Roadtripping Africa - Part 1: S.A. and Mozambique

I’m sitting under a palm tree looking out onto a white sand beach where the fishermen are just bringing in their catch. It feels like I’m in some cliché post card of a tropical paradise with torqouise blue waters in the background. Yanis is sitting next to me in the shade under the tree (he’s trying to stay out of the sun at the moment, because he’s worried that his first-time beard is going to get more ginger than it already is) and Elias is helping the fishermen pull one of the boats ashore. We’re in Vilankulo – half way up the Mozambican coast – and life is good.

Since we rarely get to be online (this is one of the few hostels with wireless internet) I thought I’d update all of you guys on what we’ve been up to over the first month of our trip.

Leaving Cape Town was tough for Yanis and me. After spending the last three years there I’ve grown really attached to the place, to say the least. The easy lifestyle, the massive waves, the nature, the amazing NGO I helped build up, the good friends, our infamous adopted dog Marty – they were all hard the leave behind, and so I found the good bye harder than usual. But we’ll have our family home in our little spot in paradise there for years to come!

After picking up Elias in East London, we spent the first few days in the Transkei, a rural area in the Eastern Cape province, one of South Africa’s poorest, and most beautiful, areas. We camped for three days on a deserted beach at a river mouth, spending our days hiking down the coast looking for waves (and finding them – although we also saw a serious looking Zambezi shark – so we didn’t surf for too long), fishing and diving for crayfish; and the nights sitting around our bonfire braaing our catch of the day, laying in our sleeping bags looking up a night sky with more stars than I have ever seen, and catching up with Elias and all his stories from his first year at University. (continues below)

Our campsite in the Transkei

Rolling hills and ocean

The view from the top of our Transkei campsite spot

Getting mobbed by kids at a local school

We have quite the ideal set-up for this road trip, by the way. Not only do we have the perfect offroad car, we also have all the camping gear, from a car fridge, to a cooking stove, a hammock, an awning for shade, a table and chairs, a solar heated shower thing, mosquito nets, etc. – we even have a dual battery system in the car with an adapter with which we can charge our computers and carmeras. Long gone are the days which we spent backpacking around Europe sleeping on park benches and under bushes because we couldn’t afford hostels – this is roadtripping in style, my friends. We are spoiled for sure.

After leaving the Transkei, we drove through Durban and we were almost at the Mozambican border when something we didn’t see coming at all happened – Arnie, our beast of car, overheated and went on strike. I guess on a roadtrip, especially one this long and ‘extreme’, something is bound to wrong with the car. Yet still it was a shock that it happened. Apparently the fan cooling system wasn’t working properly, but neither was the temperature gage, so we couldn’t tell that the car was getting hot, until it was too late. It was very expensive to fix and we were stranded for a week - it so it was a bit of a nightmare that awoke us from our bliss, but we tried to not let it get us down and made sure it wasn’t lost time.

We spent the week in the little town of St. Lucia while we waited for our car to get repaired.  It’s in a beautiful wetland nature reserve, with hippos walking the streets of the town at night and crocs lazing on the shores of the estuary during the day. We even saw a leopard on an early morning drive to a nearby beach. The owner of the hostel we stayed at made us feel at home – introducing us to all kinds of locals, taking us around and making sure that we had a good time. He and all his friends were Afrikaaners, and they braai-ed meat for lunch and dinner every single day we were there. (continues below)

Sunset behind our hostel in St. Lucia - hippo in the water

Not impressed by the bad news

Visiting the local school for Letters to Juba

Kudu - king of the antelopes

Getting back on the road felt good. We crossed into Mozambique through the southern-most border, at Ponto d’Ouro, which is only accessible by 4x4. Being back in Mozambique after 15 years felt amazing. Although I was only 10 when we left, as soon as we got to the outskirts of Maputo, and saw the city from the other side of the bay, many memories that were gray for so long were filled in with colours, sounds and smells. It felt like very little time had passed - the jacaranda trees lining the sides of the streets, the people walking down the broken sidewalks, the beautiful but decaying old portuguese architecture, and the rhythm of life there were all just like I remembered it.

Some things had certainly changed: there were lots of new developments and construction sites, fancy cars driving in the streets, prices that were comparable to those in South Africa, and corrupt police officers that pulled us over every 10 minutes seeing our foreign license plates and looking for an easy bribe. Patience is of the essence, because they came up with all kinds of ‘infractions’ which we were allegedly guilty of. Apparently you need a reflective vest, a fire extinguisher, and two red safety triangles in your car – we had done our research beforehand, so we came prepared. But after one said that the mistake we had committed was to drive leaning our elbow on our rolled down window, I lost my patience. Pointing at another car driving past us, with the driver also leaning his elbow on the open window (as one does when it is 30 degrees and humid), I told him quite firmly (as good as I could in my broken Portuguese) that they can’t just make up laws, and that I would rather have him try to take us to the station and lock us up than pay him a bribe for such a lame attempt. Eventually him, and all the others, let us go, once they realised that we’re not the easiest of targets. And besides the one case, we usually manage to joke around with them. One young police officer even admitted that he needed the money from bribes to pay for his studies. (continues below)

Back in Maputo after all these years

The fish market in Maputo

Elias has talent in taking pictures - most of these are from him

Domingo showing us around his village

We only spent three days in Maputo, but we filled our days with all kinds of things. One afternoon we went to the famous fish market, where you can choose from a hundred different types of fish, shrimp, lobsters, crabs or calamaris, and they cook it for you while you listen to the local Marabaneta music and drink a cold Laurentino local beer. Elias said it was the best meal he’s ever had.

After Maputo we headed 7 hours north to Tofo, a little beachside spot with a great surf break and famous for its many whalesharks and mantarays. During our four days there we got quite good at cooking different types of seafood, using lots of garlic, lemon and spices – and of course coconut rice. The gardener at our hostel, Domingo, became our friend, taught us some Mozambican cooking skills, showed us around his village and spent hours answering our many questions. We left him one of our surfboards, and he told us he’d be ready to come surf the point break with us by the time we come back in a year or two.

Now we are on our last stop in Mozambique, in Vilankulo, which is right next to the famous Bazaruto Archipelago. We are taking a boat trip there tomorrow, and I’ll be sure to have my go-pro charged to get some amazing underwater shots. On Wednesday we’re on to Zimbabwe, where a whole different type of experience awaits us, I’m sure. For now, let me get back to enjoying the view from within our little tropical beach postcard.