maputo Backpackers was our third choice, and there we were given the last 2 beds in a 10 bed dorm for $40. the dorm was so small that you had to turn sideways to fit between some of the bunks. There was no water half the time, the kitchen was chaos, and the lounge was taken over by the staff's children who sat around without shorts or underwear watching cartoons full blast. Take me back to Thailand, for the price of one bed in this place we would have got a night in a nice apartment in Bangkok.

The only good thing about Maputo Backpackers was the fact that we met lots of really nice people who also had the misfortune to be staying there, 2 of whom offered to drive us the 8 hours up the coast to Tofu. The other option was pay $30 to get a bus leaving at 5.00 am in the morning. The guys who drove us were really nice, both from Paris. The drive was a hair-raising one though, and it was a miracle that we arrived with only one speeding ticket and a dead chicken.

Homesick

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10/08/10

Our plan to stay in Ponta for 2 nights changed when we saw the campsite. It was as basic as the one in Sodwana, but we were paying double for it. The whole town was rapidly filling up with 4x4's full of large loud S.A's drinking, playing loud music and towing their boats or jet-skis around. It was the long weekend in S.A and the campsite was becoming full with teams of guys who constructed house size tents. It seems that being a S.A white male means at some point in your life you need to take a part share in a tent so huge and complex that it probably contains a separate dressing room with wardrobes. Camping like this appears to involve a disproportionate amount of standing around and drinking beer. These guys weren't as bad as the ones who thought it'd be fun to race jet-skis up and down the bay at 3.00 in the morning.

The only way in and out of Ponta without your own transport is on a local chappa. These dilapidated minibuses leave from the market as and when they get full. In typical African style 'full' means rammed. We were completely daunted by the task of getting our 70kg of luggage a kilometre along a deep sand track and somehow onto one of these buses that seem to swarm with over eager locals well practised in the art of elbowing their way to the front. The thought of this soon made us change our plans again. Instead we arrange a much more pricey lift with the colourful guy who gave us a lift from the border. He said it'd be no problem for us to squeeze in with some other guests for the 2 hour journey to Maputo, the capital city.

While in Ponta we had our biggest change of plans yet, and decided we wanted to fly home 3 weeks early. Trying to arrange this was impossible. No internet in the whole place and 3 phones from 3 countries failed to get us in contact with the outside world. This only added to my frustration and depression. In 8 years of travelling I’ve never been homesick. Now, when all the amazing sights are starting to blend into one and go unappreciated , all I want to do is go home early. Feel quite pathetic, but now for the first time I can empathise with those I’ve previously mocked for feeling homesick on holiday.