TheBigTrip

Answers to Brain Teasers Featured in Okavango Delta Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 09:45:00 +0000

And here are the answers, finally, to the Brain Teasers featured in our Okavango Delta blog entry in May 2011:

Q. How do you turn 182 into a number less than 20 when you can only move 2 sticks (and you must re-use these sticks elsewhere).

A. Move the two vertical sticks from the 8 to form 13 1/2.

Q. How do you fit ten people into 9 rooms.

A. Rather than 10 physical people, try TEN PEOPLE (9 letters fit nicely into 9 boxes).

Q. How do you make the rubbish in this picture appear to be off the shovel when you can only move and reuse 2 sticks.

A. Push the stick at the top of the handle up so that the handle becomes a side of the shovel and one side becomes the new handle, then move remaining side of the shovel to its new position:

The Last Stand

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:26:00 +0000

We arrived into Johannesburg at 8am in the morning and again were delighted to have arrived back into a country that just works. Even though we feared repercussions from the recent strikes which affected petrol supplies, we got into a taxi immediately who was happy to agree to a good price and took us quickly to Purple Palms in Kempton Park. We were even more delighted to discover that the wifi here was free and fast. To be able to shop in the local supermarket again for less than a couple of pounds a day was also very exciting (especially when we bought a bucket load of wine and some Cadbury's!).

So we have spent our last couple of days just catching up on the blog (in the knowledge that with a wedding coming up we simply won't do that back home) and sleeping. We are exhausted. No one tells you how much hard work travelling can be. I know it sounds stupid when you have also lazed on a beach for days on end. But we are tired of moving around all the time and looking forward to coming home.

But we also knew that we wanted to see Soweto so on our final full day we headed off on a tour. Eric our guide took us first past Soccer City where the final of the 2010 World Cup was held and then we drove on to Soweto.

South Western Township only became known as Soweto in 1963 and today has 3 classes living in it. The rich, who live in very nice individual houses in an area nick-named Beverley Hills. An area that doesn't need security fencing as they have a good neighbourhood watch system. An area that is also still 100% black. Eric laughed as I said I might move there it looked so nice and said I would gain an entry into the Guinness Book of Records if I did. But this area still looks over onto temporary hostels that house large families in single rooms. That don't have electricity because the government is desperately trying to move them out into proper homes rather than wasting money on short term solutions. They have chemical toilets only and fetch their water from outside each day.

The middle classes live in matchbox houses, red brick 4 roomed buildings just like the ones occupied by Desmond Tutu and previously by Nelson Mandela. These houses are permanent, have electricity and water on meters but most still have outside toilets, some still long drops.

The poor are still sadly in tin shacks. Just one room for a full family. Shacks made of anything they can find from salvaged buses, to carpets thrown out by building sites. However most of these areas have proper long drop toilets where they used to have chemical ones and the government is doing its best to move people out quickly as part of its Renovation Development Project. It is just taking time to build the new properties unfortunately. And sadly, Eric told us that people are still abusing the system of free housing which is impacting on those that truly need it. People are the same the world over.

The tour took us through the site of the Soweto shootings in 1976 where Hector Pieterson was immortalised by a photograph of his body being carried after being shot by police during the student protests against Afrikaans being used as a medium of instruction.

The Hector Pieterson museum is actually very good and seemed to me to be as unbiased as possible towards the subject. But perhaps it is best for people to visit for themselves and to draw their own conclusions.

It was a fitting end to our BigTrip. We fly home in a few hours.

It's been fantastic, all of it. Even the tough parts. But I'll save our reflections for one final blog...

Testies Survival Kit: Sewing Kit

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 06:42:00 +0000

ITEM USED: Sewing Kit

COUNTRY USED IN: Everywhere!

CHALLENGE OVERCOME: All things that needed sewing.

I have used the sewing kit in my Testies Survival Kit more than any other item. Here is a list of what it's been used for:

Sewing button back on Sean's shorts

Putting button back on my trousers

Sewing the bottom of an elephant (toy made in Malawi given as gift to Niece and Nephew)

Sewing a 'hook' into Sean's 20p hat from Thailand so that I could clip it onto a bag so that we didn't leave it behind. This hook eventually wore out so I replaced it with a better one using part of a ribbon from Brazil given to us as a friendship bracelet by Gustav on the Trans-Siberian.

Sewing up my shorts after I ripped them on a protruding nail on a chair

Fixing a seam in Sean's 'Jesus Shirt'

And had it not been in the stolen backpacks, I would have also used it to sew up my only pair of trousers after I ripped those on a protruding nail also, and sewed up the top of the bag we bought from PEP to carry the few items we then had left after it came apart within hours of purchase. As it was I had to pay one of the many men on the streets of Mozambique with old Singer machines to fix the bag which cost me more than the bag itself as he happened not to have change (surprise!).

Best Testies Survival Kit item? Probably.

Pemba - Take 2

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 05:18:00 +0000

Now this is more like it.

I've noted before in this blog (and, indeed, in life generally) that sometimes you get things wrong. Yes, even me. So it was that our decision not to stay at the Pemba Dive and Bushcamp on our initial visit to Pemba has proven to be a poor call on our part. Had Jen and I stayed here pre-Ibo as well as post-Ibo, not only would we be in possession of a much higher proportion of our personal belongings, but we would have been able to enjoy the tranquil surrounds, beachfront bar, stunning food and superb hospitality of this wonderful place for more than just the couple of days.

Already feeling supremely contented after our magical few days on and around Ibo, our evening arrival at the bushcamp was greeted with two immediate mood-enhancers - a secure double room (even better than the twin bush hut we'd requested) and a red meat feast the likes of which we'd not had for a long, long time.

With just days of our odyssey remaining, we were well past the point of wanting to make plans or sight see and instead were all about the relaxation, which is predominantly what we've done here. On our last day today we did have one - rather naive - hope, which was to make a third and final attempt to get a copy of our police report from the World's Finest Police Department (TM). Inevitably, that didn't happen, firstly for the previously stated reasons of "secrecy" and then secondly because it had been moved from one department to another and the man with the key was out of town. They promised that if we came back "tomorrow" we'd definitely, absolutely, positively get a copy of the report. They'd said that the previous two times as well. It was irrelevant, of course - we are flying out to Johannesburg in a matter of hours, and I'd bet whatever you liked that if we did show up tomorrow we'd leave with exactly as many copies as we have on any previous occasion.

But meh, this place is way, way too nice to be worrying about small negatives like that. Owners Rudi and Brenda, and onsite manager Lynn could not be more helpful, while their chef is some kind of genius. Ok, he keeps it simple - get lots of meat, perfectly cook lots of meat, serve lots of meat - but it's just an epic win all round. I've managed to lose something like 15kg over the course of this trip, but I reckon I've put at least half that back on in the past three days. All while watching the sunset over the water, or drinking beer by the campfire, or just generally being in a state of uber-relaxed bliss.

So here we are, Jen and I, ready to fly to Jo'Burg for our final stop but sad to be leaving so soon. Our lack of a camera charger means we're saving the battery for a planned trip to Soweto, and have no photos of this place, so you'll just have to take our word for it.

Pemba Dive and Bushcamp, the perfect end to our Mozambican chapter.

Things Jennie will remember:

1) Playing chess with Sean in the big games room (and beating him on the last occasion!)

2) Reading Purple Hibiscus on the private beach

3) Meeting Anita and Ven again (who we'd first bumped into on Ibo)

4) Amarula

5) Our final fresh coconut

6) The generosity of Rudi and Brenda. They didn't have to care as much as they did. But they did. And we thank them for it.

Testies Survival Kit: Fishing Line

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 06:51:00 +0000

ITEM USED: Fishing Line

COUNTRY USED IN: Mozambique

CHALLENGE OVERCOME: Hunger

Mozambique is famed for its seafood. So of course, I had to use the fishing line from my wonderful Testies Survival Kit to hook myself some of that!

First I had to figure out how to put the thing together! Turns out that the hooks get tied onto the clear wire. Then you have to tie in one of the balls as a weight a few inches above the hook. Then to the end of the fishing wire you tie one of the 'spinners' (the little metal clasps) to prevent the wire from tangling. Then you tie the rope to the other end of the spinner and hey presto, you're all set to go.

Off I set onto my dhow into the mangroves of Ibo Island. And waited. And waited.

Of course, sometimes you don't catch fish:

But then, sometimes you do:

And sometimes you just cheat and buy them when you get home:

However you get hold of it, the seafood in Mozambique is worth the effort!

Paradise Archipelago

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 04:18:00 +0000

Booking a private transfer to the Quirimbas Archipelago turned out to be the Best. Decision. Ever.

The road to Tandanhangue is long, unsealed, rocky, dusty and full of pot holes. But this didn't phase me at all in my nice plush minibus for 5 with leg room galore. We arrived in 3 hours (which would have taken twice as long by public chapa) and our motorised private dhow was waiting for us. In we hopped, noting how much care the captain took over wrapping everyone's bags in a plastic cover and off we sped through the mangroves. Turns out the slightest wind and a motorised boat means water splash. And that's why the bags were wrapped up so. But Sean and I didn't care as we got soaked. We'd made it to Ibo. We'd made it.

We met Pip and Sandy on our journey to Ibo, who became our travelling companions for our days on the island. They both work for Médecins Sans Frontières and are stationed in Harare at the moment. Sandy is from Vancouver and Pip from England but hasn't lived there for many years now having been a key figure at Haiti and other such posts where medical assistance is urgently required.

Since we were in the splashing out kind of mood we stayed at Miti Miwiri in a lovely 4 poster bed room.

We settled in and then headed off for a stroll around Ibo town. The town is very similar to Mozambique Island, including being similarly ghostly. The mangroves are more prevalent here and their fort is smaller, but no less beautiful.

And silver is the thing that they do here and so we watched them make the intricate jewellery and were reminded of Inle Lake in Myanmar (although we noted there it was all female and here it was all male workers).

The food here is also fantastic, with no shortage of decent chefs. Our first night we dined on soup and crayfish covered in a delicious barbecue salsa, finished with a shot of some tasty liquor.

One major activity to do here is to walk through the mangrove at low tide to the neighbouring island of Quirimbas. So at 7.30am the next day off we set. It's an incredible 3 hour walk and you have to go quickly, because the last thing you want it to get stuck when the tide comes in. The first half is all through the mangroves, splashing your way through the mud and puddles, minding out for the crabs and mangrove roots. The scenery then changes as you walk through a water channel over rock pools of small fish, caught until the tide returns. And then it opens up into a vast plain of sand where you can see the far off tide, but gasp as it catches up to you so quickly as you walk. At one point we waded through a channel of incoming tide that went up to my waist - we had obviously dawdled!

I learned that the mangrove has a stick-like pod that when ready drops to the floor. If the pod sticks into the ground vertically then a new tree will grow and if not, well better luck next time.

I had a mudpack on my arm which came up silky smooth. And we bumped into some local ladies (who initially ran away screaming) but then allowed us to take their photos. The youngest had mussiro on her face, a white paste used as a sunscreen or beauty treatment, the patterns of which can denote marital status and other things. Again, reminding me of the ladies at Inle Lake.

As we approached the island of Quirimbas we gasped at its beauty. The waters were turquoise and warm, the ladies carried heavy loads of wood on their head from the mangrove, the fishermen gathered their nets and the beaches stretched forever. We spent a pleasant hour walking around the village meeting the local children, drinking fresh coconut juice, gazing at the baobab trees before returning to the beach to laze there until the tide was in and we could charter a dhow back to Ibo.

That night Sean and I dined at African Pot with Pip and Sandy, Fabian and Augustina (a couple who we met the night before at our lodge) on a starter of crab quiche, followed by the most sumptuous goat we've ever had - it was so tender and juicy, served with matapa and rice and finished with a chocolate tart.

We thought our days couldn't get any better, but they could! For the next day we got a boat to the nearby sandbank. This was just desert island dreams. There is nothing but this sandbank, surrounded by washed up shells and corals and turquoise seas. It's a shame again that the tide comes and makes this bank disappear otherwise we'd have happily stayed for hours.

We had originally intended to follow the sandbank with a trip to another island called Matemo but the winds had started to pick up and our captain said we had to head back. Flipping heck had the winds picked up! We struggled to even get back onto the boat as it swelled in the waves. A few minutes out on the sea and we were drenched from the spray and the waves. It was absolutely the most fun! The boat rocked and rolled. The waves swept over us. And I screamed with delight.

When we got back to the hotel, Laura, whom we had met on the journey from Mozambique Island to Pemba arrived at our lodge. It was great to catch up and spend our last few hours with her.

The moon that evening was full and beautiful and it shone over the buildings with an almost orange haze. It's a shame my camera was almost out of battery since the camera charger was in our stolen bags and I wasn't able to capture the moon in all its glory. I'll certainly remember it though at the end of the street, big and bright and stunning. We ate at Miti Miwiri that night on bruschetta, prawn pumpkin and coconut pie before I got beaten at chess by the headmaster of Matemo school. I hadn't played in years, and he knew all the text book moves since he practises mostly against his computer! I didn't stand a chance.

But again our time here had gone all too quickly and it was already time to leave. We finished our last morning with breakfast at Cinco Portas on homemade breads, peanut butter, bacon, fresh fruits and eggs, said goodbye to Laura and hopped back into our dhow.

These islands are amazing. If you ever get a chance to go, do it. And do it in style too, it's worth the extra few dollars.

Here are the photos:

BT87_Quirimbas Archipelago 14 - 16 July 2011

* Thank you to Sandy for allowing me to take a copy of all her photos, some of which are used in this blog

The Bare Necessities

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:17:00 +0000

So we haven't quite made it to Ibo yet.

Jen and I have been staying, as you know, at a backpacker establishment known as Russell's Place (named after the owner) but its other name is Pemba Magic Lodge. We now know why the place is "magic" - two nights ago our backpacks mysteriously disappeared without trace from our dorm room. Thankfully Jen and I had our valuable stuff - money, passports, laptop, camera with us in the bar at the time of the theft and so haven't lost any of that. We've just - rather tediously - lost our clothes, shoes, toiletries and - most annoyingly - all the little trinkets and souvenirs and presents we'd picked up in Africa over the past six months. Nothing world-ending to lose, but bloody annoying nonetheless. Jen's been shopping today for a change of clothes and some toiletries, but it is safe to say that we're right down to the bare necessities now. How very hardcore of us.

How did this happen, you may ask? Well the dorm we were was built onto the top of a shipping container and so while it had stairs, it didn't actually have a door (which in Africa is pretty standard on dorm rooms). That being said, it was upstairs and out of plain view, and our backpacks were chained by travel lock to our bed. Compare this to a number of the campers in Russell's establishment who were simply in unsecured tents with bags lying unprotected next to them and you can see our suspicion - we were by no means the easiest or most convenient target, and yet somehow our bags seem to have been specifically targeted by someone who knew they were there. The "guard" to our dorm was apparently asleep and somehow the thieves (because there had to be more than one) escaped completely unnoticed.

Now I don't want to go slinging around claims like "it was an inside job."

But the inescapable conclusion is that it was an inside job.

Russell isn't actually here at the moment and his manager Rafael has been handling things. And by "handling" I mean making a half-arsed attempt to seem concerned whilst telling Jen (twice) that "maybe if we gave a little money the bags would show up again." It was unclear to Jen whether he was asking for the money himself, or just indicating that this is the way things work around here, but it's lucky for both Rafael and myself that he said that to Jen, and not me. Had he said it to me he would now be in hospital, and I would now be in jail for assault and GBH. It's actually quite galling to still be staying here, but we've had to remain here so that our dealings with the police could go more smoothly and they knew where and how to contact us. We have, at least, been moved to a different room.

Speaking of the Mozambican police, well it's been reassuring that in a week of such distress and confusion they have been all we expected them to be - bureaucratic, unhelpful and generally incompetent. They are also refusing to give us a copy of the police report we signed, due to it now being "secret." Telling them that it's not actually a secret from us given that we're the ones who wrote it (translating everything we lost into Portuguese no less!) and signed it has so far proved unsuccessful and, I daresay, will continue to remain so. While in the police station for the third time I actually saw a list of cases under police investigation where someone had been caught and arrested. Having seen these guys in action I was genuinely stunned - how bad a criminal do you have to be to actually get caught by these mugs?

It would be remiss of me not to mention Hywel and Megan here - introduced by Jen in the previous entry - who have been absolute champions over the past couple of days. They've bought us drinks, assisted us with the police, Hywel even offered me clothes...and most brilliant of all they've just cooked us the most stunning seafood feast on the basis that they didn't want our memories of this place to be negative. Having also had such a good (albeit brief) time with James and Sam on Mozambique Island, we can only think that the house the four of them shared in Malawi must have been a fantastic place to live.

And in the spirit of not letting such an incident have a negative impact on our trip, we have decided that tomorrow we're going to go across to Ibo and the Quirimbas Archipelago anyway, and what's more we're going to get to the boat on a private 4WD transfer rather than a seven-hour chapa ride. I reckon we've earned that.

A final mention though, to our dear Russell and his truly "magic"place. I've done quick count and by my reckoning we've so far this year found accommodation at 122 different hotels, hostels, guesthouses, homestays and campsites. At 121 of those we haven't been robbed.

Take a bow Russell. Take a bow.

Please Can We Go To Pemba?

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 02:16:00 +0000

I think I tempted fate by labelling our last journey blog Final Journey From Hell? Our travel from Mozambique Island to Pemba was very eventful. This time we had Laura from Texas as a travelling companion and Laura spoke the lingo! It started off well as we picked up a chapa as soon as we left Ruby Backpackers at 4.30am. The chapa said they were going to Namiala and the price was decent enough not to argue. So on we hopped.

Shortly after the bridge from the island most people jumped off and ran onto another direct to Nampula bus. We didn't think much of this since we weren't going all the way back to Nampula but instead getting off at Namiala, the junction to Pemba. The chapa then sped off, only to turn around and go back again to the bridge. This wasn't a good sign. There was another direct to Nampula chapa and so Sean went to check it out. But the drive then intervened and stated he would charge us 50% of our price if we got off, even though we'd come less than 1km in the chapa. So we stayed put, but this prompted them to get going.

However, our hopes were dashed when we arrived at Manapa just up the road. The driver wanted us to get out here and sit on the top of a pile of sugar bags on the back of a pick-up. Now we drew the line there and Laura managed to decipher that they weren't going to Namiala at all and that we had to change, but since she was able to tell the driver that he wouldn't let us off when we wanted to get off the driver conceded that he'd have to find another chapa to put us onto. So we drove to Manapa bus depot and found just that and made the switch.

Of course though, this new chapa needed to fill up. So as we went back and forth never quite making the junction turn towards Namiala our hopes of picking up the big bus connection at Namiala faded with every passing minute.

Still we arrived there eventually and decided just to get on anything that was going towards Pemba. After a few minutes a man in a private pick-up allowed just me, Sean, Laura and this other chap to hop in the back. And off he sped.

We overtook all the lorries that had refused to let us hitch. We passed the inselbergs of granite rock, formed through volcanic activity years ago where the soft surrounding rock has since worn away.

We started to grin as we realised that this expected 6 hour journey was probably only going to take 3! Then we caught up with the big buses as a police stop point. The driver beckoned us to get out and we groaned as we thought he might be trying to put us on the big buses. But no. It was worse. One of the buses (the Grupo Mecular bus we'd been hoping to pick up in Namiala) had had a crash. The front and door side of the bus were completely smashed in and all the passengers were lining the roads. No one was seriously hurt thank goodness, but all the other big buses had pulled over to assist. Turns out we'd have been waiting for hours if we'd actually caught those buses in the end. Seems our mean chapa driver at 4.30am had done us a favour as off we sped again in our private pick-up.

The driver dropped Laura off at Pemba Dive & Bushcamp, drove Sean and I to Wimbi beach and we said our goodbyes. Sean and I then walked a little up the road towards Russell's Place before we were picked up again by another nice driver who let us hitch just the 1km down the road to save us walking. Seems that I also managed to pick up some decent raccoon eyes after all that time in the sun!

The place was a little disappointing. We'd expected it to be nearer to the beach. But the bar and food was cheap (they even served a pizza that contained Aborigine).

We met lots of cool people that evening, including Niklas and Carl from Sweden who were researching for their Masters, Carmel from England who had travelled here 8 years ago and never left and Hywel and Megan from Wales and Scotland who turned out to be the ex-Malawi housemates of Sam and James whom we'd met in Mozambique Island. Small world!!

We figured it wouldn't be so bad here after all! Besides, Pemba is a mere stop-over on our way further north to the Quirimbas Archipelago. We walked the 7km into Pemba the next day to find a working ATM to stock up on cash. Pemba isn't really much to talk about, it has a large market (but we've seen so many now it didn't excite us) and is otherwise just run down and shabby. We managed to hitch a ride back to Russell's with Rob and Joe from an elephant charity and packed our bags ready to head out to Ibo tomorrow morning at 4am. It's still a bit cloudy at the moment, so I hope it passes before we set off in the morning - we have a 7 hour chapa ride and a 3 hour boat ride to go!

Here are the photos:

BT86_Pemba 9 - 12 July 2011

Testies Survival Kit: Safety Pin

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 02:21:00 +0000

ITEM USED: Safety Pin

COUNTRY USED IN: Mozambique

CHALLENGE OVERCOME: Bridget Jones Moments

There are times we've had to travel on the back of pick-ups. At these times my little green handkerchief that I've been using to tame my hair just hasn't cut the mustard, despite generous efforts.

It was on a pick-up journey from Namiala to Pemba that I discovered a use for my safety pins in my trusted Testies Survival Kit.

As well as the handkerchief, I could put up the hood on the blue fleece donated to me by Carol in Cape Town.... and use the safety pins to hold the hood in place in the gale force winds!

Dear Readers, this is probably the best use of a survival kit item I have made to date. I might have looked light a tool on the journey, but I arrived with hair that didn't resemble Bridget Jones' on her arrival to country getaway with Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant).

Well done safety pin, well done.

Ilha De Moçambique

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 06:15:00 +0000

Since 1991, Mozambique Island (or Ilha De Moçambique in the Portuguese tongue) has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and is considered one of the must-see-destinations in northern Mozambique. A former Arab port and trading centre, and the capital of Portuguese East Africa for several centuries, this tiny island is steeped in history and Jennie and I were most eager to explore it.

Arriving at our first guest house following a 40-hour journey (chronicled by Jen in the previous entry) we decided for one night only to ignore the fact that the price was a little high and instead pretend that we were one of the island's 17th century gold traders by treating our sleep-deprived selves to a room that looked like this.

The only things missing were a swathe of servants and incalculable wealth. I asked for both. I received neither. Meh. Still, it was a lovely place and for dinner that night we treated ourselves to the local speciality called matapa - cassava leaves cooked in a peanut sauce - which was nothing short of delicious.

Nice as that room was, for cost reasons we had to move to a different place the next morning and what a place we moved to - Ruby Backpacker is an absolute gem. An intimate little travellers haven that I'd liken to a Moroccan Riad, it had a great rooftop terrace, a good bar and an absolutely brilliant kitchen - the Portuguese owner, Claudia, has brought real Mediterranean style to it and stocked with herbs, spices and oils unheard of in most backpacker establishments. To top it all, she bakes a daily cake treat - it's sublime.

Difficult as it was to actually leave Ruby, the old colonial part of the island, known as Stone Town, awaited us. Having already tasted Kenya's Lamu and Tanzania's Zanzibar, we were really interested to see how Mozambique's equivalent stacked up. What instantly strikes about Mozambique Island is how much quieter it is than the other two - its days as a place of real influence are long, long gone and now it is something of a ghost town with many of the old villas and mansions left crumbling, next to others which have been lovingly restored. This gives the place a rather haunting feel, and is particularly engaging.

We visited a number of particularly grand structures. First was the old Governor's palace and its accompanying maritime and sacred art museums, as well as the on-site chapel and nearby whitewashed Church of the Misericordia. The maritime museum was particularly interesting - such was the strategic importance of Ilha De Moçambique as a trading port that ships from all over the world would stop here, as the collection of fantastically well preserved Ming Dynasty porcelain from a nearby Chinese shipwreck attested to.

The most prominent building on the island is also the largest - the massive Fort of Sao Sebastao, which is in fact the oldest complete fort still standing in sub-Saharan Africa, construction having started in 1558 and taking more than 50 years to complete.

It's tremendously impressive and very well preserved, and standing in the grounds or on the ramparts it was easy to imagine the grandeur of the place in its heyday as it dominated the northern end of the island and the sea port beyond. Much smaller, though equally impressive in its own way was the little Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte, just beyond the fort, which having been built in 1522 is said to be the oldest European building in the Southern Hemisphere.

This day of exploration also came with an added bonus - well, two added bonuses called James and Sam. James is a doctor and Sam a physio who have been living and working in Malawi and are on a final holiday before they head back to the UK to get married (just weeks before we do, as it turns out). We struck up conversation with them around the Governor's palace and continued at the fort, and before long we were downing afternoon beers at their (stunning) hotel and making plans for dinner together that evening.

As it turned out, the two of them had to leave the following morning, but they were a fantastic pair, and we hope very much to catch up with them back in London.

As it also turned out, we'd done the right thing by getting the majority of our sightseeing done already, because the next day the heavens opened and the rains came. Not that this was a particular problem for us - Ruby was the perfect place to spend a rainy day at the bar drinking beer, eating Claudia's baked treats and then later settling in our room to watch a couple of films on the trusty laptop. Seriously, this backpacking lark is sodding hard work.

So it's another early start tomorrow as we head still further north - Pemba, Ibo and the Quirimbas Archipelago await us as our final Mozambican adventures.

Things Jennie will remember:

1) Visiting the market and being surprised by the honest prices and how low they were!

2) The garlic prawns we ate and James' and Sam's hotel

3) The Millennium Bank which on the inside still has the old 1920s style metal bars between customer and clerk, complete with wooden storage draws. It's beautiful.

4) The peanut balls that Sean loved and I thought were far too sickly sweet

5) The small fiasco with our laundry and the rain, it finally dried out just before bedtime

Here are the photos:

BT85_Mozambique Island 4 - 8 July 2011

Final Journey From Hell?

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:13:00 +0000

Sometimes the journey requires its own blog entry.

This is one such journey.

We knew that from Vilankulos to Mozambique Island was going to take a least 2 days. We took the decision to pay a little more to go on Mozamibque's luxury bus company, TCO. This bus company doesn't come to Vilankulos, so you have to get a taxi to meet it on the main road. The ticket said 21.30, so on the advice of the ticket office we arrived at 20.30 (buses don't wait if you're not there). It was dark of course as we waited on the side of the road. We grabbed the attention of several children who were working at what appeared to be their drunken mothers roadside cafe shack. When they weren't playing games together, they were making fun of me and Sean, or chopping veggies or serving (and drinking!) beer to passers by. However, if it wasn't for these children Sean and I would have suffered from pneumonia, for they built us a little camp fire to warm ourselves by as we waited for this bus. And waited. And waited. We kept asking ourselves how long we should wait before we decided we'd missed it and head back to Beach Village, but then realising that we didn't have a taxi number we kinda just had to stick it out.

The bus arrived at 1am a mere 4.5 hours after we had. However, it was warm. And luxurious. And we had the front two seats with masses of leg room. So we fell right to sleep after we waved goodbye to our child saviours.

At 7.30am we pulled into the bus station at Beira. This city isn't really that much to talk about. So we just visited an ATM and a Shoprite supermarket to buy breakfast and lunch stuffs. This was our first time in a supermarket in Mozambique and we were mortified by the cost of everything! Why did they import from Portugal and not from South Africa which surely would be much cheaper? Anyway, we managed to get some tuna and super size bread rolls and left happy.

Our next bus was at 2pm. As soon as we got onto it we realised that this one was a much older model of bus, our seats were behind the toilet bulkhead so were the two seats with the least leg room and to top it all as soon as I opened my cup holder out scurried 7 cockroaches. Nice. We have 16 hours on this bus. Sean was my hero and swapped seats with me so that I didn't have to imagine cockroaches crawling over me in my sleep. Sometimes it's better to be in the dark, for you can't see what is happening around you.

We arrived in Nampula at 6am the next day to the sight of burning fires and tramps peeing against the walls. Needless to say we headed straight to the bus station to leave for Mozambique Island. And that is where our luck turned. For we found a chapa going direct to the island we got the front seats, didn't wait more than two hours to leave and the price was right. They even took us straight to our guest house door. Ok, so that took us another four hours, but out of a whole journey time (including waiting times) of just on 40 hours, it really wasn't a big deal!

And if I'm not mistaken, this is probably our last BigTrip long and crappy journey like this one.

I just love a happy ending, don't you?

Toe Watch: Vilankulos

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 02:26:00 +0000

Hi kids! It's time for another stomach-churning toe watch from your good friend The Sean.

When last we left my toe, it having just been drained in Cape Town, I was thinking that it wouldn't be too long until the nail decided to fall off and I could begin the task of growing a new one. As it turns out, my toenail is in fact a stubborn little bastard and is clinging on for dear life for as long as it possibly can. The daylight in between the nail and the toe itself is widening, and snorkeling here in Vilankulos seemed to loosen it still further, but it's still firmly connected at the cuticle and seemingly with no intention of separating itself.

You have to admire its fighting spirit.

If and when things change, dear readers, you will of course be the first to know...

Bons Tempos Em Vilankulos

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 00:25:00 +0000

Our trip to Vilankulos started out hassle free. Sean and I, plus Martin and Michelle, managed to catch the big bus rather than a chapa which was cheaper and didn't have the 'bag fee' that seems to be catching on in Mozambique. We then got the ferry from Inhambane to Maxixe without waiting for less than the book said it would cost. And even managed to find a direct Vilankulos bus. Unfortunately we had a crazy time haggling the price (mainly because a 'beach boy' as they're called had followed us and was trying to get a fee built in). Turns out we paid less than negotiated when on the bus anyway, so go figure! We also met Jenny & Alan on our way up - a larger than life couple of Brits with laughs that make you wanna smile.

We headed straight to Beach Village which had been recommended to us by Richard, a South African we'd met in Tofo. Turns out he wasn't wrong. This place was beautiful! And a good price! And with free WiFi! Jackpot!

We dropped our bags off and headed to the bar to enjoy the last of the afternoon sun.

I was immediately asked by some local girls if I had a camera. I replied I did. So then followed what can only be described as a photo shoot of them. Not sure why they wanted this, but there you go. They seemed to be happy!

Beach Village is run by Terrick, with his puppy Brutus. He's a top chap who made our stay fantastic. Every night Armindo the barman would ensure the fridge was stocked with big bottles of beer, Nelson the chef would cook us up a treat of Kingfish (Sera) or Barracuda and Brutus the puppy would pee on the bar (he only did this once bless him).

We also ventured on a day trip to the island of Margaruque where you can snorkel along a reef just off the islands beaches. We saw Walking-On-Water fisherman who were actually just taking advantage of the low tides as we sailed to the island.

The island was deserted when we arrived and that just made it appear like a remote lagoon. The water was a little cold as we jumped in off the coral, but the reef was worth it. I haven't seen so many different kinds of fish together ever. I actually got a little freaked out by how close they all came and what started crawling out of the coral! We had a wonderful lunch of calamari and crab on the beach, bathed in the sunshine and explored the island before heading home through the channels of water. It was a really lovely day.

In fact, we loved it at Beach Village so much we couldn't leave. We played more Carcassonne, eventually becoming expert enough to be playing all the add-ons. We bought squid and crab from the local fishermen, tipped Nelson the chef to cook it for us and ate like kings!

We even made it out one night to Afro Bar for some crazy dancing sessions! I was told that I danced like I came from Soweto (but that was by a girl from the West Midlands, so I'll take that with a pinch of salt), watched an amazing chap called "Jessie Jackson" bust a move or twenty and even met a lovely girl whose name rhymed with Condolesa Rice who showed us where the bar was and whose boyfriend then went off with another girl so she came back to spend the night with us. At 3am as we left we ran into Terrick who was just arriving. Seems we are not that fashionable when it comes to nightlife in Africa!

It's hard to leave somewhere that is beautiful, full of great people, serves great food, where you rest in the sun reading books by the sea or a pool. But that's what we had to do if we wanted to see the north of this incredible country. So we said a sad farewell to Michelle & Martin, Jenny & Alan as they left to head to Inhassoro. We finished up another delicious fish of the day meal and then went to catch our bus north.

If you're ever in the area - head to Beach Village. It's the only place to be. We'd still be there if we could.

Here are the photos:

BT84_Vilankulos 27 June - 3 July 2011

*Again, thanks very much to Martin who is the author of some of these photos

Tofo

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 22:17:00 +0000

We started early (again) on our way to Tofo from Maputo. Sean and I shared a taxi with Michelle and Martin to the bus station 7km outside of town. All I can say is, just nobody mention the egg sandwich!

It seems as well that in Mozambique people are now trying to charge you for taking bags on board buses. This is frankly stupid, especially when locals take chickens, sacks of rice and plastic buckets with them everywhere. I'm certain they're not succumbing to these additional fees! Anyway, we managed to haggle our way out of the 'bag fees' by shoving our bags under the seats by our feet (like everyone else does!). Still, it's good to know that no matter where you are in Africa people still run up to the side of the bus to sell their wares:

The bus journey was long and filled with stops to let the old man in the back seat go to the toilet and the many other people fill up with sodas along the way. I'm also pretty sure that the two person seat Sean and I were sat on moved forward as the woman behind us pushed us with her plastic bowl as my leg room seemed to reduce over time.

Anyway! We changed at Inhambane. Before negotiating our first chapa ride we found a pastelaria selling that bread we now loved as a lunchtime snack. Then we headed back to the bus station to find something that would take us to Tofo.

We were offered some crazy prices to get us there. Some were just so crazy we laughed. But eventually we had to succumb to the bag fee just to get moving. I'm pretty sure that the lady with the bucket of fish wasn't charged to bring that on board though. And after all that, Martin was still stuck up the front squished behind the railing!

Arriving in Tofo I knew instantly that I was going to like it. The chapa dropped us off in the centre and we had to make our own way 2km down the road to Bamboozi Lodge. It was a pretty pleasant walk, and we kinda liked it after being squished up in a bus all that time. Michelle and Martin wanted to try somewhere else that they'd been recommended so we parted ways with a plan to meet up for dinner later.

Sean and I took two dorm beds and headed up to the bar for a drink. When we came back to the dorm, Martin & Michelle turned up having decided the other place wasn't for them and they had even managed to bargain a bungalow for the price of the dorm - an offer that of course we then piggy backed on! Hooray for upgrades!

It was great to have them at the same place as us and that night we played Carcassonne in the bar over a tasty seafood basket. And to complete the party, Alan - our other new friend from Maputo - even turned up too!

The next day we wandered into town, looking around the varied craft markets. We found a place that would sell us cheap bottles of beer and bought some vegetables. We even bumped into Tom and Betty, our first customers whilst we were 'running' the Mushroom Farm in Malawi. They were doing a string of dives in the area and having a great time. Was so nice to see them!

We returned to Bamboozi with our crate of beers and sat drinking one as the sun went down.

An evening of egg fried rice and Carcassonne followed. Bliss.

We decided the next day that we wanted to sample some of this fish that everyone was offering. Buying it turned out to be a bit of a nightmare. There wasn't the same amount of fish on offer this day as there had been the night before and so Michelle, Martin and I went to the beach and played Carcassonne whilst Sean hunted out the fishy deals. He managed to get a load of Crayfish for a very good price in the end and so we headed back to cook it up!

It didn't disappoint either. Michelle asked the kitchen how best to cook it (boil for 5 mins apparently) and we feasted and played... yes, that's right.. Caracassonne. Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to Alan that night too as he heads up to Malawi.

The remaining four of us decided to stay just one more night before tearing ourselves away to head further north. And good job too because the nice boys on reception bumped Sean and I up again into a chalet for our final night because we'd told them it was our honeymoon (well come on, technically it is, it's our honey-sun - we won't be getting a honeymoon proper). They even dressed the room with flowers and fruits, bless them!

That final day we spent lazing on the beach and swimming in the sea.

Whilst tucking into the last of the crayfish on our last night, we met Richard from South Africa who gave us tips on our next destination of Vilankulos. Michelle & Martin even bought some of the local booze - Tipo Tinto - to try. Basically rum, good with coke.

Tofo is a charming little town with a gorgeous beach and well worth a visit. We're sad to leave. But on we must march!

Here are the photos:

BT83_Tofo 23 - 26 June 2011

Much Ado In Maputo

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 06:34:00 +0000

Sean and I met an English/Canadian couple called Michelle and Martin on our bus from Manzini to Maputo. We hit it off with these guys instantly. Michelle is originally a Brummie, but now lives in Canada for a long term working for Cancer Research. Martin is Canadian and has designs to set up his own tour company doing tours around BC.

The journey to Mozambique was actually very quick and thankfully we weren't the 4 people squished in the back seat (they were all a little on the large side so room was not forthcoming). The border crossings were drama-less and all was looking good. We started walking to the backpackers that we'd planned to stay at only to be told after our few km walk that they were full. So we gave in and the 4 of us shared a cab to another option. Turns out that Fatimas Backpackers, despite it's tarnished Trip Advisor reviews was actually very nice with a dog so wrinkly I thought he was a blanket.

We headed off for a view of the area after settling in and discovered that Mozambique has retained it's Portuguese roots where pastries and bread are concerned! They have this round roll that's almost like a ciabatta bread available at Pastelarias all over the place. We also found the local market full of hairdressers, men sewing everything, fruit and veg galore and of course - bars. Michelle, our resident Portuguese speaker, quickly made friends with the Mama of one place and we hooked into the local brews - 2m, Manica and Laurentina Preta. After negotiating a take-away deposit for the bottles that we promised to bring back we headed off in search of some food (which we found in the form of a rather small hamburger with cold chips) and promptly settled ourselves back at Fatimas getting sloshed. We even met a German family who were very interesting to talk to. It was a great first night in our final BigTrip country.

Unfortunately the sleep wasn't as good because their dorm door was very squeaky and so all movements woke me up. But hey ho, such is a travellers life.

The next morning we got some photocopies of our passports and had them notarised so that we complied with Mozambique law of always having a copy of your ID on you. We thought this was going to be a difficult process when we discovered the room choc-full of locals, but turned out that it was super quick, cheap and not at all formal as they didn't even want our passport originals when they notarised the copies. We must have looked trustworthy indeed.

Having then returned the empties, Sean went to get a haircut and beard shave. The place we found did the single most professional job on Sean's hair that we've had the entire trip. All for about £2. Michelle got a bag sewed up and we nipped in to pay our respects to the Mama of the bar we were at the night before.

Then we returned to Fatimas to make our way back to the first backpackers we'd tried the previous day as it was cheaper than Fatimas and price always wins!

After settling into their dorms and being nicely surprised by their cheap honesty fridge of beer, we set of on a city walk using a route from the Lonely Planet as a guide.

First up was the Fort. Not that big, not much in English, but a good place to people spot from its roof. We discovered some local food stalls and headed over there for a soda where we drank Passionfruit sodas, something we hadn't had since Malawi and sorely missed! We also noted that they did a very good smelling rice and chicken dish for 50 Mets which is incredibly cheap for Mozambique.

We then headed off to the Money Museum which surprised all of us by how much it had on display and how interesting it was. Not only did it contain centuries' worth of local currency, but also currency from around the world, including a $1 Aussie Dollar note (which Sean hadn't seen for years), a 50 trillion Zimbabwean note and many more. I also found it fascinating that in all the pictures of people making money back at the turn of the 20th century every single man had a moustache. Was it uniform I wondered? Along with the tie?

Next up was the train station which is cited as being in the world's top ten most beautiful train stations. It wasn't ugly, but it wasn't as amazing as this quote would have had me believe. In fact, we found the scary looking statue of a lady with eyes that would pierce iron (and, Sean noted, the incredible high-beam boobs!) more interesting.

Then we were hungry. But could we find any street food? Could we heck. We walked and walked and grew more and more hungry. In the end we just gave up, got on a chapa (minibus) and headed up the the fish market where the Lonely Planet has you believe you will find great deals that they'll cook up for you at nearby stalls. Well, you can buy fish. And they will cook it for you. But it's not a great deal. In fact, it's expensive. Especially when you consider that you need to buy rice/bread/herbs on top of the fish to make the meal into something. I fear that they have recognised the trade of tourists and so it has lost its appeal.

So we headed back to base (and our backpackers was actually called Base Backpackers) and made do with some pizza slices near to our accommodation. The food hunt had put a bit of a dampener on the day. But, Michelle and Martin had an ace card up their sleeve in the name of Carcassonne. Now this is a type of board game that requires strategy and cunning. And it's medieval themed. So Sean and I were instantly hooked and the world was once again at peace. We even met a chap named Alan that night that had stayed with Michelle and Martin in Swaziland.

The next day we continued our walk by heading to the main roundabout on which is a church. The church is a beautiful bit of architecture and looks great against the blue skied tropical setting. And using Michelle's powers of Portuguese speech we managed to get the doors opened up so we could climb the tower. This was a pretty scary experience in itself as we ascended the metal spiral staircase that wobbled with rust. The tower ledge was narrow with only one bar of handrail to save you from instant death, but the views of the city were worth it!

Having survived, we then headed off to the art gallery where we saw works by Malangatana Ngwenya, a most prominent Mozambican artist who died only this year. It was very interesting. There was some amazing sculpture work and also some very troubled death scenes. Also a rather odd installation of drums. Random.

Not as random as the art installation we then bumped into at a local theatre type place just opposite. Think many paper boats of different colours reminiscent of the arrows from Dad's Army surrounded by white with piles of cigarette butts.

We passed by the Iron House, designed by the Mr Eiffel of Eiffel Tower fame. Unfortunately he'd never been to Mozambique so didn't quite realise that iron wasn't a great building material in tropical climes.

We learned from yesterday's lessons and tucked into the best and cheapest chicken and rice in town for lunch back near the fort before trying to find a local jazz place to visit that evening. Unfortunately there wasn't much on that night so we got a bus back to near our accommodation, wandered around that area a bit more (its a bit posher down by the coast), and popped by a local art co-op whose gallery was under renovation so we only got to view the artists at work for a little while before heading back home for more Carcassonne with Alan.

And that drew our time in Maputo to a close. We're heading up the coast for our first beach experience in Tofo tomorrow where I'm expecting good weather, white sands and turquoise waters! Watch this space!

Here are the photos:

BT82_Maputo 20 -22 June 2011

* Some photos are courtesy of Martin - thank you!

(All Too) Swiftly Into Swaziland

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 02:57:00 +0000

I have been told that the average amount of time that any traveller spends in Swaziland is 1.8 days. Jen and I are bang on average, and having seen what this little country has to offer I can't say I'm proud of that statistic. It's a lovely little place.

And actually getting here was a sodding breeze - to be honest, while we go on incessantly about the regular difficulties of getting around most of Africa, getting around South Africa has been little short of effortless. In fact, by far the most difficult moments of the journey were over with early on - firstly, when we got out of bed at something like 5.30am and made our way to the bus stop and secondly, when after being told that the bus to Swaziland left from a different place to the one we'd showed up at, we were walked down one of Durban's noted "avoid at all cost" streets by one of the bus boys without a hint of menace or danger and that was that. Aside from having to change from the bus we'd settled into to a different one just before we left Durban (ok, so we were still in Africa after all) the rest of the trip was a dream. The bus was comfortable and fast, the roads were good and we made great time - and the most surprising part was that this stayed true after we crossed the border.

I'd expected crossing into Swaziland to be crossing into Lesotho - an immediate and obvious decline in the standards of road and infrastructure, and a country and population noticeably and significantly poorer. You know, like crossing from England into Wales (ok, so it wasn't THAT bad...). But the roads were excellent and the infrastructure good, and by lunchtime we'd made it to Legends Backpackers, our home for the next two nights, via the transport hub of Manzini.

Two things to note about Manzini:

1) As a town it seemed a whole lot nicer than its reputation suggests

2) Its bus stand may just be the busiest we've encountered in Africa

However, it was for the picturesque landscapes and interesting culture that we'd come - albeit briefly - and so we based ourselves in the Ezulwini valley, so we could look at things like this just outside our hostel.

We only had one real day of sightseeing, and the highlight of that day was undoubtedly the House on Fire - a legendary live music/entertainment venue and art gallery, and a place that Hendrix would have felt right at home. The only disappointment was that during our short time in the area it wasn't hosting an event - that would have been something to see.

It was a sensational place - hell, even the ladies' toilets were a highlight.

Note: I only went in with Jen, and when we were sure no one else was in there. Honest.

An afternoon at the craft market, and cooking ourselves a spectacular braai at our backpackers completed the day nicely, and now here we are ready to get up early again tomorrow morning and depart for Mozambique. The extra time we spent in Lesotho, combined with our desire to get the most out of our 30-day Mozambique visa means that we've underdone Swaziland by quite a bit. I don't think this is necessarily the kind of country where you need to settle in and spend weeks, mind.

But 1.8 days? I reckon it deserves better than that.

Here are the photos:

BT81_Swaziland 17 - 19 June 2011

Civilization (Slight Return)

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 04:32:00 +0000

Here's a surprise for you. Yet another crappy Lesotho minibus journey was up next!

We left the lodge in Mokhotlong at about 8.30am. We waited in one minibus until about 11am. Then, yep, we moved to another minibus and left to go down Sani pass just before lunchtime. We then moved at about 20km an hour down some incredibly stupid roads (I'm not sure they can actually be called roads) towards the border post at Sani. Sean and I were squashed into a back seat as normal (where leg room is much less than the middle) and I even had a broken seat that meant I had to sit bolt upright whilst the seat in front of me was also broken and sat at full recline crushing my knees. Those travellers who say they enjoy the local style of transport are just plain mad. It's not fun. But it is cheap. That's the only reason any sane person uses it.

The final views of Lesotho didn't disappoint as we made our way through the high snow covered peaks, topping 2865m at Sani pass itself.

As we left Lesotho I'll never forget the crazy woman who was screaming that we wouldn't wait for Sean who had just popped into a loo full of goats. I told her flatly that we would!

We then made our way down the hairpin 180 degree bends - and 30 degree gradients!! - of the Sani pass. Wow. This is one crazy road! We even passed a crazy man trying to go up in a normal sedan - pretty sure he didn't make it to the top.

It was also very lucky that at the South African border at the other end I checked my passport when it was handed back to me. No one believed we didn't have our own 4wd (being white this seems to be obligatory and here we were without one!) and in all that confusion, they forgot to stamp my passport. Now that would have been interesting explaining when trying to exit the country! However, I do have to admit that I would have enjoyed the Sani pass drive a bit more had we been in our own car (or if our previous day had worked out and we'd made it here that night). Our own car would have allowed us to stop and take it in rather than rush off quickly. But regardless, it was stunning (although my knees have a different opinion about it).

When we arrived at Underberg everyone rushed out into the next minibus and that meant Sean and I had to wait for another. I wasn't too upset to leave crazy bossy woman behind as she was beginning to piss me off especially as she pushed me out of the way to get off the bus. Turns out that this was a great thing to happen. The next minibus was empty. Just me and Sean. All the way baby! Yee-ha! The driver even took us right to the door of our hostel. Now that is service - welcome back to South Africa!

It's a shame we didn't stay in Pietermaritzberg more than the one night. Andre, the manager of the hostel we stayed in was very welcoming. And his two dogs were beautiful, just like the colonial style building. But we had to get to Swaziland quickly as for some reason I was only given a 30 day visa for South Africa and they don't restart this after a visit to Lesotho.

So the next day we got an early minibus to Durban. Unfortunately by the time we arrived we'd missed the mid-morning minibuses into Swaziland, so we decided to enjoy the day in Durban and head off early tomorrow.

They say Durban is known for having the friendliest people in South Africa. I think that's true. The taxi drive who drove us to our hostel from the station was lovely. He almost gave us an impromptu tour! And the hostel we stayed at was amazing and run by a really lovely lady.

We've spent the day walking up and down the beach discussing our adventures in Lesotho and what Swaziland might hold for us whilst eating chocolate cake at local cafes in the sunshine.

It was also here in Durban that we've decided we were tired of the long, cramped journeys and after everything we'd been through in Lesotho we agreed that the only way we'd enjoy our last month in Mozambique was if we only travelled its length once - so we booked a flight back to Johannesburg from the north of Mozambique. Well sometimes you just have to treat yourselves!

It's a shame we won't be in Durban for another day - but can't help the visa situation! And poor old Swaziland has already had a couple of days shaved off it by the fact that we couldn't get around Lesotho quick enough!

From The Sublime To The Ridiculous

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 05:13:00 +0000

If I could offer one piece of advice to anyone thinking of going to Lesotho, it would be this: if you are on a limited time frame, and don't have your own transport (preferably a 4WD) - don't go. I've been lucky enough to visit quite a decent number of countries over the course of my life and I can't recall an experience of ever taking so long a time to travel so small a distance as Jen and I have encountered over the past couple of days. To be fair, we've only spent about 50% of our time on a bus. The other 50% has been spent waiting for one.

Reluctantly leaving Malealea, our aim was to make our way the following day to Thaba-Tseka, about 120km away by road. We figured that, even allowing for what we'd heard were the difficult travel conditions through central Lesotho, this would be plenty of time. We figured poorly. The thing about travelling by public transport in Lesotho is that not many people seem to do it, and when they do they go from one village to the next, where the transport terminates. So unless you're on pretty much the single main highway in the country then you just have to keep picking up short-haul minibuses and the like to get you to your destination in stages.

And this particular journey, short as it was, took four stages - the first, to Motsekuoa, was waylaid by another of the police stops like we encountered outside of Quthing and a lengthy wait for papers to be found and delivered, and of course for money to change hands. The second, from Motsekuoa to Mazenod was surprisingly smooth and quick - the worst thing that could have happened, as it turned out, because it raised our confidence in the remainder of the journey to a level which didn't come close to being justified. Stage three took us from Mazenod - eventually, via yet another police stop and interminable delay - to Nazareth, where my attempts to fit in and be Jesus didn't get us anywhere. In fact, the wait at Nazareth could almost be a stage unto itself, such was the situation as we sat by the side of the road half way up a hill leading out of a middle-of-nowhere town waiting for a bus that may or may not have ever come. Eventually, just as we decided that "may not" was probably going to win that one, we got lucky in the form of a group of guys in a ute who let us (and the few locals who were also milling around waiting for Godot) jump in the back of their pick-up for the drive to Thaba-Tseka. We realised three things over the course of this open air journey through central Lesotho's mountain passes:

1) That the scenery was wonderful.

2) How little ground we'd made so far that day, as this bloke drove bloody fast and it still took us forever to reach our destination.

3) That fast, winding roads are exactly what my lingering hangover didn't need, as I managed to throw up out the back of the truck. Twice.

But by God we made it to Thaba-Tseka, a mere ten hours or so after leaving Malealea. Once again, those ironic deities who play with mortal man for sport had their fun with us, because we found ourselves a fantastic little hotel for the night with a great all-you-can-eat buffet (including dessert - result) which pleased and encouraged us to the point where we were convinced that our journey to Sani Pass the next day would be quicker and easier. After all, Sani Pass was only another 70-odd clicks away.

We never got anywhere near Sani Pass.

It wasn't for want of trying, mind. Energised by our excellent night, Jen and I got up early and made our way to the bus stand on the other side of Thaba-Tseka. Where we proceeded to wait just over three hours for a bus to arrive. Fair enough, the long wait was normal but we'd managed to be there early enough to get the front seats - always a win when you have legs as long as ours. Settling in for another hour or so to wait, we were then told that a man with a truck was leaving right this minute, going exactly where we wanted to go (Sani Pass) and that we could go with him. So we left the front-seat comfort of our minibus to find that the man leaving now was one I'd already spoken to that morning, didn't have room for us and wasn't going to Sani. So they only gotten everything wrong, made worse by the fact that when we returned to our minibus we'd lost our sodding front seats.

It was ok though, because we were leaving immediately, and with such a short distance to travel the worst must have been over. Surely.

At 5pm - nine hours after arriving at the Thaba-Tseka bus stand, we arrived in Linakeneng. We had travelled 40km. And there they left us.

So there we were, a real middle-of-nowhere village high up in the mountains of Lesotho, with the sun going down, the cold setting in, and no onward transport to anywhere we actually wanted to be. It sounds really cool now, and if you'd put a camera on us it would have made a great cut-to-an-ad cliffhanger in an adventure travel documentary. But when you're actually living it the way Jen and I were there, then our only thought was pretty much "what the frack do we do now?"

Thankfully we'd befriended a local lad named Joseph on the journey who spoke some English, and he set about speaking to a local lady named Agnys, who worked for the district council, about getting us a bed for the night - a bed which actually turned out to be the sofa in her house. And by "house" I mean "room" because that's all it was - one room with a bed, a table, a gas lamp and a sofa. Oh, and some rabid dogs outside that she told us not to go anywhere near. Which was nice of her.

Settling in for the night, struck by her kindness and the fact that she didn't want any money from us, Jen and I offered to buy Agnys dinner at the local food-making-and-selling-place (to call it a "restaurant" is a stretch that not even I am going to make). And there, on our way into the village, we see it - a man, in a minibus, with the engine on. Approaching him and waiting for the expected response to the effect that he was travelling in the other direction, or not travelling at all, what we actually got was the best news we'd heard in a long time - that he was heading in our direction, that he would just take us and our new friend Joseph with him. I almost kissed him, but didn't want to lose the offer.

So he took us to Mokhotlong, which is where I'm writing this, and ironically after such excruciatingly slow travel up until that point he got us here across icy, snowy mountain roads with absolutely maniacal speed. It's not Sani, but it's a little closer, our guesthouse is warm and cosy, and we've just tucked into a fantastic home made chicken and rice dish.

We'll get to Sani Pass tomorrow. Probably.

Things Jennie will remember:

1) That Agyns' real name is Maeseta

2) That Joseph's real name is Mokhethi and we are ever thankful that he spoke English

3) That Mokhethi knew Seala (he'd gone to school with him) and Seala was the reason we sorted out the rooms for the night.

4) Watching all the piles of straw go past on the back of the pick-up

5) The face masks everyone wears to keep warm, as well as their blankets:

6) The children who still wanted their photo taken even in the middle of nowhere:

7) The driver's name who appeared from nowhere to take us to Mokhotlong was Khotso which means "peace". He's actually my angel.

8) All the Sesotho that I learned (spelling here is my own phonetic!) - very useful when you're stuck in the middle of nowhere!

Kallybooa - Thank You

Dumela - Hello

O Pel E A Jou-A = How are you? "Ho Joang?"

Response = "Ho Shaapi"

What's your name? "U Mang?"

Where do you come from? "U Tsea Koae?" (U Cha Ko-Ay)

Are you Happy?

Yes I am Happy: "U thabele" (O Ta Be Lay)

Testies Survival Kit: Whistle

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 05:15:00 +0000

ITEM USED: Whistle

COUNTRY USED IN: Lesotho

CHALLENGE OVERCOME: Herding Beasts

Lesotho is famed for its ponies, who are often being ridden by blanket wrapped Basotho whilst they climb up and down the mountainous areas.

And it's also something of a status symbol to own cows here (it used to be goats, maybe burgers are now more popular here, I don't know?).

So it made sense to me to utilize the whistle from my Testies Survival Kit to help these cowboys out in their daily routines.

So, I got myself onto a pony and headed off into the countryside:

I put whistle to mouth and blew, in the hope of attracting lots of cows by way of assisting the local herdsmen:

I blew and I blew, but nothing seemed to come:

Until I was suddenly knocked off my pony by a blurred mass:

It appears the only thing my Testies Survival Kit whistle attracts are the local canines.... I wonder if they're worth as much as a cow?

Things To Do in Lesotho

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 06:28:00 +0000

Our first two Lesotho destinations were Quacha's Nek and Quthing. We arrived in Quacha's Nek (the border town) in the cold, misty, drizzly dark after a day of no less than 3 minibuses and an overpacked covered pick-up, and since you can see the town from the border post we decided to walk there. Sean and I made our way to the Lonely Planet's cheapest recommendation only to discover that it's no longer cheap. And neither is anywhere else. We ended up going from one place to another as prices got higher and the drizzle got heavier. We picked up the only food we could find - a loaf of bread and some apples - and headed to one more place (deciding that we'd take it regardless of cost as we were both now a bit grumpy). But we couldn't find it in the dark and ended up stumbling into what was the local police station who kindly offered to drive us there - now that's service!

Okay, so the place was pricey. But it was lovely with a bed so rugged up that it didn't matter how cold it was outside. And waking up the next morning to the blue skies and sunshine and seeing for the first time the mountains of Lesotho was incredible. As was their free breakfast!

We hadn't planned to stay in Quacha's Nek very long as we wanted to head to Quthing (pronounced "'click'-ting" - I'll never get the hang of the clicks!). Our guest house gave us a lift to the bus station and we waited. We understand you have to wait for minibus journeys. We don't mind doing that. What we do mind is when they change the minibus at the last moment before leaving and you go from a seat of relative comfort to one squished into the back where people over 5 foot tall should not have to venture. We were then kicked off that minibus onto another one where we managed to get slightly comfier seats, but where the price had gone up by 10 maloti. Oh well. Fortunately we were dropped off just down the hill from the thing we'd come to see - fossilised dinosaur footprints. Since it was still light, we decided to go and visit them straight off the minibus so that we could save a day. We thought initially that the place was closed (padlocks have a habit of giving you that impression), but a local girl soon arrived and called up the man who ran the place and in we went. We were expecting maybe one footprint, but it turned out to be a small shed's worth with a balcony around the outside and a small bridge across the middle. The chap who ran it started to get very excited when we got excited and told us all sorts of things. For example, these are 200 million years old. They were found only recently in the early '60s. They were preserved on a riverbed sandwiched between sandstone layers and discovered when the road was built. There are only 3 sites in Lesotho where dinosaur footprints have been found. These footprints are of a smaller ostrich-sized tridactyl type (i.e. stands on hind legs, has tail) - look! there's the tail print. It was fascinating!

We said our goodbyes feeling very happy and made our way the few km to Quthing centre where in the dark we managed to get directed to a semi-decent lodge, got some pretty shoddy food and made our way to the local bar. It's name was Lantern Pub and upon arrival the bar-man pretty quickly got us playing pool. Turns out that the locals all wanted to play the winner of our game and even though I managed to make 3 awesome pots in a row (one of which was a double rebound) I managed to follow it up with three complete misses which gave Sean time to win.

He then managed to beat his next 2 opponents before handing over to someone else to play so as not to monopolise the table. Good job too 'cause the next guy he would have played was some kind of genius player (Sean insists he would have beaten him too and that he retired as Lesotho's undefeated pool champion)!!! We met some really lovely, friendly people that night (Mary and her husband, the ref of the pool and the drunk teacher). It's a night I'll remember fondly.

But we'd already seen what we'd come to see here, so there was no reason to hang around another day. So we headed off the next day towards Malealea. And another adventurous Lesotho journey awaited us! We started walking towards the junction, but a minibus passed us and so in we hopped. The driver then immediately turned around to us and said "I hope you don't mind me drinking" and held up a beer can. We then noticed 2 or 3 other empty cans. Oh dear. But we were in now and so we just closed our eyes and wished for safety. A few km down the road the driver was stopped by a police check. "Oh good", we thought, "he's going to get done for drink driving and we can get into another minibus. Sure enough the police man came up to the minibus and explained our driver had been arrested.... for not having the right paperwork. It seems no one cares about drink driving here. After a quick bribe the driver got back in again and we continued to Mohale's Hoek where we needed to get a connection. Now our Lonely Planet maps aren't all that great and it took us a while to figure out how we were going to get to Malealea. We didn't really know what to do, so took the majority advice and hopped on this big bus (just in time to get the last two seats) to Motsekuoa. Turned out to be a great decision as we got there in record time for next to nothing. We stopped into a shop to pick up some staples (rice, tinned goods, packet soup) for us to eat for the next 3 days and then waited for our next minibus to Malealea. And it arrived quickly and said it was going direct. But obviously half way it changed its mind because we were dropped off 7km away at a junction. Great. So we started to walk, not knowing if minibuses did this leg at all. But this turned out to be great too, because we walked through the Gates of Paradise Pass (something our Lonely Planet map had told us was somewhere else by the way).

And after about 3.5km of walking another minibus picked us up and took us the rest of the way to our destination - Malealea Lodge. As soon as we walked through the gates we were stunned. This place was beautiful. It had little bungalows, a huge games room and bar, braai area, coffee shop, self-catering kitchen and the most stunning views of the mountains. A chap called Bob booked us in and even gave us a free upgrade! Even the weather seemed to be on our side as the sunshine was out in all its glory after a couple of drizzly days.

Every evening a local choir sings, followed by a band which plays home-made instruments. They were incredibly talented and gave us a great hours entertainment. The drummer especially was very passionate about his music and was great to watch. We got some great video clips which are better than the photos, but will have to wait to be loaded to be shared.

The lodge is run by Debbie & Michael and they have two lovely children, Bryce and Jemma, with whom I took a bit of a shine in the bar that evening. They were adorable and said the funniest things. Turns out that we were to be rewarded for my few minutes of child watching as Debbie invited us to join them for dinner, for free. Blimey! This place just keeps on giving! So we ate more food in an hour than Sean and I have eaten in weeks and chatted away with Debbie & Michael and their other guest, Paul Gosselin. Now Paul was extremely insightful on all topics and had a particular love of Lesotho. It was fascinating to hear him talk about the Besotho people and their country. In fact, we could have done so all night had we not been compelled to bed by the imminent lights out as the generators were turned off.

The next day we headed off on a pony trek into the mountains. We first rode down towards some cave paintings and could see in them many things that we had learned on our 'behind the scenes of archeology' tour in Cape Town. In fact, even the blurb sheet we had been given sounded familiar... Hang on! It was written by the curator that had given us our tour - Sven Ouzman. What a small world! We laughed as we realised we knew the author!

We then continued our ride towards Botsoela waterfall where we stopped for lunch of fat cakes and apples then headed home.

Sean's pony riding skills have definitely improved as he didn't fall off once as we went down the steepest rockiest tiniest little paths. It was a really great day.

More guests had turned up that evening, including a South African couple and 3 overlanders. We had a good old chin wag in the bar as Sean polished off a second bottle of wine all to himself - nothing one of their Amarula Coffees / Hot Chocolates wouldn't sort out the next morning though! And it turned out that the guest we'd met last night was the photographer for a famous book on Lesotho that was on the bar as a 'coffee table' display. Crazy! His photos were amazing! No wonder he was so insightful about the country.

So we've done what we'd come to Lesotho to do and now all that is left is to journey towards Sani Pass back into South Africa to make our way to Swaziland. We will be incredibly sad to leave this lovely place and are sincerely grateful to Debbie, Michael and Bob for making our stay so warm and welcoming. I highly recommend a visit here if you're ever in the area. You won't be disappointed!

Other things Jennie will remember:

1) The old fat lady on the minibus from Kokstad to Matatielle that shouted when she talked on her mobile phone.

2) The baby with the lady next to me on that same journey who was very smiley

3) That I want to send a roll of new pool table cloth covering to the pub in Quthing (Lantern Public Bar, PO Box 16, Quthing)

4) Bryce & Jemma (and Jemma's great new fringe haircut courtesy of her mum!)

5) The dogs of course! Jonty the big soppy dog, Jessie the little bulldog who'd just had the small op and the other dog that we were never formally introduced to.

6) The peacocks:

7) The Malealea weather station:

Here are the photos:

BT80_Lesotho 11 - 16 June 2011

Coast To Coast

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 02:42:00 +0000

When you've gotten up at stupid o'clock to take an early morning long-distance bus, it's difficult to find positives in anything whatsoever. However, looking back on our still-dark start at Cape Town before our bus to Knysna, Jen and I had quite the stroke of luck. On our bus was a girl named Shannon, who informed us that she worked at Ubuntu Backpackers in Jeffrey's Bay, which we'd decided was to be our stop on South Africa's Sunshine Coast. She sold the place so well to us that we stayed there, and what a fantastic little hostel it proved to be - a cosy converted house with good people (including another Sean, an American surfer/skater working his way around the world, and Maria - a lovely Swedish girl studying in Stellenbosch who we intend to swap travel notes with in the near future), a great vibe, pool table, movies and free breakfast, and it was right near the beach - the perfect place to us to hole up for a few days and do as little as possible.

Jeffrey's Bay is the surfing mecca of South Africa which, given my exceptional lack of talent on a surf board, wasn't of any real use or interest to me personally, but it did give us the chance to see some people who actually have a modicum of balance do stuff like this:

We had no real plans at J-Bay (as the locals call it) which meant we could spend a few days of guilt-free chilling before it was time to move on. Three relaxing days later, we said goodbye to our new friends and made our way from the Sunshine Coast to the appealingly named Wild Coast.

Many locals still call this area the Transkei, which is the name the region was known by during the Apartheid era. However, the stigma attached to this name - it was one of the more infamous relocation zones during those dark days, and was set up as a "homeland" for the local Xhosa people, essentially to keep them out of the way - remains quite strong and so every effort is being made to refer to this part of the country as the Wild Coast.

And wild it most certainly is - rocky outcrops and sheer cliffs against which the waves of the Indian Ocean crash make this one of the more scenically dramatic stretches of coastline in the country. Settling in at Sugarloaf Backpackers in Coffee Bay, the weather wasn't great but that just made the views of the coastline still more dramatic.

We'd come to Coffee Bay for the coastal scenery, and also to make the hike to its famous natural landmark, the Hole in the Wall. However, on our first couple of days there the heavens were frequently open, meaning that instead of making the all-day hike we had to content ourselves with playing with Sugarloaf's plethora of dogs and discovering Bunny Chow, the signature dish of the Eastern Cape's Indian community - a half loaf of bread, scooped out and filled with curry. It's bloody magnificent.

Jen and I had pretty much decided that the weather here was a lost cause and were going to call it and move on after two days, but we decided at the last minute to give the weather gods of Coffee Bay one last chance to let us worship at their altar - and the next morning were rewarded with a day like this.

Not being two to look a gift horse in the mouth, we set off on the three-hour hike to the Hole in the Wall, most of which was along the side of the hills tumbling down to the ocean. The walk was as much of a highlight as the destination, though it must be said that when we got there, the Hole in the Wall itself was pretty damn cool.

And now for something completely different...after coasts and bays and oceans and beaches, we're heading inland to the mountain kingdom of Lesotho. You gotta love variety.

Things Jennie will Remember:

1) The taxi driver from Humansdorp to Jeffrey's Bay who couldn't help but brag about the 900 rand PROFIT he had made that day. He flashed it to us and then showed us where he hid it (in his ashtray).

2) How incredibly lucky we were with weather to get that one amazing sunny day at Coffee Bay so that we could hike to Hole in the Wall (the reason we came)

3) The people! Chris and Janene at Sugarloaf in Coffee Bay (you guys made our stay and are super top people!), the Sugarloaf owners Brian & Judy and their children Crystal and Kyan. And then additionally from Ubuntu; Toby (Nepalese Ceramics guy), Shannon (the reason we went to Ubunto and who also introduced us to Montesory) and Darren (we hope you managed to get your money back and has anyone told you you look like Smith Jarad?)

4) The dogs at Sugarloaf! Bindi - Slobber Doggy, Java - Big Black Doggy, Diesel - Other Doggy, Sugar - Friendly Overlooked Doggy, Channi - Puppy Doggy and the one whose name we can't remember but called White Doggy.

5) Just how open everyone was on both coasts about pot and mushrooms. They didn't mention this in the guidebooks. ;)

6) I'm also almost certainly convinced that there were little men moving the arrow markers on our hike to Hole in the Wall, just like in the film Labyrinth with David Bowie:

7) The dogs that tried to eat us whilst on the hike at Coffee Bay. The one bit, but didn't penetrate Sean's trousers and the other had to be called off by his owner. Oh my! What big teeth he had!

Here are the photos:

BT78_Jeffreys Bay 4 - 6 June 2011

BT79_Coffee Bay 7 - 10 June 2011

Knysna Of Us Wanted To Leave

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 23:45:00 +0000

It was an early start for Sean and I leaving Cape Town and our first experience of South African public transport. I have to say that the bus station in Cape Town is beautiful, gated to keep out hawkers and so polished it shines. The bus was also on time, we were given tickets for our checked in bag and the driver was polite and greeted us with a smile. The bus itself was clean and new. We had seatbelts, rubbish bags and lots of leg room. We arrived in Knysna around 3pm, a little later than scheduled, but hey - we were happy customers! We also got a pretty decent view of this 'Garden Route' as we travelled, the hillside views that suddenly turned into seaside.

We walked up from the waterfront where the bus dropped us off and immediately remarked on how posh everything was here. Boutiques, cafes, restaurants with table cloths. It was quite surreal to see such a relatively small town be so up market. Certainly not in line with most of our African experiences to date.

The lodge we had picked was called African Jewel. And a jewel it certainly was. A huge old colonial style property with beautiful grounds, wooden floors, high ceilings, a wonderful friendly manager called Bev, a big fluffy cat (called funnily enough Fu-Fu Fluffy Pots) and a little terrier dog called Aribella. And we pretty much had the place to ourselves, except for Ron the boat captain who was there deciding whether he should buy the place and Dean a travelling South African who was considering staying in Knysna for a few years (a big move for him as he hasn't ever put his roots down anywhere).

We needed cheap things to do in Knysna having over indulged considerably in Cape Town so occupied ourselves by walking. Lots of walking. We made a day hike down the 8km to The Heads where the bay begins. And it didn't disappoint as we were greated with stunning views and the whole top of it to ourselves!

Having long since discovered the joys of self-catering as a big cost saving exercise we only went out one night on the town. Which as it turned out was all you needed during Winter. The place was hardly throbbing, but we did have a very lovely pub meal and a few drinks of the local Knysna brew with Dean, who entertained us with his philosophies on existentialism. He's a very deep thinking gentleman!

Having gotten our stride on, we took another walk down the 9km to a little town called Belvidere as we'd read that the church there was very quaint. And quaint it certainly was. A tiny little thing (a miniature 11th/12th century Norman style church) that was built and consecrated in 1855 by Thomas Henry Duthie who founded the surrounding estate. It was a lovely little place to saunter through for the afternoon. By the time we returned from that we'd walked over 30km in three days, so were feeling rather pleased with ourselves!

We'd stayed longer in Knysna than we'd planned to and had to tear ourselves away in the end. I can see why people love to 'do the Garden Route'. The places through which we travelled, the amount of activities that there are to do, the beautiful landscapes that there are to see have certainly sparked our interest. But next time, we have to come back with a car!

Here are the photos:

BT77_Knysna 31 May - 3 June 2011

Toe Watch: Cape Town

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 04:34:00 +0000

Jen mentioned in her Cape Town entry that I've had to go to the clinic here to have, essentially, three holes drilled in my toe. Despite hoping that the toe would eventually heal itself, it seems that it really didn't appreciate having a table dropped on it and decided instead to accumulate a rather spectacular build up of blood under the nail, thus facilitating the need for a pressure release in the form of my hol(e)y trinity.

So here's how it looks now.

NOTE: Not for the squeamish.

Well, I did tell you I was going to keep you updated...

Capers in Cape Town

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 03:38:00 +0000

Flipping heck. I'm now exhausted! It's been a crazy week in Cape Town.

We arrived on Sunday and after celebrating United's League win with Sean and seeing Van Der Sar raise the trophy, we went out for dinner at Arnolds to celebrate a wonderful tour and to say goodbye to each other. Unfortunately we had a mis-communication issue with Jay and so she wasn't with us which was sad. We tucked into ostrich burgers and other game meats and Drew treated us to a bottle of wine. Carol made a touching speech which had us in tears (well me at least) and Drew was ever the comedian. It also turned out that this was the last night we would see Mercedes, but we did get to meet her fella that night and he was lovely - I hope they find a way to stay together as Mercedes now heads back to Argentina.

On Monday Megan, Sean and I moved to a slightly cheaper backpackers and then Sean and I headed off to meet up with Krissie, the crazy Scot from our first Af-Trails tour. We walked down to the Waterfront in the grey and windy weather and studied the four nobel prize winner statues whilst we waited for her (to clarify, the Coca-Cola crate man in the background is not one of the four):

She arrived with Riaan (her bf) and we immediately hit the pub! (By the way Krissie, Riaan doesn't sound ANYTHING like your impression of him!). We couldn't stop talking as we caught up on events that had happened since we'd parted ways in Zanzibar all those weeks ago. Carol and Drew happened to show up at the same pub so we all had a good goss before Riaan had to leave to go to work in the casino and Krissie, Sean and I headed off in search of more beer. We stopped by another place to do 'taster' beers, had a quick look around the craft market and then met up with Stefan who had joined Krissie's tour after we had left it. I can't remember too much about the rest of this day, except that we met up with Megan and Carol for dinner at a Mexican restaurant that gave us free temporary transfer tattoos that we promptly stuck on ourselves.

On Tuesday we tried to get onto the Robben Island tour with Carol, but were far too late to get tickets so instead booked in for Friday. So we headed back to the backpackers on Long Street and nursed our hangovers watching films on DSTV. And then said goodbye to Megan (we seem to be losing one a day!)

We had decided to get our Mozambique visas in advance and so headed to the embassy on Wednesday morning. It's an incredibly efficient system. You hand your form in by 10am and get your visas and passports back by 3pm. UKPA could learn a thing or too from these guys! The sun had seemed to finally come out this morning, so we met up with Carol and headed up to Table Mountain to see if we could get up the cable car. Unfortunately no one told us that we could have saved the taxi fare because it was far too windy for it to be working. Still, the views were good.

We then found ourselves at a loose end about what to do for the afternoon. We found ourselves wondering through the gardens and then stumbling into the National Gallery. It was apparantly 'National Musuem Day' and so entrance was free. We wondered around a display of Indians in a Magazine called Drum from the 1960s - something that provoked an image of what life must have been life to have been an Indian in South Africa in that decade. Just as we finished, Sean discovered that the curator was about to give a free guided tour of the display and that there were also other 'free' treats going on at museums all over the city. So we headed to the South African Museum to try to get in on a 'Behind the Scenes of Archaeology' freebie. Turns out that we had the curator of the Archieology department all to ourselves and instead of the 20 minute tour we ended up speaking with him and being shown around the museums archives for about and hour and a half - it was really awesome as he talked us through different san paintings, their meanings, their lives. He was a really interesting character with a lot to say on all kinds of things. But we had to tear ourselves away as Carol had to leave on a jet plane. We had a fairwell beer with her back at Ashanti Gardens and said goodbye to the last man standing of our tour. Thus, sadly, it had now officially ended.

But our day was to continue. We spent the evening at the planetarium in two free one hour talks, the first on the indenginous people and the stars (how different local tribes interpret meaning, caldenarise rituals and their legends from the stars) and one about the stars in the Southern Hemisphere as of that month, what we could see, how to identify them, what they are called. It was really fasinating and both lecturers had so many interesting things to say. We went to bed that night truly delighted with our amazing free and unexpected finds!

The plan for Thursday was to be picked up by Krissie and Riaan and head off on a drive down to Simon's Town and around Cape Point. Fortunately for us Thursday turned out to be the first sunny day we had had in Cape Town so far. And that just set us up for an amazing day. We had coffee in Simonstown and then headed into the Toy Museum for a trip down toy memory lane. Stefan then joined us and we had beers on the waterside.

We then sauntered down to watch the marvell of seeing penguins on the beach (Sean and I couldn't help wondering at how well they walked on the sand compared to how we'd seen then walk on the snow and ice in Antarctica!)...

...before we drove down to Cape Point to take in the scenes of the Cape of Good Hope (where Riaan super kindly handed over the keys of his car to Sean so that he, Stefan and I could go into the National Park). I'll never forget the massive group of Italians that ruined any chance Stefan had of taking of good photo of us there! It was funny being back here. I'd been here once before by myself whilst working at iTouch and absolutely nothing had changed. It was really bizarre. I even saw the same type of animals at the same points of the drive like they'd stood there for years without moving.

We met up again with Krissie and Riaan at the entrance and drove around the cape for sunset. We saw amazing views on this drive, it was truly beautiful.

And then once the sun had set, we knew it was beer o'clock so headed to a nice little Spanish place for some yummy chili before heading back to Long Street where we started with shooters in Bobs and ended up at Dubliner's Irish Pub that had kept Sean and I up every night now with it's live band and basically things turned into this:

'Nuff said. Oh! Except for the fact that Krissie surprised us all with her sign language ability which happened to come out when we met a deaf gentleman named Richard who was staying in our backpackers. Nice one Krissie - without you we wouldn't have had that lovely chat with that really lovely man.

Needless to say on Friday we were feeling a little worse for wear, but had those Robben Island tickets to use! Turns out Stefan was on our same tour, so we all nursed our heads together. Again, another blinder of a day for us. We had been crazy lucky - the boat and that tour in the rain would not have been fun. The tour itself is a little strange because it's 40 mins on a bus with a guide talking you through buildings and then one hour with an ex inmate touring the prison. We saw the quarry where Nelson Mandela et al would discuss plans whilst the guards would try to demoralise them by literally making them take the stones from one side to the other of the quarry without point. We saw the cell that Mandela slept in all those years - it was very small. We were show the ID cards that 'blacks' and 'coloureds' were supposed to carry that were famously burnt in protest. We heard about the extensive censoring of the letters received by the inmates - such that they received something that read "Dear Bob" and nothing else. It's a very strange period in South African history, but one thing I can say is that nearly every local that we have met (black or white) are all positive about the future. There is a tremendous sense of pride here about building a beautiful country - together.

By Saturday Sean's toe was looking worse for wear so we decided to make use of our travel insurance and visit a doctor. We headed to the nearest Mediclinic where the doctor promptly drilled 3 holes in his nail and drained his toe of blood. ￡50 later and we were back in the hostel. We then because frustrated with South African opening hours as we discovered everythign on a Saturday closes at lunchtime and we should have gone to the Mediclinic in the afternoon and not the morning. Cape Town gives this false sense of security that you're back home, and then they go and do silly things like this - oh, and don't get me started on the whole 'we don't sell booze on a Sunday' thing - what's that all about?! Fortunately the lovely lady from East London who was staying in our backpackers with her group of trainee chefs kindly let us drink her wine. Probably trying to make amends for the crazy student of hers who had tried repeatedly whilst drunk to get into our room!

Sunday we spent planning our getaway. We have to leave Cape Town. We could stay here a lot longer, but we've already stayed longer than planned and if we don't go now, we'll never go!

And by Monday I discovered whilst packing up that I'd managed to lose $170 between Wednesday and now so we had to visit the police station to make a sworn afidavit, return to the Mediclinic to get some invoice paperwork and then pack for our early 5am bus start the next day. We finally, after much deliberation, had decided on staying at one place on the Garden Route, one on the Sunshine Coast and one on the Wild Coast to try to get a taster of what SA had to offer. It's such a big country really that we didn't have enough time to do much more and it's such a great country that it's ideal for family holidays - and much easier to see if you can afford to hire a car! So for now, we'll settle with our taster menu of the South African coast. But Cape Town has been a blast, it's a truly wonderful city.

Oh! And apparently they have this mountain...

Here are the photos:

BT76_Cape Town 22 - 30 May 2011

Sideways

noreply@blogger.com (Jennie) — Sun, 22 May 2011 06:09:00 +0000

Those of you who know Jennie and I well might have picked up, just very subtly and only from time to time, that we like wine. So it's fair to say that we were rather looking forward to spending a few days in wine country after crossing the South African border on our way to Cape Town.

The Stellenbosch region is of course South Africa's most celebrated wine producing zone, but we didn't have to wait until we were that far south to get our grape on, thanks to Drew's connections with Highlanders - a lovely campsite near Citrusdal in the Western Cape which makes its own wines and is also part of a local wine cooperative. Established by "Sparky" - an ex-electrician and overland guide who decided he wanted a change of tack - it's a lovely place and was a perfect stop to break our travels south.

We were booked into a hostel in Stellenbosch, so this would be our final night of camping and as such we had the rather tedious task of unpacking and cleaning pretty much the whole truck before we could get our evening started. They do say, however, that delayed gratification is a sign of maturity, and so we were feeling pretty bloody mature by the time we got up to our wine tasting session in the bar above the campsite. There we were treated to a tasting of seven different wines from the cooperative - accompanied by a most welcome plate of cheese. The wines were excellent - the Chenin Blanc and the Rooibos tea-infused African Ruby Vermouth were particularly good. And even better was when Drew bought a couple of bottles down for us to enjoy with our barbecue dinner. He's a good man, that Drew.

Wine appetite sufficiently whetted, it was on to Stellenbosch and our rather aptly named backpackers lodge, the Stumble Inn. Stellenbosch is, after Cape Town, the second oldest settlement in the Western Cape and it has the unmistakeable feel of a very classy, upmarket historic town, while the University - and the large student population that comes with it - gives the town a vibrant and energetic air as well. The food is great, and the ice cream is wonderful.

The old buildings, boutique shops, sidewalk cafes and gourmet restaurants were all well and good of course, but we were there for the wine and so we boarded a minibus and joined a day-long winetasting tour comprising four vineyards (Simonsig, Fairview, Dieu Donne and Boschendal) and a promised 25 tastings.

I won't go into detail about every vineyard and every wine, suffice it to say we had a fantastic day. Particular highlights included Mercedes winning a bottle of wine, the lovely views accompanying the wines up at Dieu Donne, Fairview - which not only combined our favourite wines of the day with a room of endless free cheese tastings but also gave us a close encounter with one of the local lizard critters, and finally the fact that through judiciously spreading our efforts (and lying through our teeth) we managed to increase our promised 25 tastings to something over 40. Result.

And thus ended the classy portion of the day's entertainment. After a day's wine drinking, and combined with the knowledge that you have to get up the next morning to make the final hop to Cape Town, you would think that the smart move would be to have an early night. We did this:

The drinks flowed at Stumble Inn, and then continued to do so at Trumpet Tree bar just around the corner, and I justified my indulgence by claiming that the ingestion of vast quantities of alcohol was healthy for me as it took away the pain of my crushed toe. I might have almost been ok had I stuck to wine, but I decided in my wisdom to help myself to a large collection of beers and shots as well (including one Stumble Inn version of a Jaegerbomb with some green stuff) - I assumed that if this was a poor idea then one of my more sober companions would have spoken up. The fact that none of my companions were remotely sober proved to be the minor yet fatal flaw in this plan.

I managed to stumble in to Stumble Inn (see what I did there?) at ridiculous o'clock and set a new personal best by needing three attempts to find my bunk in our dorm. The first (a top bunk) was empty but something clicked in the back of my head that I was sleeping in a bottom bunk, not a top one and so I tried again. The bottom bunk I then tried was occupied by Mercedes who - bless her - was thankfully as drunk as me and didn't even notice me nearly climbing into bed with her. Finally a voice rang out across the dark room "Sean, over here!" I responded to the effect of "thank you, disembodied voice lady!" and fell into my actual bed. Turns out the disembodied voice lady was Jen - who'd had the sense to call it a night a little earlier. So that was good.

The following morning was not. We've arrived now in Cape Town, which I have no doubt will look much nicer when I don't want to quietly die.

Things Jennie will Remember:

1) Our wine tastings at Simonsig:

Kaapse Vonkel

Chenin Blanc

Gewurztraminer

The SMV (Shiraz, Mourverde, Viognier)

Frans Malan Reserve

2) Our wine tastings at Fairview:

Sauvignon Blanc

Viognier

Viognier Special Late Harvest

Merlot

Cabernet Sauvignon

Pinotage

Goats Do Roam Rose

Goats In Villages Shiraz Pinotage

Special Reserve Chakalaka

Spice Route Chenin Blanc

La Capra Pinotage

La Capra Chenin Blanc

3) Our wine tastings at Dieu Donne:

Methode Cap Classique 2009

Sauvignon Blanc 2010

Merlot 2008/2007

Viognier 2008

Rose 2010

Cabernet Sauvignon 2006

Belair Rose

Rose 2010

Rose 2010 (Well it was very nice!)

4) Our wine tastings at Boschendal:

1685 Chardonnay 2009

Blanc De Noir 2010

Le Bouquet 2010

Lanoy 2009

1685 Shiraz 2009

5) I can't remember anything else...I was drunk.

Here are the photos:

BT75_Highlanders and Stellenbosch 20 - 21 May 2011