Inside the beehive hut in Swaziland
Melody hunting some impalabok for breakfast
Wildlife viewing over an egg scramble
Warthog butt
A candle mason at Swazi Candles
His handiwork
Outside the beehive hut
Hippo Lake in the background
Reading on the 7 hour bus ride to Tofu
Mozambique sky
Mozambique trees
Mozambique water
Mozambique door
Our villa on the beach
Water taxi to Katembe Island
Fishing boats after the catch
After lunch pose on Katembe Island in Maputo Harbor
I’m posting this vacation epic in full. Please don’t feel compelled to read it. It’s too long, but it’s my journal for the journey, and I figure Google is a safer place to keep it than my hard drive (my external just failed, so I’m going to be a little more cautious now).
I went on holiday. It was awesome. We caught a ride to Qwa Qwa, the border town nearest me, with my principal and caught the first taxi to Johannesburg. It left reasonably quickly and we got to Joburg in about three and a half hours. From there we transferred to a taxi to go to Nelspruit. The taxi took a little longer to fill up, but was a larger minibus and much more comfortable. Surprisingly we left before the taxi was completely full, so Mel and I had the entire back seat to stretch out and try to get comfortable for the 5 hour ride to Nelspruit. We both started going a little stir crazy about 3 hours into the ride, then we got a flat tire. They got it changed out in about 20 minutes and we were on our way again.
We were both tired when we got to Nelspruit and it was dark so we took a 4+1 (private taxi) to the backpackers. A man in a camouflage jump suite of pastel greens walked into the office ahead of us, and we followed him in. He sat down at the desk and looked at us. We looked at him, then at each other, then at him.
“We have a reservation for a double,” I say.
He says something in Zulu to Mel. She tilts her head a little to the right to amplify her quizzical look. “I speak English.” He speaks in Zulu for a much longer time. Mel just shrugs her shoulders at him.
“Do you have a double?” I ask again.
“Yes. Follow.”
We followed. The backpackers was cool. There were gazebos and bbq pits and a pool and ferns and palms. We certainly were not in Lesotho anymore. At one point he turne his camouflage jump-suited body around to point and grunt at a step down in the path. A few moments later he found a spherical lamp that wasn’t working and in a fit of maintenance inspiration began pounding on it with his palm and yelling at it. He must not have hit it properly because it didn’t turn on. We moved on.
He opened the building that our room was in, which appeared to be an old house that had been converted into a mixed backpacker building. He showed us what must have been the master bedroom. “You sleep here.” Okay. Then we shut the door and he opened the door to another room. “Or you sleep here.” Umm… Then he opened another room’s door, “Or you sleep here.” Mel and I looked at each other. We were too tired to figure out if this guy was just entertaining himself at our expense or if somebody had actually left him in charge of a large hostel. “We’ll just take the first one.” A nod from Mr. Camo confirmed the deal and we made our way back to the office to pay.
We put down our stuff and headed off in search of food. To our surprise and unmitigated joy we found a Chinese restaurant. Orange Chicken, rice, Shrimp Fried Rice and a bottle of their cheapest wine. It was a delicious meal and the first Chinese food either of us had had in 8 months. We slept well that night.
The next morning we walked back to the taxi rank and caught a taxi to Mbabane in Swaziland. Maybe caught isn’t the right word because it might lead you to believe that it left quickly. In actuality we found it easily then waited for 2 and a half hours for it to fill up. The trip to Mbabane was about 4 hours and fairly painless.
The Swaziland border was no problem and from the border post to Mbabane is only about 20km. Pulling into Mbabane is like pulling into an amphitheatre through the stage with the taxi rank taking up the orchestra and floor level. Surrounding three quarters of the rank are restaurants, shops, markets, a couple malls and a lot of people. Now, let’s not be ridiculous, this is Swaziland, not Newport Beach. The bars don’t have plasma TVs and waitresses in stilettos; they sell beer by the quart and are patronized by 98% male clientele. Regardless of the quality of the establishment, it was very cool to be in a city center that felt like a city center. We were both hungry so we found a restaurant and I got nachos (they would not have been picked to represent Plato’s Form of the Nacho, but they were good). Then we went to Super Spar, which had all kinds of food that we never get to buy in grocery stores in Lesotho, so we bought it and caught a taxi to Mlilwane.
The taxi dropped us off at a sign for Mlilwane that said, “Mlilwane 3.5 km.” We had originally planned on driving, so I hadn’t looked at the directions to the wildlife sanctuary with walking in mind. Our bags weren’t overwhelming, but we did have a couple day’s worth of food and 10 days worth of luggage. So, we started walking in hopes of catching a lift. Luckily one came within a few hundred meters and it took us within a half kilometer of the park entrance. We hoofed it the rest of the way past a well groomed primary school and a small fundraising effort consisting of 6 ceramic, presumably child-made, piggy banks for sale.
The woman at the reception desk didn’t look overly thrilled to see us even though we were pretty thrilled to be at our destination after traveling all day. “We have a reservation for a double for tonight.” Said I.
“Do you have your papers?”
The email confirmation I made online didn’t say anything about printing anything off as far as I could recall. “Nope. I made the reservation online.” She was not happy.
“Do you know which camp you’re staying at? Sundzella or the Rest Camp?”
“No. I didn’t even know there were different camps. I booked a double online.” All kinds of eye rolling and leaking of air ensued. “Okay, maybe it’s in our reservation book.” She opened a folder that had all of the reservations in it, and sure enough, there I was. “Okay, well it’s another 3 km to the rest camp.”
There were no cars at the office and it was getting dark and we were tired. “Is there a shuttle?” I regretted saying it as soon as I said it. “No.”
We bid the lady ado after paying an additional entrance fee and walked out to the gate. Walking towards us was a park ranger looking fellow and he asked us where we were going. We told him the rest camp and he looked at our baggage. “Do you mind a 20 minute walk?” Twenty minutes for 3.5 km seemed like a pretty aggressive pace considering our current state. “Nevermind. Let’s just wait and get you a lift.” So, we waited near the sign that informed us that catapults were not allowed in Swaziland (sieging the castle was out of the question) and watched an ostrich walk past us. Then an Afrikaner pulled up in a big crane truck. Peculiar I thought. He didn’t look like a patron of a Swazi wildlife sanctuary in that rig, but, he gave us a lift so I didn’t question it. Turns out he was living at the park for a few months while he installed three cell phone towers in the area.
We reached the rest camp after dusk, tired and hungry. We checked in with some of the same difficulty that we’d had at the reception desk and got the short tour of the grounds. They showed us the kitchen that was available to us (we planned to cook for ourselves to save some cash) and found that there were no utensils, pans or cookware whatsoever. We had to give a 400 rand deposit (about $45) to borrow stuff from the kitchen. It was peculiar. But then we made it to our “double”, which turned out to be a “beehive hut.” See above pictures. It was very cool.
The next day was our touristy day in Swaziland. Breakfast consisted of some eggs, yogurt and leftovers while watching impala, warthogs and eland graze under the trees just outside the huge plate glass windows in the kitchen. The decision was made to visit Ngangwane Glass, Swazi Candles and a big outdoor craft market. Ngangwane Glass is a very cool glassblower facility that also has a chocolatier and other Swazi craft stores. Unfortunately the glassblowers were not active when we were there, but the history behind the place is that it was started by Swedes who came and trained the Swazis in the art of glassblowing. All of the glass is recycled, and bought off of locals who collect it from neighborhoods (they basically pick up trash and get paid for it). It is a fantastic business practice and they made some intricate and astonishingly complicated glassware. Unfortunately it was a bit expensive for my budget and I would have broken it anyway.
The next stop was the craft market. It was a market maybe half of a kilometer long with 80 to 100 booths. Within visiting 5 booths you had seen the entirety of the merchandise available and were borderline accosted by the sellers in each booth. It was stressful because I’m not used to a bardering system and I had no clue at all what prices should be. I ended up getting a 3’x4’ painting and paid about $25 for it. I’m not sure how/if I got fleeced, but it’s in my kitchen now an I dig it.
Lastly we stopped at Swazi Candles. Swazi Candles it outrageously awesome. It is all handmade candles in various shapes, hippos, elephants, standard candles, etc, etc. The colors are vibrant and cool. The pictures will do more justice than my words can. When we walked in we went over to watch the artisans shaping the candles. They put the wax into a large low-temperature oven and wait for it to be uniformly pliable. Then they take the piece out for a while and shape it. One of the artisans pulled out a piece of the wax and handed it to me so that I could see what they were working with. It was warm and about the consistency of a waxy play-dough. I shaped mine into a Van Goghesque elephant and handed it back to him. “I think I better practice.” He smiled.
Day three in Swaziland was a relax and chill out day. We took at two hour hike through the wildlife sanctuary and saw zebras, warthogs, impala, ostriches, eland, wildebeest, and lots of birds. There are hippo and crocodiles there, but we went on the hike during mid morning which apparently is not the ideal spotting times for those creatures. It was nice to relax and not travel for a day after being on public transportation for three days straight. The rest of the stay was uneventful, although that evening I did accidentally rinse soap off into a pot full of pasta that a French group was running cold water through to keep it from going past al dente. Oops.
Anyway, the next morning we got up bright and early and hitched our way back to the main road. Well, we didn’t so much as hitch as much as allow one of the game park rangers tell a nice Dutch couple that he wouldn’t let them through the gate unless they gave us a ride to the road. Either way, we got to the road and caught a taxi to town, where we were told to go to the KFC (popular everywhere in Southern Africa apparently) to get the taxi to Maputo, Mozambique. We wandered around for a while, asked a lady in a bank for directions and finally found the taxi. We paid our fare, exchanged some Swazi money for Mozbucks (I can’t recall the name of the Swazi money or the spelling of the Mozambiquean currency). If the rest of our long distance taxi rides were any indication, it was going to be a long wait. So, off to KFC we went to get some ice cream and chicken strips, which we ate while watching the Black Eyes Peas sing “Boom Boom Pow” in hi-def on KFCs plasma TV. Figure that one out.
When we climbed onto the taxi an old, crazy-looking man, let’s call him Old Man River, and now OMR because Old Man River is too long, said, “Loyola Marymount, like in Los Angeles?” OMR had my attention. LMU is still a regional school, so for somebody to recognize it outside of California is nice. But OMR was in a taxi going from a Swazi KFC to Maputo, Mozambique. What are the chances? We started talking and it turned out that he was from LA and knew about LMU before all the crazy developing that has gone on in that area in the last 25 years. We were just chatting, but fairly engaged because I was excited to talk to somebody from Los Angeles, when the taxi driver leaned his head in the taxi and said, “What’s the problem you two?” OMR tilted his bushy beard to the side and said, “Um… we’re just talking. No problem here.” The taxi driver looked utterly confused, but pulled his head back out the window and continued to count his money.
It was clear that OMR was eccentric from the beginning. His beard and hair were disheveled, unkempt and unibomber-long. Then I asked him, “Why are you going to Maputo?” He proceeded to drop this bomb on me: He was traveling around the world informing governments about the secret ruling that the international criminal court (later identified as The Hague) had made convicting Mr. GW Bush of various crimes against humanity. OMG. OMR claimed to have been a major plaintiff in a lawsuit that went before the US Supreme Court and later The Hague, both of which found Mr. Bush guilty, along with a grip of large corporations and such. Forgive me for lacking other specifics, this encounter happened about a month ago and you tend to selectively erase such things.
Regardless, as skeptical as I was about all this litigation stuff, I was 100% convinced that this guy was going to help this 4 hour taxi ride a bit more bearable. I was correct. He regaled me with stories of when he taught 3rd graders that had 3 hour long attention spans because of mutual respect, hiring various migrant workers in the central valley and being gored through the scrotum by a beloved goat, who he later sold to the aforementioned migrant workers. Mel was not amused by the guy, so she read a couple books. But I loved it.
We got through the border no problem and dropped down a mountain range on the Mozambique side of the border. Once we got to the bottom, the landscape totally changed. The soil became very sandy and palms suddenly where the tree de jour. Houses were no longer constructed of stones with thatched roves, but were woven palm fronds. They were also much smaller, indicative of the milder climate and being able to be outdoors for more of the year. I just stared for the next hour or so on our way into Maputo. Everything was different. It somehow felt more African than Lesotho, South Africa or Swaziland. The colors were more vibrant, the poverty, well, just different. It had much more of a Caribbean feel I guess, but everything just seemed more vivid. More real, more intense. Also, everything was in Portuguese.
The taxi made about three stops for the locals before pulling into one of the city’s taxi ranks. There were five of us left in the taxi. Mel, OMR, two Dutch backpackers and me. Immediately a guy wanted to drive us to the hostel for what seemed like an exorbitant rate. USD to the Mozbuck is 1 to 25, so 600 Mozbucks was not a ton, but it sure sounded like a lot. He continued to pester me.
“I just got here. Can you please give me a minute to figure out where I am.”
“Okay. But where are you going? I will take you. Fatima’s? I know it.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s not far, I will take you there.”
“If it’s not far, then we can walk. Where is it?”
“Oh, I’m not sure where exactly.”
“If you don’t know where it is, how are you going to take us there?” Oops.
“Ah, fine my friend.” And he proceeded to give us instructions to the hostel.
OMR have no idea where he was staying or where he was going, and the Dutch couple hadn’t changed any money and didn’t have a local sim card, so they were pretty much stuck following Mel and me wherever we went. OMR took off with his rolley bag down the street, so we took off after him. The Dutch had big backpacks and were a little flustered by taking off into a city they knew nothing about with Americans whose names they didn’t even know. We stuck together regardless. After a couple blocks though, it became clear that OMR wasn’t really interested in strength in numbers as he, his enormous grey beard and his rolley luggage got lost in a Maputo side street. Then there were four. We continued in the direction the taxi driver had pointed, then stopped to ask some boys selling cell phone airtime for directions. They gave us some more broken directions and we went off in that direction, past a big, famous cathedral and a government building. As we crossed the street they ran up and offered to walk us to the hostel.
They looked more bored than malicious, and one of the boys seemed like he wanted to practice his English more than anything. We walked and chatted for a few blocks before Elaine (the female Dutcher) asked, “Is it far?” I had forgotten that they had 45 pound bags on their backs and we had been going at a pretty good clip for 12-15 blocks. The boys conferred and said, “About 10 minutes.” Elaine looked pretty dejected at this response, and although it didn’t seem like a long way to me, I recalled that the guidebook said that the hostel offered free pickup. I handed one of the boys some Mozbucks to buy airtime and asked them to use their phone to call the backpackers.
That conversation was neither clear in terms of reception or language, but they seemed to say that they would send a car to the corner we were on, which was something like Huge Chavez Blvd and Vladamir Putin Avenue. Mozambique is apparently socialist. We waited 20 minutes before calling the backpackers again and finding that their car was actually broken, so we could get a cab or walk. 10 minutes didn’t sound bad, so we decided to walk. The boys continued with us and after a block, Elained asked, “So it’s close?” She had clearly had some issues with things being lost in translation before. “It’s three blocks” one of the boys said. 8 blocks later Elaine asked, “Are we near to it?” “It’s about 10 minutes away” was the reply.
Elaine was not amused, but we decided to give it 3-4 more blocks then call a cab if we didn’t get there. This time the boy happened to be correct and we finally made our way through the gate into the backpackers. Crisis averted. We all enjoyed a cold beverage, then when Mel and I found out that our double had an extra set of bunkbeds, it was the last double, and Elaine and Reiner didn’t really want to sleep in the dorm, we offered to share the room. They were happy at that turn of events and seemed to finally relax a bit after a stressful and long walk to the backpackers.
This retelling is getting entirely too long, so I am just going to hit the major points from the rest of the trip.
1. The 5:30am bus to Tofu the next morning arrived at 6:30 and left at 7. The ride was 8 hours long and cramped, but made a few stops to get fresh bread and fruit from roadside venders.
2. Tofu was beautiful, with squeaky sand, blue water, fresh seafood and produce and the cheapest ($3/bottle) and most delicious rum I’ve ever had. We had calamari steaks, spicy prawn pizza, barracuda steaks, BBQ sandwiches, prawns with Portuguese rice, fresh pineapple, 2M beer, Italiano pizza, seafood curry, fresh banquettes and a bottle of phenomenal Portuguese black olives. Food quality and diversity where not overlooked.
3. We took a Sea Safari with a local dive shop and got to briefly snorkel with an adolescent Whale Shark. They called it a small one. It was by far the largest animal I’ve been next to in the wild. Very cool.
4. We hung out with Elaine and Reiner a couple more times and had some great conversations and meals. They were a lot of fun.
5. The trip back to Maputo was long again, and we had 5-6 hours in Maputo before our overnight bus left for Pretoria. We decided to take the water taxis over to an island in Maputo Harbor for lunch. Maputo harbor was not clean. The water taxis were more like bumper boats when docking, acting like a fat lady trying to squeeze into a seat that is too small for her. They just rammed the dock, then the boat in front of it, then the dock, then the boat, then the dock, you get the idea. The restaurant on the island was not close to the dock, but we eventually got a lift. The restaurant was empty except for us. Mel’s seafood pasta appeared to be the unsorted contents of a dragnet, a veritable catalog of crustaceans and mollusks. It wasn’t quite palatable while looking at the brown, foamy waterway in front of us.
6. We made our way back to the backpackers then to the office for the bus company. We somehow booked our tickets for the previous night. So I had to go run and pull out more money to buy new tickets. Luckily they had room on the bus still. The overnight bus was amazing. It was a real bus, and I watched some lousy Beonce movie and slept for a while.
7. We got into Pretoria at 5 am. Stayed warm in the bus line office. Found a backpackers nearby the station at 7 am and slept for a while. Then we explored Pretoria a bit, found a big mall, watched a movie, ate McDonalds and went to bed early.
8. The taxi rank was nearby the backpackers and we put our bags on at 8:30 am. The taxi didn’t leave until 12:30, at which point it stopped at KFC so that two girls who the driver apparently thought were cute could get some chicken. Nobody was amused. The border gate at Qwa Qwa closed at 4 pm and we were 5 hours way. No luck.
9. We got out of the taxi somewhere near Bethlehem and caught a ride there. The next day we found a solar panel for Mel, I got a used DC Permanent Magnet motor for experimenting with wind/animal powered battery charging stations and we made it back to Ha Sefako at about 5 pm. It was really nice to be home.
So, that was vacation. It was good, and necessary, but it also made the first week of school tough. I was not in a very good mood by the end of it. But, that’s a story for another post. These 7 pages are good enough for now. Cheers all!
