A slow interlude in Sabie: May-June 2016

Ruins of Great Zimbabwe, June 21, 2016

It’s 8 pm under a nearly-full moon here in the deserted campground of the Great Zimbabwe ruins.  This is a World Heritage site, the most spectacular old stone ruins in sub-Saharan Africa, and there were fewer than twenty visitors today.  Tourism in Zimbabwe is truly dying.  It’s a good place to reflect on the transient glory of worldly power and fame (both 600 years ago and today in Zimbabwe!) and to catch up on my blog after a few weeks away.

Nice rock strata at Bridal Veil Falls, near Sabie

My previous blog post ended with Terri and I driving Stanley back into South Africa after two wonderful weeks in Mozambique.  It was May 27^th and we were hoping to make it all the way from Chidenguele to the Blyde River Canyon in one long day of driving.  We tanked up with diesel on the South African side of the border and went into a supermarket to stock up on food.  As is frequently the case in South African supermarkets, shoppers have to leave any large bags they are carrying at the security desk on the way in.  I left my camera bag and found Terri perusing the fruit and veggie selection.  We got so engrossed in selecting avocados that when we left the store, laden with groceries, I completely forgot that I had entered with my camera bag.  We loaded the fridge and the larder and drove off, first west on the N4 and then turning north near Nelspruit to head into the hills.  We made good time and we were congratulating ourselves on having saved a day of travel by taking the route we did, rather than retracing our path through Limpopo and Kruger parks.

Blyde River Canyon morning light

The road climbed higher and higher, passing through pine plantations that cloaked the hills in alien rows of imported greenery.  As we got to the top of a long climb, we looked down into the deep valley of the Sabie River and I decided that it warranted a picture.  I pulled over, looked into the back seat and saw empty space where my camera should have been.  A wave of panic swept over me:  what had happened to my beloved camera gear?  After a few seconds, I remembered that I had not picked it up from the supermarket security guard 160 kilometres back down the road.  I was completely stricken with the thought that the camera, the lenses, the filters and everything else in the bag was gone for good.  We looked up the telephone number of the Lebombo Supermarket on our phones and I called.  The manager answered the phone and said that the camera bag was still there and that he would put it in his office for safe-keeping until I came back for it.

Pretty waterfall

I was relieved, but also furious at myself for making such a stupid mistake.  I had stopped on the right side of the road (since that was the side with the viewpoint) and as I pulled Stanley around in a U-turn, my distraction and my anger at myself made me forget for a moment that I was in a country where people drive on the left.  The road was empty as I turned, so there was no visual cue of traffic to remind me, and I started to head back down the road on the right side of the road.  Almost immediately two cars appeared around a bend, headed straight towards me, and my instinct didn’t tell me that I was on the wrong side of the road, or at least not right away.  Rather than immediately moving left to avoid them, I pulled onto the right shoulder to let them past, wondering why they were driving on the wrong side of the road.  Then it struck me that it was me who was on the wrong side!  I had already stomped on the brakes, and luckily I hadn’t gotten going very fast yet.  The first car swung out to avoid me, but the second car put on the brakes and gently skidded into Stanley.  By the time the collision happened, Stanley was more or less stationary, and the other car wasn’t going too fast.  It was still fast enough to cause real damage to the vehicles, but not so fast that anyone got hurt.  It was a minor miracle, but it was also completely terrifying, as Terri and I realized how disastrous the accident could have been.  We were both in a state of mild shock for the two hours it took for the police and tow trucks to come.  The other vehicle, a fairly new Toyota Hi-Lux, had a very badly crumpled front right fender and was undriveable.  Stanley, on the other hand, got off pretty lightly:  the front right corner got a bit dented, making it hard to open the driver’s door, but otherwise it was fully driveable.  Even the headlights and indicators worked.  The bodywork looked pretty ugly, though, so we definitely wanted to get it fixed.  Terri took the wheel once we had the OK to leave the accident scene, and we crawled downhill into the nearest town, Sabie, and found a small campground for the night, the Sabie River campground.  It was a sombre night around the braai that night, as we came to terms with the accident and what a few seconds of distraction and emotional upset could have resulted in.

Sunset shadows at Blyde River Canyon

As the other driver said to us, “Look, it was an accident.  Nobody got hurt, we both have insurance, it could have been much worse.”  This was true, but we now faced the reality of a serious delay to our travel plans as we waited for our car insurance to go through the process of repairing the car.  It turned out to be exactly two weeks of waiting, first for the insurance company to approve the claim, and then for the repairs to get done.  Saturday, May 28^th we called Santam, our insurer, and they found a Santam-approved garage in the small town of Sabie.  We dropped by and found them working on a Saturday (even though they were officially closed on Saturdays, they frequently caught up on any backlogs on Saturday morning).  They took a preliminary look at the car and told us to come back on Monday morning for an official assessment. 

Terri riding her bike around Marlothi Park

We then backtracked 160 kilometres to the Mozambican border to pick up my camera; miraculously it was still there, safe and sound.  We had decided to take advantage of the trip to see the southwest corner of Kruger National Park; we had skipped it the first time around, and hence hadn’t seen many of the white rhinos for which Kruger is one of the biggest remaining refuges.  We drove from the border back to a strange little suburban development called Marloth Park, where (mostly retired) South Africans buy a lot, build a house and live in the middle of a well-stocked game reserve right against the southern border of Kruger National Park.  There is a well-run little campground, Marlothi Safari Park, in the middle of this subdivision, and we spent the night there as all of Kruger’s campgrounds (other than Punda Maria) were fully booked that Saturday night.  Marlothi proved to be a great place to stay, as we could ride our folding bicycles around to go birdwatching on the banks of the Crocodile River, right on the boundary of Kruger.  Bushbucks came through the campsite at night, and impala and kudu strolled through the yards of the houses in the nearby subdivision.  We had a long chat with our neighbours, a retired couple from near Johannesburg who told us that they had moved out from the city to a rural area in the Magaliesberg after a home invasion by armed men who held a gun to their young grandson’s head to convince them to hand over everything of value.  It is remarkable how many South Africans have truly harrowing stories of brushes with violence. 

Lindy showed Terri how to tie a doekie around her head in Sabie

The next morning we set off for Kruger, and had a day's wonderful driving through the park, as related at the end of my previous Kruger blog post.  We drove out the Numbi Gate, thinking sombre thoughts about the war on rhinos and about our own near-brush with mortality, and headed back to Sabie, where this time we took up residence in the huge, well-run Merry Pebbles Resort campground.

We were there for four days, waiting for Santam to send an assessor to look at the car.  As we waited we went hiking in the hills, rode our bikes around town, went on afternoon runs and tried to take advantage of the enforced delay to take care of pending business.  We bought an electric oven/stove to supplement our cooking options and bought a fancy new mattress to give us a better night’s sleep.  We read a lot and spent a lot of time on the phone with Santam and with the garage, trying to speed the process along.  Finally on Thursday, after the assessor’s visit, we packed up Stanley and drove north to Blyde River Canyon, an hour’s drive away in an impossibly scenic location. 

Terri at Blyde River Canyon

Blyde River Canyon

We spent three enjoyable days camped at Blyde River Canyon Resort, hiking around the resort and drinking in the huge views.  The plateau of the Highveld tumbles down into the Lowveld along a long escarpment, and the Blyde River cuts a deep gash through the escarpment here.  It was an idyllic spot, full of birds and waterfalls and butterflies, and we were much happier to spend days in these surroundings rather than in the industrial surroundings of Sabie and its sawmills.  The scenery was definitely the prettiest we had seen yet in South Africa and, had it been warmer, we would have taken advantage of the waterfalls and swimming holes to have a dip.  As it was, it was cold at night, cold enough that were glad to have an electric heating fan to keep Stanley’s insides warm. 

Folding bikes make a great way to get to the sunset lookout

Bourke's Luck Potholes

Neat scenery at Bourke's Luck Potholes

On Monday, June 6^th we drove back to Sabie, stopping to see the sights along the way such as Bourke’s Luck Potholes (very pretty), Berlin Falls (OK), God’s Window (over-rated) and Mac Mac Falls (quite pretty). We checked into indoor digs (the very pleasant Sabie Self-Catering Apartments, run by the friendly and efficient Annelise), unloaded much of our gear from Stanley and dropped Stanley off on Tuesday morning at the garage.  We spent the next five days in an agony of impatience, phoning the garage, dropping by, hoping that we could leave the next day.  It was a bit like Groundhog Day.

The team that got Stanley back on the road in Sabie

Finally, though, after some stern words by Terri to the garage owner, we were promised that the repairs would be done by Saturday at noon, and they were as good as their word.  At precisely noon I picked Stanley up, paid our deductible (about US$ 230) and drove off.  We loaded all of our gear back into Stanley and headed north, trying to outrun a cold front that was bringing wind, storms and general nastiness to the Highveld.

Terri with friendly French overlanders at Merry Pebbles

After a night in the industrial town of Polokwane, we drove north, right to the three-way corner of South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe, where the small Mapungubwe National Park is located.  We spent a couple of nights camped there, enjoying the rocky landscape, birds and game.

Crested barbet, Mapungubwe

Mapungubwe is a UNESCO World Heritage Site for historical reasons; the first big empire in Southern Africa, a forerunner of Great Zimbabwe, was centred on Mapungubwe.  We tried to visit the ruins, but they were only accessible through a fairly expensive tour.  We stopped by the museum, but the power was out and we would not have been able to see anything inside the museum, so we gave it up and went for a game drive instead, spotting the first elands of our trip.  The campground was tiny (only 10 sites) but idyllic, and we spent the next day visiting a bird hide (quite rich in water birds) and doing another game drive, during the course of which we saw a kori bustard, the largest flying bird in the world, stalking along the ground in search of snakes to eat.  We really enjoyed Mapungubwe and were somewhat sad to leave it behind the next morning, but we were keen to move onto our next country……Zimbabwe!

Spoonbills flying in Mapungubwe

An hour and a half of driving and we were at the chaos of the Beitbridge border crossing, ready to enter the unknown.

Kori bustard, Mapungubwe

As we won’t be back to South Africa for a few months, it seems like a good time for a few thoughts on the country.  We only saw a tiny corner in the northwest of the country for a few weeks, but it was enough exposure to form a first impression.  We talked to a lot of South Africans, both whites (the majority of tourists that we ran into in Kruger) and non-whites (the majority of the population, but not the majority of people that we ended up talking to) and they all had strong opinions on the state of the country.  Few of them were positive; there was a lot of “the country is going to hell in a handbasket” sentiment, and while this sort of idea always tends to be a bit exaggerated, from the point of view of the white Afrikaner you can certainly understand this.  Almost everyone we talked to had a horror story or two to share about violence:  people being held up at gunpoint, sometimes in their own homes, being carjacked, of relatives being murdered.  South Africa has a horrific problem with violent crime, dwarfed only by the free-fire zones of Central and South American cities. 

Big views at Blyde River Canyon

Berlin Falls

This fear of violence leads to white suburbs being collections of tiny fortresses, with houses surrounded by razor wire-topped fences, protected by CCTV cameras, security guards, armed-response units, guard dogs and guns.  Ironically, the people most at risk of violent crime are the people living in poor shantytowns like those in the Cape Flats, the most violent urban area in Africa.  Until South Africa gets a grip on violent crime, it will continue to be a country gripped by fear.

Lovely waterfalls and pool on the Lourie Trail, Blyde River Canyon

Lots of people of all races lamented government corruption and perceived ineptitude.  The upcoming municipal elections in August are viewed as a chance for people to vote against the ANC and to give them a much-needed kick in the pants.  Any political party that has dominated a country for 22 years gets complacent and attracts self-interested individuals, and the ANC is no exception.  As I write this, riots are gripping Pretoria over the ANC’s choice of mayoral candidate, as various factions in the ANC battle it out on the streets, with shops owned by Zimbabwean, Rwandan, Zambian, Ugandan and other African businessmen the first target for mob violence and looting. Sergeant, the security guard at a caravan park we stayed at, gave us an interesting insight into public opinion one night around the campfire.  He is a black South African in a fairly low-paying job who has no time for the ANC.  He supports the Democratic Alliance (DA), the traditionally white liberal opposition party that is attracting a great deal of support these days.

Along the Lourie Trail

He had nothing but scorn for the corruption in the ANC, and for the many splinter groups that have split off from the ANC.  He said he could never vote for anyone who had been part of the ANC.  If the ANC is losing the vote of young black South Africans, it could be in trouble.  Recent opinion polls show the DA actually leading the ANC in many of the big cities; the DA already runs Cape Town, but Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, East London and other metropolises seem to be in play after decades of being gimmes for the ANC.  It will be interesting to see how the election plays out, and whether the ANC peacefully surrenders power if it loses in these places.  The corruption scandals engulfing Jacob Zuma, particularly the surreal stories of the Gupta family’s extraordinary influence over the president, make the ANC very vulnerable electorally.  What many South Africans fear is that Zuma is another Robert Mugabe in the making, willing to go to any lengths to maintain his hold on power no matter what the cost to the country is.

Fiery Acraea butterfly

With violence a daily menace, politics a mess and the economy doing poorly, and with many whites wondering what future their children will have in the country, many of the South African whites we talked to were keen to emigrate, or for their children to do so.  New Zealand seems to be a popular destination; as soon as Terri revealed herself to be a Kiwi, people would tell us that they wanted to move there, were in the process of moving there, or had relatives who had already gone there.  Black and Coloured South Africans told us that even with programs in place to empower non-white South Africans, with unemployment high and education very much below-par for many non-whites, they saw little prospects of their childrens’ lot in life being any better than their own.

Aloe flowers at Mac Mac Falls

I was surprised to hear some black South Africans lamenting the end of the apartheid era, not because they had any love lost for the racist laws of the time, but because at the time it was much easier to get jobs.  Unemployment is high in South Africa, especially now with the downturn in the mining sector and the drought that has plagued all of southern Africa this past year.  We saw a lot of fairly down-and-out people on the streets, particularly panhandling in supermarket parking lots and at busy intersections.  A surprising number of them were whites, particularly in Sabie, where the closing of big timber mills has thrown a lot of people out of work.  On our last day in Sabie, as we restocked Stanley’s refrigerator, at least five white people approached us in the parking lot looking for handouts. 

Tree roots

South Africa still has a lot going for it.  It has a well-developed economy with industry, service sector companies, agriculture and mining that would be the envy of any other country in sub-Saharan Africa.  Its roads, schools, banks, newspapers and sprawling suburbs could be taken from Australia, New Zealand or Canada.  Its companies dominate the commercial sectors of neighbouring countries.  The average South African is materially better off than the average Zimbabwean, Zambian, Tanzanian or Nigerian.  The problem is that the averaging process obscures the yawning gap between the mostly-white haves and the mostly black have-nots.  The inequality, the violence and the sense of a diminished future that so many people in the country feel all bode poorly for the future.  South Africa is a country whose future could go in so many different ways.  If they emulate Botswana, turning mineral wealth into a broad-based middle class society, it could be a shining light for the rest of the continent.  If they emulate Zimbabwe (as many South Africans fear), it could be disastrous.  I will stay tuned to see which way it goes.

Happy campers at Blyde River Canyon

Blyde River sundowners

Five Beaches and a Lake: Stanley in Mozambique, Land of the Sunbird

Sabie, South Africa, June 8, 2016

It always seems to take much longer than it should to get around to distilling experiences into blog posts.  The essence of blogging should be its immediacy and speed, and yet it seems to take me a few weeks (or even months) to get around to it.  I’d like to claim that it’s because it takes that long to ruminate on events and assess their significance, beauty and interest, but that would be a lie.  Mostly it’s that I don’t get around to it because I have other things (usually further travel) occupying my time and my mental phase space.  We left Mozambique 9 days ago, and we’ve been in a bit of a holding pattern, but I still am only getting around to writing about our wonderful two weeks in that unfortunate country now that it’s a grey day and we’ve done the hiking that we wanted to do in this area.

Waves coming into Pomene

I had been looking forward to visiting Mozambique for years.  I had heard about its lovely beaches and its historic remnants from other travellers and from friends who had worked in the country.  I heard that it was rebuilding after its brutal years of independence struggle and subsequent civil war, and that it was an optimistic place.  Looking through the Lonely Planet, it sounded as though there was a lot to see throughout the immense length of the country, and we planned to drive Stanley north, at least as far as the main border crossing into Zimbabwe, preferably as far as the Malawi border, and maybe as far north as the Quirimba Archipelago, about which I had heard great things.  Unfortunately while we were in Johannesburg in early April, having brunch with Erin Conway-Smith, fellow ex-Thunder Bay-ite and current Economist correspondent for southern Africa, she told Terri and me that things were rapidly falling apart in Mozambique, with Renamo, the losing side in the civil war, having walked out of government over its demands to rule the northern provinces of the country.  There were reports of frequent shooting attacks on traffic on the EN1, the main north-south highway of the country, carried out by Renamo, and of government retaliation against civilians in the Gorongosa and Manica provinces where Renamo’s centre of support is.  In an article in the Global Post, Erin wrote about the very real dangers of the civil war kicking off again, and urged us to be careful and keep ourselves informed about the current state of play in the country.  I subscribed to a couple of newletters and Twitter newsfeeds on the country, including the excellent Zenaida Machado (a Mozambican journalist) and as we travelled through Kruger, I would follow developments in the country, none of which looked good.  Hidden debts used to fund useless tuna trawlers and line officials’ pockets; imminent default on the country’s foreign debt; the IMF and Western countries cutting off financial support; more shootings; mass graves in Gorongosa.  We set off for Mozambique already thinking that we might not be able to venture beyond the beautiful beaches of the south, firmly held by the Frelimo government and out of range of the Kalashnikovs of Renamo.

On the dusty road through Limpopo Park

We entered Mozambique on Thursday, May 12^th, at Giriyondo border post.  This is one of the most soporific border crossings imaginable.  We arrived at 8:05, just as they opened for business, and crossed relatively quickly, although not painlessly.  We were the first vehicle to enter Mozambique there that day; we heard later that in total three vehicles crossed all day.  The South African side was relatively quick, while the Mozambican side was a bit more leisurely.  We regretted not doing our homework and reading up on visas in more detail.  Mozambique issues 30-day single-entry visas at the border, but the prices vary wildly depending on the currency in which you pay.  In Mozambican meticais, the price is Mt 2085, or a little under US$ 40.  If you pay in South African rand, the price is R 785, which is about US$ 52 at current exchange rates.  If, however, like us you want to pay in US dollars, it’s US$ 90 per person, which is an outrageous markup.  We scrounged together enough rand to buy one visa, then swallowed the loss and bought the other in dollars, muttering under our breaths.  Perhaps the visa prices (which were on an old printed list) were set when the rand and the metical had not yet fallen off a currency cliff.

Terri at Fish Eagle Camp

We drove along a reasonable dirt track for the next hour and a half to get to Campismo Aguia Pesqueira (Fish Eagle Camp), through the Parque Nacional de Limpopo.  In theory Kruger, Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe and Limpopo Park in Mozambique should form a single tri-national wildlife safety zone that is one of the biggest wildlife reserves in southern Africa.  In practice, Limpopo is almost bereft of wildlife, its elephants and lions poached long ago.  We drove through scrubby forest very similar to the bush on the South African side, and yet we saw barely a single animal, other than a snake, a handful of zebra and a few impala.  It was sad; there were barely even any birds.  Despite Kruger’s relative lack of visible game, it was still the Garden of Eden in comparison with Limpopo.

Fish Eagle Camp sunset over Massangir Dam

We pulled into Fish Eagle Camp around noon and instantly fell in love.  It’s a wonderfully situated campsite, high above the waters of the Massangir Dam, and the campsite itself is well appointed, with nice bathrooms and braai pits.  We found a great spot with a particularly good angle for sunset and settled in.  We did some exercises, then went for a stroll down to the shore of the reservoir.  As we returned for sunset, another 4x4 camper drove up and picked the campsite next to ours, doubling the number of inhabitants of this idyllic spot.  It was a German couple, Edith and Marcel, in a camper that they had rented in South Africa.  We watched the  wonderfully coloured sunset together and, after an excellent dinner of steaks grilled on the braai, we had them over for whisky and Amarula and stories.  They had wanted to do a similar trip to ours a few years ago but had been put off by the hassle and paperwork involved in buying a vehicle in South Africa, so they were interested in how we had managed it.  In the dark we could see the fires of the local villagers who were cultivating maize and running cattle in the bush near the water; between farming and fishing, it’s not that surprising that there aren’t many wild animals to be seen around the park, other than a few beautiful fish eagles soaring high overhead.

The next morning we waved goodbye to Marcel and Edith as we made an early getaway after our usual feast of oatmeal and fruit a la Terri.  We drove out over 20 km of fairly awful track before we left the park and turned unexpectedly onto asphalt.  Our map had shown dirt roads all the way to the coast, so it was a pleasant surprise.  We crossed the massive dam wall, then turned into the small town of Massangir, where we got money out of an ATM (no more miserable exchange rates for dollars for us!), bought a SIM card, had a bite to eat and tried (unsuccessfully) to buy third-party car insurance (compulsory in Mozambique) with the help of a friendly local guy, Artur, who worked for the national park as an agricultural extension officer.  Marcel and Edith drove by and headed off towards the coast.  We drove as far as Chokwe along a new, smooth, empty asphalt road.  Chokwe was a substantial town, full of banks and shops and offices, so we got more money from an ATM, had a splendid lunch and eventually found an insurance guy who sold us a month’s third party insurance for MT 660 (about US$ 12).  I was having fun trying to speak Portuguese, a language I don’t know.  I basically spoke Spanish, trying to put on a Portuguese-sounding accent, and hoped for the best, and often it worked.

Chidenguele dawn

The drive to Chidenguele was long, made longer by the horrible state of the road after Chokwe.  The next 40 km were paved road that was in such a potholed state that it was much worse than a dirt road would have been.  Lots of slaloming between craters, driving beside the road and (finally) a detour onto a parallel dirt road that was both a lot better for driving and a lot more scenic than the ruined highway.  Progress was slow, made slower by our fear of being pulled over by the traffic police.  South African tourists are a big target for the traffic cops, who patrol the speed zones around towns (80 km/h on the outskirts, 60 km/h in the town, with the signs frequently missing) and insist that you were speeding and show an old, stored speed gun reading to back up their claim.  We drove with exaggerated caution past Chibuto and down to the coastal road as darkness fell around us.  We finally hit the main EN1 road just east of Xai Xai and continued another 50 km to the Chidenguele turnoff, where we drove another 4 km down increasingly sandy tracks to reach the idyllic Sunset Beach Resort, where we found Marcel and Edith already established.  They had arrived an hour before us but had been pulled over for speeding along the way, only escaping by genuinely not having a single metical to their name to pay the fine.  The campsite was very nice, with individual bathroom/dishwashing huts and great shade trees.  We slept well after a great fish dinner in the restaurant.

Graydon on the beach at Chidenguele

In the morning, we woke up early with the small, noisy child in the campsite opposite ours, and went up to the restaurant to watch the sunrise.  It was our first view of the Mozambique coast, and it lived up to its billing.  We were above the beach, perched on a sand dune, and the surf of the waves provided a great backdrop of white noise.  We went for a brief walk along the beach before breakfast, then ate in the restaurant before taking a much longer stroll along the completely deserted beach for a couple of hours.  White-fronted plovers and crabs were the only other creatures taking a stroll along the golden sands, and it was a relief after so many days cooped up in the car in Kruger to walk for so long with the wet sand beneath our toes.  When we got back I went out for a run along the road we had driven the night before, as far as a lagoon where fishermen were casting their nets and locals were filling up water jugs.  Back at Sunset Beach we took a dip in the swimming pool, did some yoga, had a luxurious late lunch overlooking the beach  and then bought a freshly spearfished snapper from a local guy who was selling fish to the restaurant.  We cooked it up on the braai, the first of a number of memorable home-cooked seafood dinners in Mozambique.

Terri on the beach at Chidenguele

We had a lazy morning the next day, doing yoga, juggling, lazing over breakfast, and didn’t even start driving until 10 am.  Terri was at the wheel when we had two encounters with traffic cops keen to shake us down, but since we were nowhere near the speed limit, Terri managed to talk our way through both speed traps.  We switched drivers and I was at the wheel as we turned off EN 1 at Lindela for the long trundle towards Inhambane.  We had decided to stay in Paindane, about which we had heard good things, and everything went well until the last 5 km.  The track had been getting sandier and sandier, and suddenly we were stuck in deep sand.  We engaged our 4WD and then got out of the first sand trap, deciding to take another road around.  We got stuck on that one too, and local kids and adults helped push us out, but it was tough going.  What we should have done, and didn’t because we weren’t aware of how much a difference it makes, was to let most of the air out of our tires, all the way down to 1.0 or even 0.8 bar, to greatly increase the contact area of the tire with the sand and “float” us better, rather like fat skis in powder snow.  We continued spinning our way furiously, followed by a small battalion of excited kids who knew that they would be digging us out again soon.  I managed to get us to within 100 metres of our destination before finally and definitively getting mired in sand so deeply that our wheels could no longer even spin, as our differential was buried in the sand.  We dug and dug and dug, using the spade that came with Stanley, but were unable to get out. 

The lagoon at Inhassiro

I walked up the road to the Paindane Resort and to the neighbouring resort in search of a vehicle that might be able to pull us out of the sand.  Paindane Resort was all but deserted, with only a security guard on hand, but Vossie, a South African dive instructor, was at the neighbouring resort and came to our rescue.  He asked why we hadn’t deflated our tires properly (a fair question), deflated them all to 0.8 bar and then tried unsuccessfully to pull us out.  As it turned out, his tires weren’t properly deflated on his Land Cruiser and his Hi-Lift jack wasn’t working, so he retreated in search of replacement parts for the jack.  In the meantime I had been digging, along with the team of local kids and an adult, and we had managed to free the diff from the sand.  Putting the vehicle in low-range 4WD I was able to free myself from the sand just as Vossie returned.  We drove Stanley over the sand into Paindane Resort, managed to get the security guard to agree to let us camp outside a cottage (we were the only guests of the entire resort) and cooked up dinner (a fish curry, using the leftover snapper from the night before).  It was a spectacular spot to camp, high up above the ocean, and we slept well.

Lobster lunch at Paindane

Having expended so much effort to get to Paindane, we weren’t keen to leave too soon, so we spent a couple of days there.  On the first day we had a local spear-fisherman, Peter, drop by and ask if we wanted him to catch us any fish.  We agreed to take some lobster, and by lunchtime he was back with 9 lobsters; we had 4 for lunch and kept 5 for later consumption.  We lunched magnificently looking out over the bay and the fringing reef, and then dropped by Vossie’s resort (20 metres behind where we were staying) to see about going diving the next day.  We agreed to go as he promised dragon moray eels (something I had never seen before) and gave us a very reasonable price (290 rand for a dive, plus 220 rand for gear rental, for a total of US$ 34 if we did one dive or US$ 53 if we did two).  We then went for a long walk along the beach north towards adjacent Guinjata Beach in search of a supermarket.  It was a beautiful walk, with lots of shells and crabs to distract our attention and great light.  Taurus supermarket, tucked into a bay full of South African holiday homes and a couple of big resorts (Jeff’s and Guinjata Bay) was full of imported South African goodies at inflated prices, but we were low on supplies and had no choice but to stock up there.  We had great sunset light on the walk back, and supped magnificently on leftover fish curry.

Paindane

In the night the wind changed direction and started blowing hard from the southeast, rattling the canvas tent sides of Stanley.  We woke up to a windy morning and a building swell.  We walked up to Vossie’s and suited up for a dive.  His dive shop was well-appointed and he seemed to be a very experienced and competent dive instructor.  We drove down to the launching point on the beach, climbed aboard the rigid-bottomed Zodiac and headed out into the sea.  Our dive site, Dragon’s Ledge, was beyond the shelter of the fringing reef that protects Paindane Beach, and it was pretty rough water by the time we dropped overboard.  We did a negative entry, dropping immediately below the surface swell.  The wind shift had changed the currents and we ended up fighting current for much of the dive, meaning that I sucked my air down faster than usual.  We had a good dive:  the dragon morays were there, along with more usual marble morays in some profusion, all attracted to a cleaning station where legions of cleaner shrimp serviced them.  We missed a turtle on the initial descent (Vossie saw him, but we weren’t fast enough to turn our heads before he vanished into the distance) but had a number of pipefish, lionfish and two rays, one an electric ray and the other a very large blotched ray, to feast our eyes on.  The coral was nothing special, and we did our safety stop out in the blue, but it was still an interesting dive, my first in nearly 2 years (since Indonesia in August, 2014).  We surfaced to even bigger waves, and decided against a second dive in the worsening conditions.  We beached the boat on the sand in a crazy James Bond-esque manoeuvre that had us holding onto the side ropes for dear life with our toes tucked into floor straps as Vossie gunned the engine at full throttle to hurl us clear of the surf.  I have never landed on a beach like that, and would be happy never to do it again.  We sat around at the resort afterwards chatting with Vossie about his 9 years in Mozambique, the local attitude toward conservation (complete disdain), the fate of dugongs and manta rays (eaten for food; there aren’t any in the area anymore), the malign influence of China in Mozambique, the deteriorating security situation with Renamo, and the perils of not treating coral cuts immediately.

Terri at Paindane

We went back to our deserted resort and had another massive lobster feast before I went out for a run in the dunes.  It was really hard work running through the soft sand, and I returned with tired legs.  Having lunched so magnificently, we settled for a toast and soup supper and an early night.

In the morning we packed up to leave, but not before the resort manager finally made an appearance to collect money for our stay.  Paindane, like much of the Mozambique coast, is full of resorts that have either closed or are barely ticking over.  All the tourists come from South Africa and outside of major school holiday times, there are very few South Africans coming to Mozambique.  Apparently tourist numbers have been declining for a couple of years with a worsening economic outlook in South Africa, but xenophobic riots in South Africa last year in which a Mozambican man was lynched by a mob led to a mass exodus of South Africans from Mozambique and a plunge in tourist numbers.  Mozambique has a lot to offer, with long stretches of unspoiled coastline, but South Africans are reluctant to come to a place that is falling apart politically and where they feel unsafe.  Paindane Resort was apparently only open during major holiday times, and was basically closed when we arrived, although they were happy to take our money.  Peter the spear-fisherman showed up with some freshly caught snapper and, after some negotiation, we agreed a price for four fish weighing in at a total of 3.5 kg, which we tossed into our refrigerator.

Terri at Morrungulo

We set off towards Morrungulo, described to us as the nicest campsite on the Mozambican coast.  Terri drove us out across the sands; with the tires deflated, it was relatively easy and even rather fun to drive, a complete contrast to our dismal arrival.  We got out to the main gravel road and used the small air compressor that Etienne, the previous owner, had bought for Stanley to re-inflate our tires to road pressures; we were glad for Etienne’s meticulous care in equipping the vehicle for all possibilities.  In the town of Maxixe, back on EN1, we stopped for an ATM and to get Vodacom to get my cellular data service to work on my (not so-) smartphone.  It took the young woman a while to figure out the problem, but eventually I had a working data connection.  

Terri making friends at Massinga market

We drove off north towards Morrongulo, stopping in Massinga for fresh vegetables before we turned off the road for the beach.  This road was hard-packed and such easy driving that we didn’t have to deflate tires or even engage 4WD.  The campground is in a faded colonial-era resort that is slightly overpriced and slightly rule-bound, but situated in an absolutely lovely shady garden that fronts directly onto the ocean.  I raced out to swim in the surf, although the fierce longshore current made bodysurfing tricky.  

White-fronted plover, Morrungulo

We chatted with James and Barbara, the Zimbabwean couple who have run the place for years, and with Harry, their son, an engineering graduate who has returned to help run the place.  Terri cooked up a feast of breaded snapper fillets and we went to bed with full stomachs, happy with the loveliness of the area.

Our day off in Morrongulo was pretty idyllic.  After a lingering big breakfast, we went for a long walk along the beach, then put on our running shoes and went for a run.  We passed other, almost-deserted resorts like Sylvia Shoal, as well as armies of pink crabs that ran away into the surf on our approach.  After doing some yoga, we went for a swim, then tried out our folding Giant Expressway bicycles for the first time.  It wasn’t ideal conditions, with soft sand on the road playing havoc with our bike tires, but it was still good to get out and ride a bit, past a few tiny bakeries in the village and past newly-built houses set in banana, coconut and cashew plantations.  It was all rather idyllic.  Another feast of snapper fillets and we were in bed early to escape the searching south-easterly wind that hadn’t died down in two days.

Multilingual but bread-less bakery, Morrungulo

We were reluctant to leave the beauty of Morrongulo, but talking to other campers there we had heard that Pomene, which had been on our wish list for ever since watching a nature documentary set there, was well worth the long sandy detour involved in getting there.  We stocked up on food back in Massinga and then turned off for the 57 kilometres of dirt roads and sand dunes that separated us from Pomene.   It was an easy drive until we entered the Pomene Nature Reserve and ran into deep sand.  We were wise enough this time to deflate our tires and had no difficulty, other than believing in our GPS, in arriving at Pomene Lodge, easily the loveliest place we stayed in all of Mozambique.  The lodge is located on a narrow spit of sand between the Indian Ocean and a saltwater lagoon, and we put Stanley in the shelter of some trees with a view out towards the ocean.  Jorge, the friendly Mozambican man at the front desk, was a fount of information and sent us out towards the tip of the sand spit to watch the sunset and look for flamingoes.  Both quests were successful:  the sun set over the retreating waters of the lagoon in a pleasingly beautiful lightshow, while a group of several dozen flamingoes posed for us in the lagoon.  We even had the bonus of seeing a humpback lagoon surfacing periodically as he hunted for fish.  As we walked back to Stanley, plovers and crabs scuttled along the sand.  The nearly-full moon rose out of the ocean in a fiery orange ball, and we went to bed satisfied.

Stanley on the beach, Pomene

The next day the weather had become even windier, stirring up a steady swell.  We walked along the beach for a wonderful hour, past a myriad plovers and salmon-pink crabs and a handful of local villagers, to the ruins of the Portuguese-era Pomene Hotel.  We strolled around the headland to the bay tucked around behind, looking for the blowholes that start up at high tide.  We waited for a couple of hours, but the blowholes never really got going.  The scenery made up for it, though, with big swells surging into the sheltered rock pool through a narrow keyhole gap in the rocks and colourful crabs scuttling across the limestone rocks.  After a while, with the sun sinking in the western sky, we gave up on blowholes and walked back to Pomene Lodge along the sandy track we had driven on the day before.  We passed through the fishing village of Pomene and looked in vain for anyone selling fresh fish.  

Pomene flamingoes

On a tip from Andre and Carien, two South Africans we had met in Morrongulo, we asked around for Doc, a local woodcarver.  He wasn’t at his stand, but we were directed to his house in the village.  We arranged for him to cook us a feast of big mangrove crabs the next day and then continued our walk back to the lodge, with sunbirds accompanying us along the way in the bush.  The sunset was just as beautiful as the day before, and the full moon rising over the ocean, an hour later, was spectacular.  We cooked chicken on the braai (in the absence of fish), watched the moon light up the ocean and basked in the natural beauty of the place, glad that we had come to Pomene.

Tree art, Pomene

Pomene pink crabs

Sunday, May 22^nd we awoke to local women strolling by to sell avocadoes, passion fruit, fresh bread and oranges.  We got up, had a breakfast of toast, tomatoes and avocadoes, then rented a sea kayak for the day for US$ 12 and went out for a paddle on the lagoon.  The tide was going out, and it was hard work paddling upstream against the tidal current.  The lagoon was rapidly becoming shallower, and finding deepwater channels became challenging.  There were birds everywhere:  distant flamingoes, cormorants and egrets up close, pied kingfishers hovering over the water to pounce on fish.  The mangrove swamps lining the edges of the estuary teemed with crabs and birds, and everywhere villagers were out casting nets and gathering some of the abundant shellfish.  

Sand art, Pomene

We made our way as far upstream as we could before the stream petered out into mudflats and oxbow lakes.  We drifted back with the current and made it back to Pomene Lodge in time for a quick swim and a long run along the beach before setting off for our late crab lunch.  We stopped by Doc’s place and then were directed to his father’s restaurant.  His father is chief of the village and is clearly the wealthiest guy in town.  Doc eventually appeared with a huge platter of rice and crab stewed in coconut milk and we sated ourselves.  It was interesting to get into the village and see how life outside our idyllic campground worked; mostly, Doc’s father and his friends sat around watching Premier League football while his sister-in-law served us food.  Kids kicked around ragged footballs and steered elaborate handmade metal toy cars around the streets.  As we drove back to the lodge, we passed neatly tended huts and compounds with fish being smoked over fires.  The sunset that evening surpassed the previous two, as did the moonrise.  I sat playing guitar on the beach, and it was hard to believe that we were ever going to want to leave Pomene.

At the old hotel, Pomene

Smoking fish in Pomene

Pomene sunset

Sadly, the next morning saw us leaving.  We hadn’t arrived with very much cash, and the lodge didn’t accept credit cards, so we were out of money until we got back to the main road.  On the way out of the lodge, we had a couple of baby plovers running like mad along the sand in front of Stanley, waving their tiny stubby wings madly.  We stopped and waited for them to get out of the wheel ruts, but the chicks, only a few days old, weren’t strong enough to climb up out of the tracks and into the surrounding bush for several minutes.  It was a long sandy slog out of Pomene on partly deflated tires, along a track chewed up by people trying to drive on fully inflated tires, and just after leaving the nature reserve we pulled out the compressor again and reinflated the tires.  We made it back to EN1 and turned north.  It was an uneventful drive to Vilanculos, an actual beach town, and our first couple of stops were for cash and to refill the diesel tanks.  We looked around for a place to stay, but weren’t terribly impressed by the lodgings in town and couldn’t find anything north of town.

Pomene sunset

We ended up driving south of town, following a ridiculous route plotted by our GPS, to the Blue Water Lodge.  We arrived there not long before sundown to find it had closed for business months before.  Luckily the caretaker wasn’t averse to us camping there for a consideration that went directly into her pocket.  The initial asking price was Mtc 1000 (US$ 20) for one night without any power or water.  We bargained that down to the same price for three nights, then sat beside the empty swimming pool gazing out to sea, sipping a sundowner and watching fishing dhows returning to shore from the islands of the Bazaruto Archipelago.  We headed down to the beach and, in my miserable pidgin Portuguese, managed to buy a couple of decent-sized snappers from one incoming boat for a great price of Mtc 200, far cheaper than we had paid in Chidenguele or Paindane.  We cooked the larger one on the braai, watched the moon rise over the bay, thinking about the slightly melancholic feeling of being in a closed-down resort.   It was yet another reminder of the decline of the Mozambique tourism industry. 

Re-inflating the tires on the road out of Pomene

We spent two lovely days in Vilanculos.  The first day we slept in, had another big oatmeal and fruit breakfast and then spent time doing yoga and going for a long run on the beach at low tide, when it looked almost as though we could walk all the way out to the islands of the archipelago, ten kilometres offshore.  We lunched on toast, tomatoes and avocadoes and then drove into town to fill up our water tank, buy some groceries and see about a boat trip out to the islands.  We ended up booking a snorkelling trip with Dolphin Dhow Safaris, run by the grandson of an Indian immigrant who lamented the fall in tourist numbers which had led to him cutting back from eight boats to two, laying off most of his employees.  We returned to Blue Water to cook up a delicious fish and coconut curry after watching a dramatic sunset light show in the sky. 

Vilankulo fish braai

The day of our boat trip dawned sunny and cloudless.  We made our way to Dolphin Dhow and set off in a dhow, sadly under motor power and not under sail, with an Irishman, Paul, and a Kiwi woman, Jacqui, probably the only two real backpackers in Vilanculos.  It was fun to sit and chat about our various travel experiences and to watch the light flash green over the sandy shallows.  We watched keen-eyed for signs of dugongs, found in the area, but had no luck; we probably needed to head out further towards the fringing reef to have had a more realistic chance of spotting them.  We landed on tiny Macaruque Island and spent a few hours walking the dunes, watching the cormorants and crabs and snorkelling in the lagoon.  

Macaruque Island sea colours

The sky clouded over and a few spits of rain came down, making for dramatic skies but cold snorkelling.  We had a big lunch on the beach, then motored back, passing dhows that were floundering under sail in the almost windless afternoon.  That evening Terri cooked up a lentil stew and we did some internet activities until a sudden burst of rain drove us under the roof of an open-sided hut (a barraca, in Portuguese).  We fell asleep to the sound of drizzle, and were awakened several times in the night by torrential downpours.

Terri on the beach on Macaruque Island

We had decided not to push on further north from Vilanculos, with our Twitter feed bringing us news almost every day of further shooting attacks on the EN1.  Instead we packed up Stanley on the morning of Thursday, May 26^th and set off on the long drive south, back to Chidenguele.  We split the driving; I used my passenger stint to try to book camping spaces in Kruger again.  It was a futile quest, and we ended up deciding against backtracking through Kruger in favour of the direct route through Maputo and Ressano Garcia.  I took the wheel after Maxixe and drove us through huge cloudbursts to Chidenguele.  We had almost no run-ins with the traffic police, although there were an increased number of security checkpoints, perhaps in response to the surge in Renamo attacks.  It was a pleasure to return to the familiar loveliness of Chidenguele, where we had the campground to ourselves.  It felt strange to have water, 24-hour electricity and a reliable cellular data signal again.  I braaied up some delicious steaks and took advantage of the data connectivity to restore my iPod after iTunes had deleted all my podcasts a few days earlier.

Macaruque Island, Bazaruto Archipelago

Friday, May 27^th was our last day in Mozambique and it went remarkably smoothly.  We set off early, drove steadily past Xai Xai to the northern outskirts of Maputo, where a half-finished ring road brought us to the EN4 towards the border with only a few stretches of mud and potholes to navigate.  The EN4 is newly built, smooth and mostly empty, so we raced to the border unexpectedly early.  The border crossing was remarkably smooth and easy, with only the minor hassle of would-be touts trying to earn a few meticais by telling us to do what we were already doing.  We traded the rest of our meticais for rand with one of the hundreds of women sitting beside the road with bundles of banknotes and crossed back into the familiar confines of South Africa after two enjoyable, beautiful weeks in Mozambique.

Tree art, Macaruque

We really enjoyed the Mozambique coast, and had a great time.  We had very few hassles from the traffic police, and other than that had very positive interactions with Mozambicans.  We had pristine, wild beaches almost entirely to ourselves, ate delicious seafood, saw lots of colourful sunbirds and made use of our transport freedom to see some really wonderful places, especially Pomene.  It was a bit sad seeing the decline of the tourist industry, and sadder seeing the signs of Mozambique’s impending decline into economic malaise and possible civil war, but overall it was a very positive experience.  I only wish we had been able to continue north directly to Malawi, rather than making a multi-thousand kilometre detour to avoid the depredations of a bunch of cash-hungry hoodlums.  I would gladly come back to Mozambique in the future when the central third of the country has calmed down again. 

Pomene sunset

Sand art, Macaruque Island