4^th June - 10^th June – Days 248-253 – Cape Town, South Africa

So we'd done our loop around Western Cape and were back in the Mother City. First thing in the morning we made hopeful glances out of our windows to see whether Table Mountain would be clear to go and visit still before my parents were due to fly out. What we got was grey rain. Hence, my parents had the pleasure of spending their last full day in South Africa by circling around the Century City Mall in search of whatever they might want to take back (read: my mother was looking for something new for the wardrobe). Us youngsters managed to use the opportunity to replace our camera (the one that had left us after Victoria Falls) with a new one, the fourth one of the trip.

First picture with the new camera! We're back in Lumix-land! Cheers!

The next day me and T waved my parents off in front of the hotel when they jumped in a taxi to the airport under bright blue skies. They talk about the changing weather in Cape Town a lot, and by now I was sure that every word is true. What followed after that was a sunny day's pub crawl which started at 1pm and finished around midnight when we decided it was a good idea to get a taxi back to the hotel before passing out at Zula Bar. I have a vague recollection of meeting some Italian guys who invited us to come and join them in meeting the Italian football team at some banquet style evening. For some reason, these guys also disappeared rather quickly before we managed to sort out the practicalities. Hmmmm.

We're also back in the first world.

The owner of the hotel, or actually guest house, was kind enough to let us stay over for a couple more days at a reduced rate while we were going through our options and trying to sort out accommodation for the next five weeks. T needed a new passport as his old one was full (which with the French administration would take forever to get) and we were also days away from the start of the World Cup, so we needed somewhere to let our hair and bags down and just enjoy the show while it lasted.

A strange situation by the name of "No parents"

After a couple of more nights out in Cape Town with some interesting characters and several inquiries into lodging possibilities in Cape Town at any reasonable price, we called up Elma, a contact of Marlene's, to ask whether she'd propose a good deal for us. She rents out a holiday apartment in a beach town called Strand, not far from Cape Town, which would probably not be booked for off-season so we stood a chance of getting a five-week continuous tenancy. The only thing we knew about Strand was that it had been described to us as a dead-end beach town that got busy with holidaymakers in the summer and mostly retired people at any other time of the year. Elma made us the cheapest deal we'd heard, seen or been teased of. We took it and jumped on the “MetroRail Plus” confidently with our noses pointing out at yet something new and unexplored. Surely we could rock even the deadest town up and enjoy some beach living for five weeks.

The Incredible Case of the Curious Ostrich

31^st May - 3^rd June – Days 244-247 – Western Cape Drive-a-thon part 2 (Oudtshoorn to Cape Town), South Africa

The first leg of this post will be rather poor, given that we fell asleep in the car and spent half of the day snoozing in the car. When we were eventually shaken by the oldies we were in a place called Mossel Bay. We were for a lunch of calamari and various seafoods although it was otherwise an utterly uninspiring and uninteresting town – apologies to anyone from Mossel Bay reading this but it's a fair point. We swiftly moved on.


The idea so far had been to follow the Garden Route and go along the coast when M's mother decided that actually a trip around the Little Karoo would be better. We reached the town of George and turned inland towards Oudtshoorn. The drive was uneventful other than a cigarette break which was unexpectedly interrupted by a curious ostrich poking its head over the fence between the fence and the roadside.

"Who you callin' stupid?"

We drove around Oudtshoorn aimlessly around 3 times before the young'uns took control and we ended up at a B&B by the name of Aan De Brug run by the delightful Marlene, who took us young'uns into a room with the promise that “it's my most romantic room” coupled with a wink and a smile, and her husband Chris who treated us to home made booze of some sort, served from a ram's horn. The romance was slightly broken by the fact that everyone ended up watching South Africa v. Guatemala on TV, but that's how life goes sometimes!


Marlene and Chris had told us about a little loop we could do around a few small towns and the Cango Caves which were apparently fairly groovy. Hence we woke up the next morning and zipped off towards the town of Prins Albert. It was a beautiful drive dotted with hills, small villages and the general emptiness which is so typical of some parts of Africa but hard to find in the areas of the Cape we'd been in so far. We stopped at a waterfall which we'd been promised was nice in the wet season. It was now the dry season, and the waterfall was more of a watertrickle. Still, it was nice to stretch our legs for a bit.

Pre-waterfall anticipation

A trickle indeed

The next stop was Prins Albert, a quaint little town where we did the classic M-and-parents routine of driving around without making any decisions before the young'uns stepped in and ordered the oldies to park and hop into an antique shop/restaurant for a bite to eat and a home made lemonade, and then got back into the car and drove through the mind-blowing Swartberg pass. The driving was slow but the views were amazing and we lapped it up for several hours, eventually emerging at the Cango Caves, ready for a tour of one of the biggest cave systems in South Africa. We parked and walked to the entrance with baited breath. It was closed. We left again.

The best quiche in Prins Albert

The spectacular Swartberg

The return to Oudtshoorn was made via a lodge which was run by Marlene's daughter and her husband and had a sundowner next to a pan and watching hippos and elephants wandering around. Yet again, a moment which made me fear going back to Europe where we would be sitting drinking a beer on the street watching drunkards and streams of traffic. I tried to forget the future and concentrated on what was going on.

All dirt roads lead to Cape Town

Next day, we tried the Cango Caves again and were presented with a choice of the short tour or the extended tour. Unfortunately the extended tour was not recommended for those above a certain age and so us young'uns swallowed our pride and went for the shortened tour, during which we wandered around a cave system previously inhabited by the San people and apparently filled with the largest stalactites in the world. We looked on extremely impressed and snapped pictures like good tourists do. The short tour was indeed short and soon enough we found ourselves blinking in the sunlight and hit route 62 towards Cape Town where the car had to be returned.

How many stalactites does it take to change a light bulb?

A stop in Barrydale was totally unproductive aside from the fact that we managed to eat lunch at place called the Blue Cow, where not only was the food tasty but we also got given bread to feed the ducks before we ate. Barrydale's attractions were soon exhausted (a fairly easy task, given that there were none) and we hit the road towards Worcester where we were to spend the night. The familiar pattern repeated itself and we went to the restaurant where I managed to impress even myself by stuffing down 600g of ribs, before we retired to bed and watched low-grade movies on E-TV. Winner. It transpired that we were just down the road from South Africa's biggest brandy distillery which gives tours followed by free tastings, and what better than a bunch of brandies before heading off on a road trip? We sampled a selection aside from M who was remaining soberish for the drive down to Cape Town.

Even the most hardcore Finn couldn't handle all of this...

Although the vast majority of Finns are well used to this. Even the pillar is asking for a few hours of sunshine, man...

Further confusion followed as we headed back to the “Mother City” intending to pull through Franschhoek and Stellenbosch on the way. We made it to Franschhoek and ate at a delightful restaurant, watching baboons cavorting in the garden and enjoying the sight of a fellow diner who may or may not have overdone the wines before crashing his car into a pillar in the parking lot. Stellenbosch awaited us until M's mum decided that she didn't want to go and preferred to head straight back to Cape Town. As we rolled into Cape Town's minibus-taxi station due to my slightly sub-standard map-reading skills, M managed to navigate us out through several 3-point turns under a shower of “brother, what are you doing here!!” calls from minibus drivers. We pulled into the Flower Street Villas as Table Mountain greeted us draped in her habitual clothing of grey cloud. Our ascent was put off yet again.

Cheers Marlene!!

29^th May - 30^st May – Days 242-243 – Western Cape Drive-a-thon part 1 (Cape Town to Caledon), South Africa

To my mother's delight, the day we drove out of Cape Town and down and around the Cape Peninsula was the first nice day we'd had so far. It was all postcard perfect with sunshine and bright blue skies, and it seemed like Table Mountain was waving us goodbye with a very cheeky smile on, now that it had got rid of its tablecloth. Touring the Cape Peninsula in this kind of weather is not a bad alternative, however, so we grinned back just as cheekily.

The trip was enjoyed more by some than by others

We began to suspect that Tiina's binoculars were surgically attached to her eyes

The originality award goes to whoever gave this village its name...

We followed the coastline rigorously past Camps Bay and the peaks of Twelve Apostles, through Chapman's Peak drive – which is supposed to be “amazing!!” which it was, but also disappointingly short – and on to Noordhoek, cut across to the other side to the Table Mountain National Park. This is where we got out of the car to see the second most southern point of Africa, the Cape Point. (For those of you who are not in the know but curious, the southernmost point is at Cape Agulhas, about 300km further east on the coast.) There's a cable car which takes you up to the point from the parking lot, but with our luck it wasn't working so we were taken up by a shuttle bus instead. You can also walk, but as my parents were lazy and rich enough to indulge on this ridiculousness, we all sat on the bus for those three minutes it takes to get up. Amusingly, this was enough time for them to be challenged in their Swedish language skills and look troubled as there was a Swedish guy sitting in front of them. What a reward for us on the back seat! Cape Point in itself, needless to say, was awesome even if – and I quote my dear friend Inna who has been here before – “you cannot really see where the two oceans merge into one”. (As I was standing there looking out into the blue I thought of you and about where I would be without your wise words, darling. With a wicked grin on, obviously.) From Cape Point we made our way to Simon's Town for the night. Pizza and beer for dinner, and off to bed.

Generic landscape picture #88829030393774

See above

We reached Cape Point and we're STILL not killing each other! Feel the love!

In the morning of the second day of driving we still hadn't really formulated any kind of plan of where we were actually headed or what we wanted to see. So we just continued up the Cape Peninsula nearly all the way back into Cape Town and then swerved right back towards the coast again. The only short-term plan we established was that we would stop for a coffee in Gordon's Bay, which is a pretty little fishing town full of holiday homes but also has a naval base of sorts. Here people were having picnics on the beach in shorts while I was clutching onto my scarf and trying to wrap it around my neck for the third time. Still I somehow enjoyed an ice cream in the sun with no problem.

Ditto

We had received miscellaneous information from various people about whether there were any whales around the False Bay area at this time of year or not. Bizarrely, quite a few people were swearing to us that there would definitely be, even if it wasn't supposed to be the whale watching season at all yet. As we drove off towards Hermanus, “the whale watching capital of South Africa”, we optimistically stopped a few times to look out for the big swimmers, but in vain. Once we got to Hermanus and asked about the whales we got a straightforward “not yet” at least. Oh well, late lunch there with some shisha on the terrace – again, far too cold to be doing this – and a decision to carry on somewhere else for the night.

This was when I browsed through one of the tourist info pamphlets that we'd grabbed from our hotel in Cape Town and spotted that there is a casino in a town called Caledon, a couple of hundred kms inland from the coast. This revelation together with a mention of a mineral spa convinced my mother about that this was where we would be spending the night. Just over an hour later we did indeed find ourselves at the Caledon Hotel & Casino, in spacious spick-and-span rooms with heating and satellite TV. T and I made use of the large bathtub to do our washing before we all headed out to the mineral spa for a sauna in true Finnish style, i.e. sitting butt-naked in the steam room. While I had been wandering around the mineral pools a bit earlier I had spotted two ladies in one of the jacuzzis so I rang the alarm bell for the rest of us to get some swimming gear on or make it quick and out of the sauna before these ladies would run into us and turn us all in for indecent behaviour.

Karoo + phone lines

Soft-skinned and invigorated, we had dinner and then headed upstairs for some gambling. Most of us lost, some of us covered for the losses of others (I'm not boosting my own ego here by not mentioning names). Late into the night we descended from the frenzy and sunk our dazed heads into some huge and puffy pillows. I'd organised a date with my mother at the mineral pool at 8am, just in time to try it out before breakfast and check-out.

The next morning we miraculously got up and to the pool at 8am. Only to find it being drained as part of the weekly cleaning procedures, and hence out of use until the afternoon. Just when I really could have done with a nice and warm pick-me-up.

Back to Europe......??

25^th- 29^th May – Days 238-242 – Cape Town, South Africa


It was strange to arrive in Cape Town. The “Mother City” welcomed us as a final stop on the Cairo-Cape Town run before the aimless farting around began in earnest. As we rolled in on the best bus we'd ridden in on the entire trip, we found ourselves looking through the windows in an upward direction, which was unusual. Cape Town is a big city, both in terms of population and in terms of how high the buildings stretch. To anyone jetting in from London or Paris or Berlin or New York for the World Cup just a couple of weeks away it may have seemed quaint and provincial, I don't know. To us, though, it was a city of big shops, big buildings, traffic lights and street signs and flashy cars, trendy bars and restaurants serving food from all corners of the world. We were suddenly back home, and we had a bit of time here to decide whether we liked it or not. The funny thing is that in all of those hours and days of sleeping in back-breaking beds in Ethiopia, rattling on those buses along those roads in Tanzania, and getting look-there's-a-white-guy attention throughout the whole trip, I was getting increasingly curious about how it would feel to be back in “the civilised world” where I could walk around like I was back home and where I was more or less anonymous. This was it – we were about to find out. We were about to go back to our previous lives for a bit. Although admittedly, we did have cheap beer, cheaper steaks and biltong to assist us.

Big mountains, big buildings


...and bright lights

With all the swagger and self-assurance of two people who were staying on someone else's money, M and I accompanied her parents through the gates of our home for the next 3 nights at a price which we would never have paid ourselves. Table Mountain, we were assured, was right behind us although the tablecloth of cloud was preventing us from seeing anything. We took refuge from the elements in a Vietnamese restaurant. The elements caused more problems as Yka and Tiina had unfortunately not packed enough warm clothes. As a result, we ended up wandering around shopping centres with chain stores. The rain was pouring outside and it was cold. It definitely was like being back home. Another funny thing, I realised – after all of the cultures and landscapes and different experiences we'd been through, Cape Town was the place where I first got a major culture shock.

International food...


...and international smokeables

To cope with it, we went around this European-style city doing European-style things - the South African museum which took us through the region's prehistory, showed us a huge array of stuffed animals, including my favourite the okapi, and a big display on marine life. This was followed by a trip to the aquarium where we saw various aquatic beings, as one does in an aquarium, and I discovered the “giant spider crab”, which is very impressive and entirely deserving of its name. We wandered the length of the seafront, stopping here for a glass of wine and there for a bite to eat. It was all very calm and civilised. Africa, of course, does have its ways of reminding her guests where they are, and I wandered the streets of Cape Town with a 9th staphylococcal infection drooping from my jaw, prompting mothers to cover the eyes of their children, attractive young women to cross the road as they saw me coming, and the Predator to come and hunt me down.

The waterfront's Marina...


...and its entertainment options

As it became clear that M's mother's wish to climb Table Mountain without being swamped in cloud was not going to materialise any time soon, we picked up a car, hit the N2 and sped away from Cape Town to have a look at what the Western Cape Province could offer us – the abundance of signs ensuring that we wouldn't get lost, and the chain service stations by the side of the road ensuring we could pick up a packet of Lay's or biltong whenever we got hungry. I'm still struggling to get used to it.

With the tastes of home... (thanks mummy and daddy!!!)


...are we waving goodbye to Africa? (crap humour helps me cope with it, sorry)

In Transit

23^rd - 24^th May – Days 236-237 – Kasane, Botswana and Windhoek, Namibia


Our research came to nothing. Going from Victoria Falls over the border into Botswana we had 2 options – an expensive transfer through a safari company to Kasane, or a taxi to the border and see what we could find on the other side. We sided with the latter option, and ended up spending a while sitting in the sun on the Botswana the side of what is probably the quietest border crossing in all of Africa. A few more people trailed over and after about an hour we had a small group sitting and waiting for some kind of transport to arrive. No one really seemed to know when it would come, nor what kind of transport it would be. Happy to show M's parents a nice African “wait and see what happens” experience, we continued sitting, waiting, and seeing what happened. Eventually a minibus pulled up from some safari company, the guy hopped out and asked where we were going. “Kasane, how much?”. It was just to help us out and give a favour, the guy said. Fair deal then! We hopped in, made some space for our co-waiters to share the ride but the door was pulled closed. What about the others? we asked. There's no space, he said. There's lots of space, we said. No there isn't, he said. And anyway, a minibus will be along soon. With that, he drove off. Strange.

Anyway, Kasane wasn't far off and before long the guy had dropped us off at a German restaurant-hotel where he said we could find somewhere to eat and took his leave. Lunch wasn't ready, they said – you can go down the road to “The Old House”. Only problem being that we had no Botswana money, so the girl at the bar pointed us to an exchange bureau in a small shopping centre down the road. And what an experience it was!!! A Spar supermarket straight out of Europe, and more bizarre even, there were white people working at the checkouts and working as electricians! For us, who'd only seen white people in safari vehicles or chauffeur-driven Mercedes cars in the last 8 months, it was a surreal sight.

Transport to Katima Mulilo, Namibia, was nearly as elusive as it had been from Vic Falls to here. People couldn't really direct me with any consistency to any bus station although they seemed to agree that the minibuses to Katima left from the Immigration office. When I went there it didn't look like much of a bus stop – an office in a compound and a woman sitting outside under a tree watching the world go by. I went inside, asked around and seemingly confused everyone inside before heading out to poke around again. This was when I saw a minibus with Namibian plates on picking up the woman who was sat under the tree. The driver told me with certainty that he was the last one of the day although he was a little more vague on when the minibus would come tomorrow. “10, 11...” he trailed off as if to imply that it could be at any time at all. And so it was that we ended up scouting out the rooms at The Old House and spending the night in Kasane. Another reconnaissance trip with M led to us finding out that there should be a minibus at 7 from the bus station. Someone else said 8. We decided to give up and go back for a beer and to (eventually, after having a hard time persuading the resident Afrikaners that it was a good idea) watch the Champions League final, which was boring and won by the least entertaining team, so I won't go into that in any detail, to the relief of all.

Kasane bus station. Clean, organised, empty - are we still in Africa????

We'd decided to take the earliest possible answer from the previous day's inquest and aimed to wake up in time to make the potential 7am minibus. Our first error was waking up too late for it, and this was compounded by our total inability to open the gate leading to the street. This second error was rectified about 20 minutes later when M's dad realised that actually the gate was not locked at all, although the result of this combination of errors was that we missed the minibus to Katima. Another bout of waiting around then began before we decided to up sticks and move to the Immigration Office where we set up a gypsy camp and, for the first time, introduced M's parents to our favourite sport here in Africa - “sit and wait”.

"Cos I'm a gypsyyyyyyy..."

After the traditional 4 hours arsing around, we decided that we couldn't wait for the minibus any more as we'd got tickets on a bus from Katima at 3pm. It was now midday, although we knew that Namibia was 1 hour behind Botswana at this time of year, so effectively we had 4 hours. The taxi dropped us at yet another mind-numbingly quiet border post where we faced a kilometre-odd walk across the beautiful Ngoma bridge to Namibia. If we didn't have the bus to catch I'd have quite happily taken all afternoon to gaze at the scenery provided by this low bridge over a flooded Zambezi river. Luck was on our side as a shared taxi was going to Katima and had four spaces left so we were off pretty quickly. Unfortunately we also found out that the Caprivi Strip area of Namibia where we were was in fact not an hour behind Botswana at all (unlike the rest of Namibia, which was) and so the rush was back on. As so often happens in Africa though, the bus was several hours late and so the whole “will we/won't we” worrying was entirely academic. This left us several hours in the sunshine of Katima Mulilo's main petrol station minding the bags, munching on biltong and drinking Coke. Any attempt to get hold of a beer was thwarted by the revelation that it's illegal for a shop to sell beer on a Sunday in Namibia. Thankfully, selling biltong on a Sunday is perfectly legal and so I was left happy. Yka was also introduced to biltong during the early stages of this trip and was by now seemingly quite a fan. Several packs of biltong later, the bus showed up, and we piled on with a spare pack of biltong for good measure. I liked Namibia already, despite the bizarre beer-selling regulations.

Mopane worms go in...

The next day. It's 7am, it's Windhoek, it's cold and grey, and we've slept a bare minimum to be functional. Rgh. Tiina had wanted to press on to Cape Town as quickly as possible so we'd decided just to stay the day in Windhoek and then get a night bus to South Africa that same evening. It's a nice enough town although quite hard to get a feel for – part big town, part village, part Germany and part suburban England, and the central Kalahari Sands Hotel is probably the ugliest swanky hotel I've ever seen, something out of a 1960s English council estate. The day passed by with us wandering around, seeing a few shopping centres, having a few beers (for it was now Monday) and adding a new food to our alimentary CVs: mopane worms. They're quite a delicacy in this part of Africa and, although they look about as appetising as one could expect deep fried caterpillars to look, I found them quite tasty. I was, however, the only one of us who felt this way. Time went by as we sat in various cafes and restaurants and we got onto the night bus for a second evening in a row, as M and I resolved to visit Namibia again in a lot more detail. We hadn't seen much but it looked nice from the little we'd seen. Most of which was in the dark. Throw in a slow 3am border crossing during which a border guard saw my French football shirt and brightened up the evening by declaring loudly “I will steal this man's shirt!” (when in fact I can't think of any shirt less worthy of theft in 2010) and another night of less-than-average sleep levels and that was it – we rolled into Cape Town 21 hours after leaving Windhoek. The final stop of the Cairo to Cape Town route definitely wasn't going to be the final stop on our trip but... WE'VE DONE IT!

...and mopane worms come out again

THE SMOKE THAT THUNDERS!

21^st May – Day 234 – Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

Staying put in Victoria Falls town for a couple of days was nice after all the tarmac we'd seen in the past three days. The town itself is obviously built for tourists and doesn't have all that much to offer apart from the nice lodges and a couple of decent places to eat. But just as obviously people come there to see one of great natural wonders of the world, and so did we.

Dr. Livingstone, they presumed? "YES", said the statue.

The day we went to see the falls was a very nice and sunny one which is an advantage since you will invariably get soaking wet at this time of year when the falls are at their most plentiful in terms of the amount of water that flows through (yearly average is 1 000 000 litres per second but we unfortunately don't remember the wet season average). We managed to soak our camera to that extent that it wouldn't recover even after two days of trying to “dry it out” in the sun. Somehow we managed to get the pictures out of it at least. After a tour of the falls we popped a bottle of bubbly in the afternoon sun as well while trying to dry ourselves out.

The mighty falls.

The smoke that thundered turned out to be water vapour.

Voyagers in the mist

Slippery when ultra soaked.

But they found the rainbow!

Late afternoon we embarked on one of the river boats that cruise in the upstream of the Zambezi river. Supposedly you get to see wildlife from the boat but that's not the point so much when your ticket entitles you to free drinks for as much as you can down during the 2 ½ hr cruise. In our case the departure of the boat was delayed by more than an hour because of a party of Chinese people who were also booked on the same cruise were nowhere to be seen. We enjoyed our beverages to the fullest while waiting for them to arrive, cursing them under our breath. Once they finally joined us, we found out that it was the Chinese ambassador to Zimbabwe and his friends and varied work related acquaintances, one of which had lived and worked in Finland as well. The ambassador himself took a great liking to T in particular as they had a chat while going to the bar for a refill at the same time. Sooner than we noticed, the ambassador joined us at our table for some casual conservation about the role of the Chinese in Zimbabwe and in Africa all in all. He was very impressed about our long and eventful journey as well and insisted on taking photos of the young couple (sorry parents but I think that was us). The boat eventually returned to its docking point and we had seen two hippos, a beautiful sunset and were in a very happy mood.

Yeh folks, it's a hippo eat hippo world

Before sobering up too much we moved onto some fine dining to honour our last night in Zimbabwe. The next day we'd be crossing into Botswana and onwards to the Caprivi Strip in Namibia to start another looooooooooooong bus journey down south to Cape Town via Windhoek. I was keen on seeing how the older generation would manage some of the style of travelling we'd been doing for the past eight months. They clearly deserved some pampering before that.

Photo credit: Chinese Ambassador, Harare, Zimbabwe

Le Tour de Zim

18^th-20^th May – Days 231-233 – Great Zimbabwe National Monument and Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe

My Dad had organised a rental car for us in advance from Finland. From what he had understood, the car would come at quite a cost as we would be dropping it off at Victoria Falls from where the agency would pick it up and charge us an extortionate fee of 150USD for the pleasure. However, having your own – or in this case rented – wheels in Zimbabwe is by far the easiest way to get around for someone with time constraints but not enough cash to fly. More importantly, we were not going to risk facing the consequences of not getting to Cape Town in time for my mother's liking. This is why I found myself making coffee for the whole Europcar office in Harare in the morning while Dad was sorting out the paperwork. I managed to come up with some absolute bland mud water, as often happens to me if I don't know the particular machine I'm using, and the manager of the office decided to make a new pot after tasting it. At least I got a cup of actual coffee and he had a good laugh out of my intended philanthropy. My Dad being my Dad, he'd insisted we take the TomTom as well (even if T pointed out this was unnecessary as there are about four main roads in the whole country and the chances of getting lost are therefore quite minimal), so after only minor circling around in the outskirts of Harare we got on the road south towards Masvingo and the Great Zimbabwe National Monument.

Busy man, busy road

My parents have never been to Africa and probably would never had made it here if it wasn't for our adventure. This is reflected well in their take on travelling around here. Before coming over, my mother had come up with only two things she wanted to see on their trip: Victoria Falls and Cape Town. This was why they flew to Harare in the first place, to gain easier access to the falls. As the distance between the two desired locations is over 2000km as the crow flies, we sure had some road to cover. Both me and T had tried to get her to read about Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa to get some other ideas as well but she had been so busy at work right up until the trip that we were still stuck with the same mantra. Dad at least had read about the national parks of Zimbabwe and some sights in the Western Cape so we had something to elaborate on. As T had been to Zimbabwe before, he had some ideas which we used in order for my parents to get more out of their trip. Great Zimbabwe was one of these ideas.

The mean machine on the highway to Masvingo

The trip down to Masvingo and onwards to the ruins surprised us all in how few vehicles there were on the road. Apart from some large trucks, we hardly saw anyone ahead or behind us at any point. Once we got to Masvingo we started seeing some life around us again, nothing much worth mentioning in itself, though. As we had left Harare after 10am, we made it to the ruins quite late in the afternoon but still managed to get a tour around the site. What surprised us even more was that there were no other visitors at the site either, apart from one young couple from Zimbabwe who were sitting up on the top of one of the Hill Complex. Great Zimbabwe was impressive and we got to enjoy our tour in peace. We'd heard before that it's the kind of place where you can just walk around and sit to admire the surroundings and the historical value of the monument, and this is exactly how we found it as well. We decided to stay in the bungalows next to the monument for the night rather than drive back to Masvingo. The electricity was off and we had not brought any food supplies, so we headed to the nearby hotel for an African buffet and some expensive drinks before turning in.

T's got the guide cornered

The Hill Complex

The great enclosure. It was, as its name promised, great.

We presumed that Great Zim didn't look exactly like this back in the days

The conical tower. It was, as its name promised, conical

The next day we set out for the long drive all the way to Victoria Falls. Lunch stop was in Bulawayo, an attractive town with colonial architecture and long and wide streets crossing each other in a perfect grid. It reminded me more of American towns from the 1800's than of the British legacy. When we returned to our car we found a parking ticket on the windscreen, we'd have to pay four US dollars at the town hall. We sent T to run after the parking warren and sweet-talk us out of the ticket, which he successfully did in the manner only too familiar to anyone who knows him. Dad handed the car over to me for the drive up to Vic Falls, and halfway there I managed to pick up a speeding ticket from the police with a radar by the roadside. I'd been doing a pitiful 94 km/h on an area with an 80 km/h limit. It was my turn to do some sweet-talking, which to anyone who knows me sounds rather hilarious. The conversation went on for about 45 mins and followed a repeated pattern described below:

Officer: Sister, you know we have to fine you for speeding.

M: Yes, Mister Officer. That's all very well. How much is that?

Officer: It'll be 20 US dollars.

M: Great. Could you write me the ticket and I'll pay it wherever necessary, in the next town with a police station, or however it works here.

Officer: That's not how it works. You give the money to us in cash right here.

M: Oh, is that so. Well, as it happens I don't have enough cash to pay you that right here. Could you just write the ticket for me and I promise I'll pay it later.

Officer: We can't do that.

M: How do you mean you cannot do that? If you can fine me you can surely write me a ticket as well?

Officer: No, in fact we can't. We can fine you, but we're not allowed to write you a ticket because you have a foreign license, you see. You will get a receipt for your payment, however.

M: Aaahha. Well that's all good but completely useless for me. Besides, I told you I don't have the money. I'm telling you, just write the ticket and you can even escort me to the next town if you don't believe me. I go and get the cash and then we go to the police and pay the ticket.

Officer: Listen, Sister. We're not going to escort you anywhere. You go ask your friends for the money if you don't have any. You admit that you were speeding? In that case you must pay the fine.

M: Listen, Officer. Yes, I admit that I was speeding. And exactly because I am the driver, I am responsible for the ticket. My friends have nothing to do with it and I won't make them pay for my mistakes. So, how do you suggest we proceed?

Officer: Well then you have to pay us.

M: I told you I don't have the money.

Etc. etc. etc.... After repeating this for a good while we finally reached a consensus:

Officer: Sister, why don't you just say that you are very sorry and that you won't do it again?

M: Oh, well because where I come from there is no way you can worm your way out of ticket like that and I respect you enough not to try.

Officer (smiling): Why don't you give it a try this once?

M (looking bemused): OK then. I'm very sorry for speeding, Officer. I promise I will drive slower from now on.

Officer: See now, it wasn't all that hard, was it? (hands back the license) Have a nice day and drive safe.

T attempted not to antagonise the Zimbabwean police by not openly taking a picture of them attempting to elicit bribes as a proud mother looks on

I walked back into the car to some amused giggles from T and amazed shrugs from my parents but having avoided paying the fine. As a result I can still say I've never been given a speeding ticket in my life. My driving instructor would call that pretty amazing as he nicknamed me “Miss Straighten-out-the-corners” already nine years back.

We arrived at Vic Falls late in the evening after making a small detour to one of the safari lodges close to Hwange NP for some sundowners. My Mom was thrilled to have seen her first herd of buffaloes and a couple of elephants by the pond right nearby. We decided to make a trip inside the park the next day, and I sensed my parents were slowly starting to get into the Africa mentality. After all, my Dad was already nearly comfortable driving in the dark even if he had earlier sworn he would not have any of it where he doesn't know his way around.

The next day we got up early and I drove us to the park (paying attention to the speedometer this time). We drove far into the park before any sightings of animals but were eventually rewarded with Mom starting the spotting with finding some kudu in the bushes. All the expected ones (elephants, giraffes, impala, warthogs, baboons) soon followed with quite a few different birds and sightings of jackals and sable antelopes. At sunset we drove to one of the pans to see hippos and crocodiles as well and also welcomed a herd of about 25 elephants coming to splash around, which got my Dad working with his snapshots for real.

The Jackal, not starring Bruce Willis

Anyone seen enough impala yet?

Siamese giraffes

No introduction required

On our way back to the gates at 5:45pm, 15 minutes to closing time, we burst a tire while Dad hit one of the all too many potholes he'd been hitting throughout the day. Brilliant. Out we got into the fading light of the evening with our torches and noticed that the hub cap was tied to the tire with cable ties. None of us were carrying a knife or sharp enough object of any sort to cut them off and actually get to the bolts. Could we be spending the night with lions? Luckily a 4x4 soon appeared from behind us, it was the group we'd seen at the pan earlier. South African as they were, of course they carried knives! Dad got to work, and we arrived at the gate together with the South Africans at around 6.30pm to find someone still there to open it for us. What's best, on our way there we spotted what we later confirmed to near certainty to be the African wild dog. It was not too bad a place and time to get a puncture, then.

We're in wheel big trouble now! (apologies)