The End.. For Now...

16^th October-19^th October – Days 380-383 – Maputo, Mozambique and Johannesburg, South Africa

The final days are always tough. It doesn't matter how long the trip is, the final days are always days of lethargy mixed with energy. You want to fit in as many things as possible before going home but your mind is already on the plane. For us, after nearly 13 months, it's particularly tough. We've forgotten how to live a life of routine, we've forgotten how to have a home and do the same things day in, day out. Going to work, taking public transport along routes we know inside out, not having the stimulation of the new and unexpected are going to be difficult. Most of all, it'll be a return to Europe - not only are we going back to the continent and culture that we know well, but we'll be leaving a continent of mystery, excitement, and the unexpected. Africa has tested our nerves, tested our patience, enthralled and frustrated us. It's a continent that inspires the whole range of emotions and the prospect of going back to a continent which is bland and empty of the unexpected leaves us uninspired. The bus to work will be full of silence and apartment blocks. Looking out of the window we'll no longer see savannah, tropical forest, desert, unregulated commerce, buzzing markets where anything goes. The bus itself will not be full of noise and life, it will stop at the same place at the same time every day. For us, the culture shock will not have happened on the first day of the trip, but on the day after the last. But this is how life goes. The biggest challenge will not be how to get from A to B in some of the poorest and most disorganised countries in the world, nor will it be how to communicate with people who do not speak the same language as us or come from a totally different culture. The challenge will be reintegrating ourselves into a place which we know all too well and with people who have not lived what we have lived over the last year or so. Of course, we had a few days left and we were intending to make the most of it. And so we jumped into a Maputo-bound minibus at 4am from Tofo and headed back to Maputo. We found ourselves a cheap hotel to crash in, found ourselves a nightspot to watch live timbila music, a quite surreal James Brown-style singer, and wandered back, happy to be living our final days in this magical continent, at 3am.

The last minibus-taxi picture

The last "Waiting for something" pic. In this event I can't remember what it was...

The last "panoramic picture from Mozambique" picture. Maputo from the hotel.

The next day's minibus taxi ride back to Johannesburg was uneventful but we savoured it as our last long-distance trip. Our last evening meal on the walk from the intersection where we were dropped off by our Jo'burg local minibus was too, aside from a curious couple who noticed our backpacks lying on the floor next to our table. "We have noticed your bags", they told us, "and so we are supposing that you are not from here. Tell us, how do you like South Africa?". We were delighted to regale them with tales of our months here and how much we loved the country. They smiled, another couple who are very concerned with the reputation that their country, and I suppose their continent, has abroad. "We are always happy to hear that people have enjoyed our country! We hope that you have a good trip", they told us. And we were alone again, heading to the Brown Sugar hostel where we were to spend our last night.

We took Inna around the parts of Joburg that we had known last time we were here, and to an Ethiopian restaurant somewhere out in the suburbs where we had another typical long trek without a sure idea of where we were. People smiled and said hello as we walked past. I just couldn't imagine myself back home. That night, I couldn't sleep. Maybe it was the Ethiopian coffee, maybe it was the nerves about the return, maybe it was that I wanted to make the most of my final hours in Africa for some time. I know that I will be back some day, but when will that be?

Those dark glasses don't hide the pain! M chugs her way through her last Jo'burg cocktail

The last African Ethiopian meal

Admittedly cheesy. Do I look bothered?

The next day passed by and before we knew it, we were in a car headed from Johannesburg International Airport. The sky was black and the huge storm that broke out as we were on the road persuaded me that Africa was crying for our departure, as sad about this day as I was. The thought that our departure might be delayed crossed my mind but it would just be a case of putting it off for a bit. We had run out of money and our time was up. We waved Inna off on her flight and waited in the departure lounge in silence. The EgyptAir flight to Cairo was called and we disappeared into the night. Until the next time.

The final journey

T is busy plotting. Where next? And when will I be back here?

Pointless detour

1^st October-4^th October – Days 366-369 – Johannesburg, South Africa and Mbabane, Swaziland

Inna had been talking about coming to Africa for a few months (or even a few years) and various problems meant that she'd nearly have missed us. In the end, we managed to stretch the trip with a bit of inventive budgeting (i.e. creating a state of denial about how little money we had left) and Inna, a friend of M's from Helsinki, would provide company for the last two weeks of the trip. She'd been to South Africa before with her parents and remembered a guided tour of Johannesburg by car, with tinted windows, and strict instructions to not unlock the doors at any point. This would be a slightly different view of the city...

New recruit !

We picked her up from Jo'burg International Airport and asked the info desk how to get a taxi back into town. After a small explanation of our meaning of the word “taxi” (a minibus taxi, rather than a white paranoia private taxi) and an inquisitive look from the info desk guy who probably hadn't heard this kind of request too often, he pointed us to the far end of the airport where we could get a ride to Kempton Park and another one to MTN station downtown. “So this is big bad Johannesburg !” she exclaimed with a hint of possibly surprise. We wandered through town again, bags on backs, to Park Station, Jo'burg's main transport hub. It's a large, confusing place and with the help several helpful standers-around, we wandered through the station, past the KFC, up the staircase and into the chaotic minibus taxi park where we eventually located the minibuses to Swaziland. The Mozambican visa question had caused us a bit of confusion – the price had recently gone up to 80€ although a phone call to the Mozambican embassy in Mbabane confirmed that they were selling it for 85 rand, a mere tenth of the price. We had hence decided to make a little detour through Swaziland in order to pick it up.

Park Station, minibus section. Despite the smallness of the fine, I went for a different option

“You'll see the difference as soon as we cross into Mozambique”, we told Inna. “It'll be the real Africa. South Africa is nice, but everything works. You never get flat tyres, things run on time...”. This, of course, is why we ended up sat on the hard shoulder halfway between Johannesburg and Nelspruit with the driver desperately trying to flag down passing minibuses to replace his flat tyre. A flat tyre for which he didn't have a spare, obviously. Great!! A few other minibuses pulled over for a chat, one of which unloaded a gang of friendly drunken Swazis returning home from a wedding. One of the guys asked if he could have M as a wife but then confided “I already have a wife. She is already too much for me. Anyone who takes a second wife must be crazy!”. The gang piled in again having turned up the radio and given us a rousing demonstration of Swazi dancing and we eventually got going, thanks to a breakdown truck which had brought us a new tyre.

"You won't find this back home" series #3528043

It had been a while...

Mbabane greeted us again under a shroud of darkness and after a bite to eat and a beer at the Phoenix (a regular haunt for us the last time we were here), we headed off to Bombaso's and were greeted like old friends. The previous bunch of Finns had departed and we spent the evening in the company of a new bunch of Finns which gave Inna a soft landing, M a chance to speak Finnish in a group, and me to take stock of how terrible my Finnish had become... Our stopover in Swaziland turned out to be useless, however – it was a public holiday in Mozambique and the embassy was closed and after a bit of headscratching, we hopped into a minibus to Manzini, where we'd connect to a Maputo minibus, trying our luck on the border for a visa.

Good morning Mbabane!

The trip started off well, aside from an Ethiopian-style argument with the ticket man:

- You must pay for the bags.

- No. The Mozambicans are not paying for their bags, so we will not either.

- Yes, you must. (repeat ad nauseam)

Eventually, he got bored of this discussion, shrugged his shoulders and wandered off. However, when he took our money for the tickets along with that of the other passengers, he kept the money that he'd wanted to charge us for the bags and I started to enquire about where the rest of our change was. One woman in the minibus seemed to speak English, translated for the other passengers what our predicament was and under an increasingly loud torrent of abuse in Portuguese, the ticket man returned our change and we hit the road. At the border, however, we turned from heroes to zeroes as the other passengers sailed through the immigration formalities and we got our visas done. It turned out that, unlike the one we got between Malawi and Zimbabwe many months ago, this post gave super hi-tech visas featuring digital photos, digital fingerprints and so on. Unfortunately, it appeared that the border guards were not too familiar with technology and as time ticked on, our visas didn't seem to materialise. One border guard would hold the passport saying one of our names, the other would repeat it with a questioning tone, and there would be a deadlock. It took quite a few repetitions before the passport-holding border guard would decide to spell it for the typist-border-guard who seemed to have been introduced to a keyboard for the first time only that morning. A picture was taken, more details were taken, and the driver would come in telling us that he was leaving in 10 minutes. This happened for all three of us and, after two hours, we emerged in the dark to a riot in the minibus as the other passengers seemed rather unhappy about being made to wait for so long...

EU taxpayers, be reassured - your tax money is not being wasted in Mbabane...

Township Tourists

29^th September-1^st October – Days 364-366 – Soweto, South Africa

On a trip like this, it's inevitable that we're going to have a few surprises. They'll be negative, they'll be positive, and no matter how much you move around on a continent like this, your expectations will always be confounded one way or the other. That said, I don't think that anywhere has the gap between expectations and reality been so sharply contrasting. When you hear the word Soweto, you associate it with the worst excesses of the Apartheid system, with shanty towns, piles of garbage and so on. The picture, in short, is pretty bleak.

This is Soweto. Orlando West and the Orlando Stadium, home to one of South Africa's biggest football teams, the Orlando Pirates

I wasn't really expecting anything in particular from Soweto but I suppose that, if I was expecting anything at all, I was expecting something along the lines of what I just described. This seemed to be coming to bear as we trundled out of Bree St minibus station having gone through the usual walk between MTN and there, wondering where the hell the minibuses leave from and not being able to get any reliable information at all from anyone. The Southwestern suburbs of Jo'burg aren't particularly inspiring – tired-industrial looking with generous amounts of rubbish strewn all over the place, broken and boarded up windows and tired-looking people. The buildings soon gave way to « informal settlements » as they're called here, small shanty towns of small, home-made shacks. Then, we turned off the road onto the Soweto Highway and towards the self-proclaimed world's most famous township. And this is where things started to get interesting.

I'd read that Soweto actually has the highest concentration of millionaires in all of South Africa but, with my impressions of the place without having seen it, I'd always half-presumed that these millionaires were gangsters or criminals or whatever. As the minibus rolled in, though, we were greeted with sights that we certainly didn't expect. Tidy gardens, well kept parks with kids playing in them, and the small Sowetan houses mostly had garages with cars in them. A young guy from the minibus volunteered to escort us to Lebo's Soweto Backpackers – apparently the only backpackers in Soweto – and we set up the tent and tried to take it all in. I suppose that there are rougher parts of Soweto too, but this is true of any town of any size, and Soweto's population estimates range from 1.5 million to 4 million. Orlando West (the area we stayed in), though, looked as nice as any part of Johannesburg. The houses were smaller than in Sandton or wherever, but it was definitely a place that locals kept up and were proud of. We celebrated our arrival by teaming up with a few Frenchies who were staying there – a lone guy and a family with two young kids – and went to the shebeen down the road for a few beers and to watch Man Utd. Against Valencia, which was a mind-numbingly boring game. In contrast, the bar's owner seemed so delighted to see us that he gave us each a free bottle opener and kept up a lively chat through the evening.

He walked into an Orlando Pirates bar with a Kaizer Chiefs shirt on but got no trouble. If that ain't love...

WARNING : COMMERCIAL PLUG – If anyone ever considers going to Soweto (and they should), Lebo's is one of those places that you look at with wide eyes and just have to take your hat off to the guy who started it all up. According to the story, Lebo started his community work by cleaning up the park over the road from his hostel, which used to by a rubbish dump. He got the community involved, set up some swings and slides and football goals, and the park now swarms with local kids every day. He says that, as a former crafts salesman, he got sick of seeing tourists come into Soweto by bus, take their pictures, and then go back to Johannesburg. And so he started renting out beds in his parents spare room before opening his own place in the house his grandfather used to own. He's one of those guys who's never had any formal training in the tourism industry, but has succeeded in what he's done through determination and dedication, not only to the local community but also to showcase Soweto to the world. It worked well with us and, by the look of the guestbook, we weren't alone in feeling this. It's definitely a place we'd go back to. END OF PLUG.

In the garden at Lebo's

Vilakazi street - civil rights struggles have been won, other struggles are just beginning (with the help of Ryan Giggs)

Orlando West is home to Vilakazi Street, which is (or should be) known the world over for several reasons. During the apartheid era, this relatively small street was home to both Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, and Sowetans will tell you that it's the only street in the world that has been home to two different Nobel Peace Prize winners (and I haven't done enough research to either confirm or reject this assertion, but it's certainly possible). It's also the home of several high schools which were central to the organising of the Soweto Uprising in 1976. Hector Peterson, the 13-year-old boy who was killed during the uprising and whose picture spread shockwaves around the world, was shot in an adjoining street. Vilakazi Street has changed a lot since those days – Mandela's old house is now the Nelson Mandela Museum, over the road is the Nelson Mandela Family Restaurant and there's also a swanky restaurant close-by populated with well-to-do locals and tourists. The past is not forgotten, though, and signs take you through the history of the area, mostly the Soweto Uprising. The streets are freshly paved and occasionally see a busload of tourists coming in to see various museums. When we bought the Sowetan « Kota Burger », we walked to the Hector Peterson memorial and ate it over the road from a sign advertising the opening of Soweto's KFC. It seems that times have changed – and as one of the Vilakazi Street signs told us, what we were doing would not have even been possible 20 years ago – journalists were banned and non-Sowetans had to apply for a special permit to enter (which probably wouldn't be granted in any case). We left the Vilakazi Street area with a happy feeling – the township has come on leaps and bounds since the end of apartheid (aside from its imminent hosting of a KFC, which is arguably a big step backwards) and we were happy to see it now before it becomes just another part of Jo'burg. The history of the place will always remain but it's still one of the few places in South Africa where a tourist can walk the streets and get cheery waves from women doing laundry or have a bunch of kids walking alongside trying out their English.

M ponders her choice of Kota Burger

Beats KFC any day!!

It seemed suitable that it was in Soweto, one of the centrepieces of modern African history, that we spent the one year anniversary of this trip. Unfortunately, it seems that I got lost somewhere along the way and so it only appears as « Day 364 » in the title of this post. As the people of Soweto know well, things don't always go perfectly...

Downtown Orlando West

On the day we were planning to go back to Jo'burg, we had a little side trip to the Apartheid Museum, a collection of stories and exhibits from the shady days. While the things presented are generally what is already widely known, the way that it's all presented illustrates just how ridiculous the whole thing is. Entrances to stations, train station platforms, public toilets, park benches and so on – everything was segregated. Pictures from the street showed public toilets with four separate doors – white women, white men, non-white women, non-white men. The differences in spending on health an education for whites and non-whites were laid out as were quotes from leading politicians at the time explaining that the sole purpose of the South African black should be as a provider of manual work to advance the white cause, and so on. Reading these quotes just made you wander how the rest of the world tolerated such a system for nearly 50 years and indeed supported it, against the greater threat of communism. In return, South Africa set out some of the toughest anti-communist legislation in the world, although in practise this was used to suppress any criticism of the system. Nelson Mandela, for example, was thrown into jail under the Suppression of Communism Act. The pass system (which allowed blacks into white areas just for enough time to work, after which they had to return to their homelands) was also set out for us. In the end we didn't have enough time to see the whole museum, but it left us with another lasting impression of just how far the country has come in the 16 years since Mandela became president. South Africans, both black and white, call this the era of freedom. I've heard white South Africans describing the Apartheid era as the dark days, the days of the fascist dictatorship, and so on. Sure, South Africa still has a long way to go on the road to racial harmony and just from being on the street, it feels like there is a lot of tension between the races. An afternoon at the apartheid museum to see just how bad things used to be changes your views on this though. The grace with which most black South Africans have moved on from those days is amazing too and seeing how these people were treated for 50 years makes you smile and how Sowetans will see white faces walking through their streets and greet them with a wave and a smile. Some people we've talked to say that it's depressing (one otherwise tough white South African we met in Jo'burg claimed that he couldn't ever go to the museum without crying) and some say that seeing the past shows how inspiring the future is. I think we both came out this way, and I certainly returned to Johannesburg seeing the country through slightly different eyes after these few days.

Return to Snoozeville

25^th September-28^th September – Days 360-363 Pretoria, South Africa

We'd struggled to find anything to do the first time round in Pretoria and it looked like it would be similar this time round. Unfortunately, Christine's house was full but fortunately, this meant we'd be staying in a backpackers (even if, unfortunately, we'd have to pay for it). Fortunately, I had my legion of infections (the face had since been joined by 2 comrades, one on each leg) as an excuse to not do anything. M jumped on the bandwagon quite happily and we sat around, watched TV, chatted with the various characters around the place. Two Dutch student nurses who worked up in Botswana were nice company, and two women wandering around with Bibles (one of them was an American missionary, the other was South African) had such an innate fear of speaking, it appeared, that I became mystified at the spectacular advances made by Christianity in this part of the world. I can only assume that other missionaries were perhaps more forthcoming with their communicational skills. The American was from Kansas City though, so maybe that's some kind of an excuse.

No caption required

We were about half an hour's walk away from Christine's, yet the scenery was very similar. Roads went between large houses as far as the eye could see, the jacarandas were awaiting our departure before they'd start to bloom, and so on. One thing that I noticed last time and forget to write down was something which I can imagine was done just to make Pretoria slightly more interesting for passing motorists or residents. It seems like the city's land has been re-zoned (this according to signs which have been propped up here and there) and so land that used to be one of these long straight roads has now been packaged into something that can be sold off. That means that Soporific Avenue, for example, is now divided into two parts as there's now a large garden in the middle of it. This has two potential consequences – firstly, a drive who wants to get from one end of Soporific Avenue to the other has to take a detour via Snooze Street and Sweetdreams Drive. The other, far more hilarious yet unlikely consequence, is that someone driving down Snooze Street will take a left into Soporific Avenue as he did last time he was here, but then will rather unexpectedly collide with a brick wall a few metres down the road. I didn't manage to see this happen, though, so we called Christine and went ten-pin bowling with her and her guests for the week, which was nearly as fun.

Just before we fell asleep for all eternity but having done such things as laundry and disinfecting infections, we roused ourselves and got moving southwards. The final goal was Soweto although we'd stop at a backpackers for the night closer to the airport to drop off some bags.

T bravely attempts cooking in a Jo'burg blackout

A Ride with a Giant

22^nd September-25^rd September – Days 357-360 – Pietermaritzburg and Northern Drakensberg National Park, South Africa

The aim for a few days was the Amphitheatre Backpackers, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. After the cold of Lesotho didn't induce the more climatically frail of us to go wandering around the Sani Pass, the Drakensburg mountains looked like a better bet. Various pieces of advice let us conclude that we needed to take a minibus taxi to Ladysmith, change there get to Bergville, and then get another towards Harrismith, which would drop us at the Backpackers' turnoff about halfway down the road. Simple, right ? Once again, we managed to make a mountain out of a transportational molehill. Pietermaritzburg to Ladysmith went perfectly well, as did Ladysmith to Bergville. However, it seemed that the final minibus had left towards Harrismith and we were advised to "go to the main road and hike". Hiking is a rather vague concept in South Africa and means getting a lift with whatever passes - it could refer to hitchhiking just as much as it could refer to trying to get into a passing minibus which has any space. The act is the same though (stand by the road and try to flag down passing vehicles) and so we walked out of town towards the main road and tried our luck.

Our luck wasn't really in for a while and M eventually decided that the best course of action was to go to the nearest petrol station and pick up an icecream and some drinks and see if anyone could give us a lift from there. No such luck, but a few minutes later a large pickup containing an even larger man ground to a halt and asked us where we were going. "Sure, I'm heading that way, get in" he said, and we did. Our new friend was a friendly and talkative guy, eager to hear our opinions on South Africa as most people in this country are. He was from Bethlehem, further up the road, he told us, but worked in Durban. "Did you go to Durban ?" he asked. "We did !" M piped up from the back. "We saw a rugby game there a few weeks ago". This seemed to interest our new friend. "Sharks against Western Province eh ? I played in that game". This is when I started regretting not reading up about rugby very much and I had to admit to him that I knew very little about the game, although we promised that we'd cheer for him next time we saw him on the TV. "Haha ! OK, I'm number three for the Sharks". Noted. "And number 3 for the Springboks as well". Aha ! So we were getting a lift from an international rugby player. Great. I asked him name, warning him in advance that I'd probably never heard of him with my limited knowledge of rugby. So our new friend was called Bismarck du Plessis, and he seemed not to mind that he was helping out a pair of rugby ignoramuses. He dropped us off at the Amphitheatre, politely declined our offer of a beer to thank him for his help as he had some business to take care of back home, and took his leave. We instantly called all of our South African rugby-watching friends to brag about what had just happened, and wondered what the chances would be of David Beckham or Zinedine Zidane giving a pair of hitchers a lift in Europe. Probably rather slim.

George the tent gets another workout

The stay at the Amphitheatre itself was a bit of an anticlimax - the guided tours were too expensive for us and another lump was sprouting on my face, meaning that I wasn't feeling energetic enough to go and wander around. M did so for a short time but it seemed that the distant mountains were a lot further than they appeared, and she returned without having left flat ground. These few days, then, were used to relax again. It was a nice little place with a big grassy area for sticking up the tent, a cozy bar and a restaurant that did decent food. We read books, sat around and picked up our energy for the final leg of the trip. Less than a month was left before the flight home and we wanted to make the most of it.

M explores "The Berg"

and this is what she finds.

Another hour of attempted hitching finally got us back to Bergville from where we grabbed another minibus up towards Pretoria in a desperate attempt to find something interesting to do there. We had some things to pick up from Christine's place and aimed to be in big bad Johannesburg within a few days.

Bergville, anyone? I'm not fat, I've just got an abcess...

The Kingdom In The Sky

13^th September-15^th September – Days 348-350 – Port Alfred, South Africa to Semonkong, Lesotho

Leaving Port Alfred was about as complicated as getting there was. Not spectacularly so, but probably more so than it should have been. Megan had given us a lift into town at 7.30am, dropped us off at the minibus taxi rank and gave us a cheery goodbye as she disappeared off to work. There was only one minibus in the area so locating the one we needed wouldn't be hard, we thought. That was until we were told that this was the local minibus station and to get anything else we'd need the other station which was accurately described to us as being « somewhere over there », accompanied with a vague waving of hands. We walked around in circles until the sight of a shopping centre reminded M that she hadn't had her morning coffee and so we ducked into a Wimpy so that she could get her fix for the morning. This was also useful as the Wimpy staff were slightly more helpful than the minibus taxi drivers – we'd have to get a local minibus to an intersection somewhere out in the townships where we could get onward transport from there.

We were aiming to get to Maseru, the capital city of Lesotho, but we weren't yet quite sure how to do it. We'd originally thought of going through Port Elizabeth but I thought that, given that P.E. was in the wrong direction, that might not be such a great plan. We decided on trying to find our way to Grahamstown again and get a bus from there to Bloemfontein, from where we could get something to Maseru. Easy. And in fact, for once, it turned out that we did make it easy. Grahamstown was sunny, as it always seems to be. M and I tried our hand at tennis, which we realised that we weren't very good at, and we got invited by Grant and Bast for a game of touch rugby, which I realised that I wasn't very good at. Rather than realise that she was crap at two sports too, M trekked off to the Pick N Pay to pick up some supplies for the night bus we'd arranged up to Bloemfontein.

M practises her backhand...

...and shows a distinct lack of coordination with the tennis racket

...but T's attempts with a rugby ball make her feel much better.

Now, not only was this a night bus but it also arrived in Bloemfontein at 3am, meaning that we'd have to find our way to the backpackers place that M had called up during the day, call up a guy inside to open a door for us and pitch up our tent in the middle of the night. It just seems that we're suckers for punishment – you know that line you always come up with after a heavy night? "I'm never going to drink again"? I'm starting to have that with night buses. Always uttering the same words yet, when it comes down to it, you always end up doing it all over again. I guess it's useful in a way for us as we have somewhere to sleep and don't need to pay for a bed for the night. In this case though, we'd arrive at 3am and would pay to spend the night in Bloemfontein anyway. Fortunately, when we eventually got there and woke the guy up, he seemed to take pity on us and offer us a dorm bed at a tent price. And in any case, that was the only bus going from Grahamstown to Bloemfontein so we had no choice. The fact that it was Greyhound, one of the smarter companies with nicer buses, didn't seem to make any difference – sleep was just difficult to come by. I think this is down to several factors: a) the movie on TV is always loud enough to prevent you from sleeping, but quiet enough that you can't really follow what's going on. Given that you can't sleep, you try to watch the movie but only catching half of it gets annoying. This in turns further prevents you from sleeping; b) you will always end up in the close vicinity of either a screaming baby, or an extremely large person who spends the night either clearing their throats of snorting like a hippo (as happened on this particular bus). This will be the only such person on the entire bus and is always either in front of, behind or next to you; and c) you will be woken up at every stop by a booming voice on the loud speaker. « WELCOME TO ALIWAL NORTH, WE THANK YOU FOR TRAVELLING WITH GREYHOUND. IF YOU WERE SLEEPING, TOUGH SHIT FOR YOU. YOU SHOULD HAVE WORN EARPLUGS. PLEASE TRY AGAIN. ». Of course, the only time that you would potentially sleep peacefully through this announcement is at the town where you are supposed to get off, which means that you spend the entire trip paranoid that instead of waking up at 3am in Bloemfontein, you'll wake up at 8am in Johannesburg. This paranoia, in turn, prevents you from sleeping. In this case you'll either be utterly tired when you get off the bus, or you'll pass out at 2.50am, and end up Johannesburg just as you thought. Miraculously, M and I found ourselves getting off the bus exactly where we should have, and by 4.30am we were sound asleep.

M poses before Naval Hill Backpackers, one of Bloemfontein's more arresting tourist attractions

Bloemfontein itself is one of those places that is nice enough to wander around for a day – pleasant and green, a few nice old buildings and an easy layout that means that you won't get horrifically lost very quickly. It's also big enough to keep you from stumbling upon the same thing every 5 minutes but also small enough to be walkable. Not the kind of place I'd take a 3-week holiday in but nice enough to while away the day waiting for a bus. It's also got a « Waterfront » shopping centre which is quite funny, given that Bloemfontein in the middle of the Free State, which is itself in the middle of South Africa and hence nowhere near the sea from which Cape Town's equivalent gets its name. We went there, split a pizza, and kept on walking. I had quite a headache for some reason, so we trudged back up to the backpackers and had a lazy evening (easy enough since we were the only guests there, by the looks) before turning in for the night. The owner was one of those guys doesn't seem interested in running a backpackers at all, but rather prefers watching horse races on TV and occasionally coming out with the odd racial slur, but he had a Franco-German guy working for him who was friendly and helpful and recommended to us that we go directly to Semonkong as Maseru was just a town with nothing much going for it. Besides, from the look of the maps, the road to Semonkong looked like a dead end so we'd have to bus it up back to Maseru anyway. The decision was made, a taxi was called for 5.30 the next morning, and we slept again.

The Bloemfontein skyline at sundown. Nice cooling towers.

The final day of the trip to Semonkong was a beautiful one. From the modernity of South Africa to the rural charm of its smaller neighbour, from the flat plains of the Free State to the towering mountains of Lesotho, we saw just about the full range of sceneries within a single day. The bus left bang on time and by 9am we were walking through the Maseru Bridge border crossing and before we knew it, we were in Lesotho. Arriving here was just like arriving in Swaziland – people suddenly started waving and smiling at you in the streets, people said hello to the tourists and we were asked if we needed help. We were pointed towards the minibus rank to get into town, where we went through our normal « new country » routine of getting a sim card, looking at the new money we got as change for it, and then wondering where the hell we were. In Lesotho, the fun was added to by the fact that many people spoke Sesotho to us and seemed quite taken aback that we couldn't understand them. The fact that they didn't speak English either restricted the depth of many conversations. In the end, we asked in the fabulously named « Hip Hop Shoe Shop » for directions to the Semonkong bus, and a woman inside said she'd show us the way. We weaved through market stalls, in and our of roads, stopped as our new friend had a chat with various people, and eventually got to the central bus station. The bus was due to leave in three hours but we were too tired to wander around with the huge backpack. Consequence being, we sat on the bus for three hours and waited.

Lesotho smiles at us in one of those "out of the bus window" pictures that turned good

It's a bumpy ride down to Semonkong – half of the way it's a gravel road, and the other half is pothole with a little bit of tarmac here and there. We rolled along the sides of mountains, up and down, left and right. Half of the time on such a ride, you'd be admiring the beauty of the mountains. The other half, you'd be thinking « Gee, I hope the brakes don't fail on the 1870s-built bus-like contraption, or we'd be rather finished ». The fact that this 1870s-built bus-like contraption appeared to have done the run from Maseru to Semonkong every day since its construction probably helped me to believe that it would be OK. And hence, with about 90 people on board, the chattering of Sesotho all around and M humming the Vengaboys to my left, we bumped our way through the countryside for quite a while. Every time we'd come over a pass, the mountains and valleys would spread before us without any sign of life or habitation bar a few herders on horseback here and there. People did get on and off quite regularly though, making the more inquisitive minded European wonder where the hell these people are going/where they came from. I guess Lesotho is just one of those places where people will walk 3 weeks over mountains to get back home just because they think they may have left the gas on, and then wander back without a care in the world to pick up the next bus. My aimless thoughts were crudely interrupted just after we crossed the Makhaleng river by the delightfully familiar sound of KABOOM coming from underneath the bus. We'd blown a tyre in a spectacular way and I realised everything that I had missed since being in South Africa, the country where things just seem to function well. In other parts of Africa things never go according the plan – things break down, things go the wrong way and things blow up, and that's part of the fun. I tried to count how many passengers were squeezed into our bus-like contraption several times but lost count and then it was time to get back on. We went repeatedly over passes again, and as night fell, I started to think that Semonkong was just an urban legend, an Atlantis of Southern Africa. We'd just drive through the night and eventually arrive back in Maseru tomorrow morning. « Semonkong » was just Sesotho for « Circular route » and the whole thing was an inside joke to be played on the monthly tourist.

Back in Africa!! T waits for the puncture to be fixed, one of his favourite pastimes

Like many of my imaginative and unlikely scenarios, this one also came to nothing. We pitched up in Semonkong which, in the dark, looked like a village with a population of at least 6. We were approached by several people asking if we needed help to get where we were going and one guy walked us half way across the village to give us some directions, wished us a pleasant night and turned around, walking back where we had come. How nice. This is Lesotho, it seems. In fact, there wasn't really much point in asking a foreigner with a backpack where they are going at night because it seems that Semonkong only has one place to stay, the Semonkong Lodge. But it's a good one.

Boat Camp

10^th September-13^th September – Days 345-348 – Port Alfred, South Africa

I don't want to get too far into the complexities of getting to Port Alfred from Mthatha where we were dropped off by the approximately 103-year-old driver from Bulungula. Let's just say that getting to East London was an easy minibus ride but that we had to seek hard and long to find onward transport from there and ended up in a shared taxi that cost us the same price for an hour's drive to Port Alfred that it had cost us for the 4-hour ride to East London from Mthatha. But we made it there in time before the next day's event and that's all that counts.

Port Alfred is a little seaside town at the mouth of a river on which all of SA's biggest universities (and some international ones too) come to compete in the noble sport of rowing. The annual boat race is a big happening for the student population who come here to drink and soak in on the sun while shouting for their university's team to row quicker and beat the arch rival – whichever university that might be. We were here to support Rhodes University as one of Bast's friends, whom we'd also met earlier, was the captain in the team. So we reunited with Bast and Grant and their various friends on the river bank armed with beer. Or we would have, had we not got separated from our crate as a result of a badly organised day. The lovely manager of the backpackers in town, Kim, took us out onto the riverbank in the morning and stored our beers in the fridge of her office not far from the river. We then lost Kim after finding Bast and Grant as she was out with her baby and the dogs and hence couldn't come down to our spot on the river but instead gesticulated that she'd come and find us before heading back. She never did, and so we went dry-mouthed for a while (despite Bast and Grant keeping us supplied with what they had) before we embarked on a mission to find her – at the pub not far from her office. We'd walked all the way back to the backpackers just to get her mobile number before we caught up with her again and she kept us at the pub for a few rounds before we managed to pull back to the riverside, which caused us to miss a good part of the day.

Spot the cox (har har)

"We've lost a soldier!"

The party had continued all the while we'd been gone, of course, and we had to pick up the pace in order to catch up with the mood. Somehow we didn't manage it, however, and felt a lot more tired than our fellow celebrators (Rhodes had apparently done well). After ending up at the party in one of the boathouses later in the night – via Bast's friend's house party where we spent some time in between and where we got the free tickets for the boathouse – and not being able to get excited over the standard concept of a drunken student fiesta, we decided to head back to the backpackers not too late at all. The fact that the dorm room was embraced in the sweet smell of weed and that someone was watching movies with loud sound on didn't bother us one bit as we crashed and snored within minutes.

T tried hard to fit in with the students in the background but something was amiss...

The next day we were invited to Bast's friend Megan's house just down the road for breakfast and to stay for the next night if needed. We sort of missed the breakfast but happily took on the offer for a free bed for the night. Bast and Grant headed back to Grahamstown with the rest of their friends early in the day, and Megan was feeling tired from the festivities and slept through most of the day, so we got the lounge and TV all to ourselves for the day and benefited whole-heartedly by watching soppy movies and eating noodles in front of the telly.

The outcome of the weekend would suggest that we really are getting too old to keep up with the pace of the party, but I am refusing to believe it. Lesson learnt: look after your own beers.

Familiar faces...?

Party Interlude

8^th September-10^th September - Days 343-345 – Bulungula, South Africa

Coming from Coffee Bay to Bulungula was like arriving at a harbour of tranquility, and like T insinuated in the previous post, this was exactly what doctor had ordered for us. Bulungula is not really a village in itself (even if we think one of the villages close by might be called something similar) but a patch of land right on the Wild Coast that is remote from the surrounding bigger habitation centres and acts as some kind of a “resort”. It's mainly of interest to those who like to spend some slow hours in a natural setting observing the local, simple way of life.

Bulungula camp at sunset

Our hosts welcomed us warmly and immediately took us on a tour of the essentials of the place: the compost toilets and what they call 'rocket showers'. Bulungula runs on the principle of sustainability, and these two elements were at the core of their operations. Compost toilets I believe everyone is more or less familiar with, but as for the rocket showers, I'll tell you that they are showers that work on liquid paraffin which you place at the bottom of the water pipe and set on fire in order to heat the pipe which then provides you with hot water for a full eight minutes. So not only do you use little energy but also minimise the consumption of water while showering. The quick tour ended with the introduction of the campsite right next to the ocean and the main lounging area where a delicious home-made dinner was served a bit later. We were very appreciative of all the amenities and started our two days of ultimate chilling there and then.

Takin it easy by the coast. Life is hard.

We spent our days at Bulungula catching up on our newly-bought novels and getting to know the other inhabitants: an American girl who was studying in Cape Town, an English traveller guy, a Swiss pair of siblings and a small group of Germans who we'd already seen in Coffee Bay but hadn't exchanged many words with so far. We also booked ourselves on one of the community based tours, namely the herbalist trail, which included a meeting with the local medicine man, tasting some of his potions (some black powder made of extracts from sharks, snakes and some roots) and familiarising ourselves with the plants that he collects from the local woods. The tour ended at a local “restaurant” where we were served very nice pancakes.

De medicine man, man

The scenery here was much of the same as around Coffee Bay: traditional Xhosa huts scattered on rolling hills and a few schools to keep the kids of the area busy with the experience of learning. The bushy forest lining parts of the coast provided us and the other guests with relaxed surroundings for sitting around and conversing about the multitude of stars above us on the clear night sky, among other things. To write here about what we actually did or talked about during our time at Bulungula would be both uninteresting and pointless, as you just have to be there to share the uneventful moments in order to appreciate them.

De herbalist man's huts. One broken, one cool

We would have liked to stay at Bulungula for longer but had also planned to make our way to Port Alfred for the annual boat race between all the universities' rowing teams. According to Bast, the one who had invited us along, things were going to get “Hectic!” so I was glad we'd stopped here to charge the batteries before that.

Wild Wild Coast

5^th September -8^th September - Days 340-343 - Coffee Bay, South Africa

On first appearance, the Coffee Shack was a haven of tranquility. We'd woken up in Mthatha with the usual night bus stiff neck at 7am and tried to get down to Coffee Bay. Fortunately we shared a bus with Klaus, a German guy who worked at the Coffee Shack, and Sophie, an Austrian who was heading there too. The usual headscratching on emerging from a night bus was thus eliminated and we followed Klaus a few blocks to the minibus-taxi station and waited for a small eternity for it to fill up. Mthatha is a tired looking city full of boarded up buildings and radiates the impression that its better days are long gone. Our minibus to Mqanduli eventually left and from there we transferred over quickly and painlessly to another minibus to Coffee Bay. From the stop, it was a short walk to the Coffee Shack where we were made to feel at home and flopped out to compensate for the night bus syndrome.

Transkei minibus-taxi fun

A good start.

The drive down was through true rural Xhosa country – rolling green hills with blue and cream-coloured rondavels scattered all over. Goats and cows wandered through the fields and across the road, people ambled around, schoolkids chased chickens – it was that kind of place. It lacked the spectacular scenery of some parts of South Africa but it was definitely among the most scenic parts of the country that we'd seen so far. It was with this and the ocean as a backdrop that formed a part of Coffee Bay's charm. We whiled away the day playing pool, chatting with whoever came our way, reading books and enjoying what little sunshine there was. It was the kind of place with attracted backpackers from all over and a generous scattering of hippies and vagrants – we met the usual quota of tourists plus people like Marie-Claire, a 50-year-old woman who was born in the Congo, escaped to South Africa as a refugee as a child, was divorced by her husband 15 years ago and immediately hit the road, which she's still on. Her conversation tends to hover around yoga and inner peace and the like, but she has a fascinating story. She made bead necklaces for a living and was waiting for a good sale before she could move on. Two brothers from Johannesburg was also around for a few days – they'd decided that they hadn't seen enough of their own country and rented a camper van for a while to drive around. We spent quite a bit of time with them too. They invited us one day over to their camper van for what turned out to be a rather competitive game of dominoes, and we discovered on leaving that the inlet between them and our tent had succumbed to high tide. We could either swim across, or stay with them. And so it was that we spent our first night in a camper van.

Jungle Speed was a smash hit in Coffee Bay, as it is everywhere.

M considers a swim. And then reconsiders.

As the first day went on, the Coffee Bay silent idyll disappeared and the place turned into a backpacker loud-n-brash bar which was good fun as always but, slightly partied-out by recent weeks, we tended to retire earlier rather than later and started thinking about moving somewhere a bit calmer. In a small twist of fate, we met with one of M's primary and secondary school friends whom she hasn't seen for a good ten years. She was there with a friend of hers who knows several friends of mine and went to school with my ex. Small world? Maybe not, but Finland is a small country...

This is Xhosa country

One of the days, we signed up for a walk off to « Hole In The Wall ». Aside from the fact that it was a hole in the wall somewhere, we weren't really too sure of what to expect. During the 4 or 5 hour walk across the rolling hills, we had a good look around as well as spotting the « Transkei Big Five », where the traditional safari group of lion, leopard, buffalo, hippo and elephant had been replaced by cow, sheep, goat, horse and donkey. At one particularly steep looking hill, some of the group started wondering out loud if it would be possible to go around rather than over the hill and so, with the tide coming in, we hopped from one cave to another, trying our best not to be swept out to sea. We managed it just about without any loss of life, although our poor, long-suffering camera took another pounding as I was partially submerged by waves. It still works, bless it. When we weren't panting our way up hills or expiring at the top of them, we busied ourselves looking at the same beautiful scenery that we'd come through on the way here and M also spent part of the afternoon working on her sunburn, which came out nice and red. Getting to the Hole in the Wall itself was great – not for the hole in the wall itself (which, aside from being a moderately interesting example of hydraulic pressure on rock, wasn't anything spectacular) but we did get toasted sandwiches thrown into the price of the walk. It was a happy moment, one to make me forget that I was feeling slightly worse for wear after the previous evening...

One of the Transkei Big Five

As its name would suggest...

Honestly, it was just tiredness.

Generic Wild Coast coastline shot #8882929737/92.6

In the end, though, we decided that we'd seen enough and the party party scene was getting rather repetitive so we upped sticks and moved a little further up the coast to Bulungula, which a German girl in Coffee Bay had recommended to us (although, this being Africa, it took us about 5 hours to get the few kilometres via an enormous detour) to see what we could find there. We hoped for Coffee Bay minus the party party. Hopefully it wasn't too much to ask...