Gelli goes South-ish

With apologies for the continued delay. There are blogs written and ready until I get home (sorry of i've now spoiled the ending to this tale), but I have no internet to upload them. I'll get them up as and when i can, and hopefully before i go away again...

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Of all the things I had wanted to do in South Africa, taking the train between Johannesburg and Cape Town had been high on the list, though I couldn't really tell you why. It was not, after all, as though I would be using the world famous Blue Train for the journey - My bank manager amongst many others would have objected substantially to such an outlay: The cost of that journey alone is probably more than my entire transport outlay in Africa, which covers 9months travel and 5hire cars amongst much else. We actually drew up alongside the Blue Train in Kimberly, and got a few glimpses of it's obscene opulence: Wealthy Japanese dressing for dinner, which would be in a dinning area with every place set with 6different sized wine glasses, and a staff member playing the grand piano in the bar.

But to me the journey itself, as opposed to the comfort that i undertook it in, was the important thing. Slightly frustratingly, timings were not ideal and so we had made the decision to pay for a night in Johannesburg prior to our morning departure, instead of trying to fight our way through from Pretoria.

Waiting to leave Johannesburg, and then leaving

And I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Well, apart from the 11hour delay, naturally. The Shosholoza Meyl – long distance train - journey begins with a trip through some of Johannesburg's suburbs, before passing through a fairly empty stretch until Kimberley. From there, you pass the boringest parts at night before traveling through the beautiful Karoo (astonishingly it was not raining this time) the following day and then into Cape Town. That we reached Cape Town after dark was disappointing, as it mean't we were (a) very late and (b) didn't get to see Table Mountain appear during the approaches.

Passing Vineyards in the Karoo

As it was, it was nice to relax and watch South Africa roll by, or in the case of along section at night and also a stop at Beaufort West, not roll at all due to faults. The restaurant (though it won't win prizes for gourmet cuisine) was surprisingly reasonably priced, as were drinks from the bar, and we had a decently appointed private cabin meaning security was no problem. About the only problem was that the top bunk was high, and awkward to get on.

But in general, the scenery, especially several hours of the Karoo more than made up for it, and as a reasonably priced (420Rand, so roughly 35euro: Buses started around 350 and went to over 600) - if slightly longer journey than by road - way of traveling between the 2 cities, I can highly recommend it.

Just don't have any unchangeable plans or tight connections at the other end.

The light at the end of the tunnel, very slowly, got brighter

It was with our now customary impeccable timing that we arrived in Swaziland. It soon got very grey and absolutely chucked it down, and that was very much the story throughout our few days there. Swaziland is a small, beautiful mountainous Kingdom, but with heavy rain, thunder and low clouds, much of it remained sadly out of sight to us. There was enough to get some glimpses of how nice is could be, and how much possibility the country had. It is also renowned as being the cheapest place (though I would say that currently Zimbabwe is cheaper) to buy crafts and stuff in Southern Africa, and we certainly managed to get some things.

If i'm going to camouflage myself as a wooden mask, I probably need to work on the beard...

But really, we saw very little of the small country and experienced even less. A mix up on arrival in Manzini delayed us a bit, though Swaziland Backpackers, out of town past Matsapha, was one of the nicest hostels I have ever stayed at. The following day we went back to Manzini (a kind of small semi European, semi South African town of no interest to non locals except as a transit point) to eventually discover the market we were looking for was shut as it was Sunday. For reasons that are now lost in the midsts of time I ended up walking about 9km home alone in a huge thunder storm, arriving back utterly drenched: My shoes and some of my clothes were still soaking wet a week later, and some things that I had had on my person – a notebook, a watch etc – were totally destroyed.

We returned for craft shopping the following day, before moving up the Ezulwini Valley: An area which would doubtless be nicer if the clouds weren't there, and we either time or a vehicle to enable us to get off the main track. And so after a few hours diversion spent in the capital, Mbabane, a small little city which oddly instantly appealed to me for no obvious reason, we then returned along the valley to a long roadside craft market where more money was spent. With time rapidly running out, the following morning we left for Pretoria, and a painfully squashed minibus ride – oddly, from Manzini, and not Matsapha which is larger, the capital, and which we had to drive past anyway, but had no minibuses – during which i lost feeling in my right arm and hand entirely (it took a day before i had full feeling back), and suffered horrible pain in my knees, back and shoulders. My knackered old body can't cope with much more of this, although Swaziland gets added to an increasing list of African places that I need to return to and spend more time in.

But I am rapidly starting to dream of travel in Europe again, where though you may have to stand, you will at least always have headroom and you never have to fit more than the officially designated number of people into the seats (insert wistful look into distance here).

This notice was in the second hostel we stayed in. I know that all backpackers like Free stuff, but I have to wonder just how many took them up on this treat...?

We had left around 2am to get a 3am bus. Though legally buses can't leave so early, it is normal in Mozambique. Finding buses that leave after 8 or 9 am can be impossible, especially in the North and 4am type departures are routine. And, even more unlikely, they actually leave on time: Our bus was on the road by 2.50: Mozambique certainly does transport a bit differently - An early bus in the rest of Africa means that it leaves less than an hour after its scheduled time. Even more surrealy, a Chilean guy we had met, Ignacio, had attempted to leave northbound early the previous morning, only to return a few hours later having been told that the bus was canceled due to insufficient passengers. That really is a new one!

It was back passing through Maxixe that it finally happened: I saw my first Renamo poster and car sticker. Mozambique was in the grip of election fever – the election was held 2 days after we left – and all of the papers and TV were full of it. Virtually every other vehicle and house (and even some rocks) were sporting political adverts, and there were also many T-Shirts being worn with slogans on. However, every single one that we had seen to that point (and would see again) belonged to Armando Emilio Guebuza ruling Frelimo party.

Frelimo were a Liberation group that took over at independence and have held power ever since: close to 35years. They were not the only party in the election, and indeed in Beira (Mozambique's second city) amongst others, they didn't even hold power [in Beira, Renamo are the main group]. However in the south, and country in general, they were really the only party. I would have loved to know the official rules on party political campaigning, or to speak enough Portuguese be able to ask questions about opposition advertising (or intimidation), but I couldn't.

One of the larger Frelimo ads that we saw, in Maputo. Normally they had lots of identical (or just in 2 different colours) A4 sized ads posted together. And these ads were – and doubtless still are - everywhere

I was just happy I saw a single house and advert (doubtless that of a candidate or the party) of one other party. The election itself was a foregone conclusion, and was essentially a referendum on Frelimo: They were not fighting other parties, only the population itself and its turn out. Naturally, Guebuza kept power with 75% of the vote from a turn out of about 45%, which i not great but is pretty respectable.

For us, however, it was an uneventful journey. An afternoon back in Maputo doing a few chores, having another of the worlds best brownies, talking to the excellent Tino and Luis in the hostel and trying to avoid the group of 17teenage Finns who had invaded the hostel: listening to Maarets many threats on what she would do to me if I happened to let slip that she was Finnish was actually quite funny. Against that, the bl**dy Finns left at 4.30am and made a heck of a racket. The next day on route to Swaziland, the border crossing at Goba was the quietest and least painful that I have ever done in Africa, even if a few KM down the road at a customs check, a bottle of Jamesons changed hands...

A few people have asked about Fred – Well, i'm happy to announce that though still fragile, he has recovered from the vicious attack in Tofo. Here he is on his homecoming (note the new black mark on his nose). Fred lives, though he has been wounded for life

Vilanculo

How can you not enjoy a place where the hostel is called the Zombie Cucumber?

Though I couldn't really explain why, I enjoyed Vilanculo – another beach resort, further north - significantly more than Tofo, even though I did just as little there as I had in Tofo. Our main reason for visiting, to pay a trip to the Bazaruto archipelago, had sadly been canceled on financial grounds. We simply could not justify the 50euro cost of a trip to the main island, and though there were cheaper options to other islands, it was one of those situations where if you don't do it properly, it isn't really worth doing at all. So we didn't

With the one place I really wanted to visit on Mozambique – Isla de Mozambique – having already sadly had to be dropped on time grounds, this was not really a great piece of news. But, as they say, sh1t happens. Instead we just spent a few days wandering around Vilanculos (of which there are at least a half dozen different spellings). There were some interesting people around, and, we discovered in the way that you do, that an English guy there used to go out with a Finnish friend of Maaret, and the two had missed meeting in Ecuador a few years previously only by a few hours.

But mostly what kept me interested in Vilanculo was the bay. The the bay is extremely shallow, and as a result, the tide goes out a ridiculously long way: If you time it right, it looks like it would be possible to walk all the way to the islands some 14km away. And when the sea is going out, the vista shows glorious layers of colour, as sand, water channels, shallow water and green seaweed and plant life all intermingle. It is absolutely beautiful, and no picture can ever really do it justice.

The pictures really don't do it justice; In reality, it is much more beautiful that than

It is a town with some security issues, especially after dark, and a chunk of which had been destroyed by a cyclone a few years previously and after which a short burst of redevelopment/rebuilding had been undertaken before the government quietly withdrew funds leaving several half built concrete buildings and an air of decay. It is also the sort of place that i think could be hideous in high season, when it would doubtless be flooded by mostly South African holiday makers. But out of season, it was fine – good seafood, and colorful and happy locals (especially when the fishing fleet came back in mid-afternoons, something we watched repeatedly) and I enjoyed being there.

Women surround one of the fishing vessels on it's return to Vilanculo, and (below) some of the days catch

I'm not sure exactly how it happened. Indeed, I am still in shock and confusion at the whole situation. What I do know is that one minute we were sitting by the side of the road in Maxixe and the next we rolling North through the Mozambiquian countryside on a purple beast which is arguably the swankiest bus I have been on since Korea in 2005, and would be a luxury bus even in Europe. Even if not – it was, after all, the same basic design as buses I had used in Namibia and South Africa – it was certainly the nicest I have used in 'real' Africa: double deck, stewardess service, plenty of leg room, reclining seats, and real working air conditioning were all real 'wow' factors for such buses which are invariably lots of people (and chickens) squeezed tightly into narrow rows of seats, and broken windows the only chance of air con.

Having already been on a chappa (local minibus with the inevitable bits falling off) and a knackered old boat (a ferry of sorts) both crammed with people that morning, such service was, to say the least, unexpected.

But what was really amazing was the fact that there was no livestock at all on the bus, and most surrealy of all was that the bus was ¾ empty. I have never – never – been on a bus anywhere in Africa, North of the Sahara included, which has ever been so empty. Heck, I once even broke into a bus in a depot as i needed somewhere to sleep the night, and even that had more people on it! It is rare that I have even been on a bus which has 'only' been 'full' with the manufacturers specified maximum passengers on it: most buses have been significantly fuller. And to travel almost 4hours on such a bus in such spacious luxury with only a single passenger joining, is an event which even now is almost beyond my comprehension.

In truth, i have started to become a bit jaded with African travel and part of me is starting to desire to be back in Europe where transport (even British Rail) is generally reasonably punctual, efficient and comfortable. But one small incident in Mozambique has proven that African travel still has the occasional capacity to surprise me. Perhaps I won't leave just yet.