Heading home

We’re on our way home. Currently sitting in our favourite airport, Changi

We’ve discarded stuff, cleaned up, packed up and left Clancy locked up in storage until we go back to Joburg in 5 or 6 months. We’ll be sure to bring keys with us next time.

Compared with the 90-ish kgs of stuff we took over with us, we are bringing a mere 10kgs home, plus our laptops. No checked bags, just one very light 5kg travel pack each.

We were very lucky that on this trip, our problems were minimal. 5 punctures compared with 12 on our last trip, and we had none for the last 4 weeks. Last time, we got our final puncture 2 kms from our final destination!  A minor radiator problem that a bottle of Bars Leaks fixed. Inevitable wear and tear on our dear Clancy, but that’s always going to be a feature of overland travel.

Here are a few random stats –

Nights we have spent in Clancy since Greg finished building him – 100, over our 2 African trips and the 2 trial runs we did at home.

Kms driven since we left Cape Town in mid-February – 13,800

Number of punctures in 14 weeks of travelling in Southern Africa – 17

Kgs of bread flour used to make our (almost) daily bread on this trip – 10

Number of butane gas cartridges used on this trip – 8. We were able to use our electric hotplate a lot more than we thought we would.

Thanks for travelling with us, it’s been a really great trip. See  you next time!

Stored in Johannesburg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Manyeleti Game Reserve

Leon at African Bush Backpackers told us about Manyeleti and recommended it as a good place to spent a couple of days. It’s just west of Kruger’s Orpen Gate, but can also be accessed from the south via the R40 and some side roads. Our host at Hippo Waterfront Lodge recommended that we avoid the R538 between White River and Hazyview as it’s busy,  may have a lot of livestock wandering across the road and can take long time to drive a short distance . We’ve learnt to listen to advice from locals!

After we left Marloth Park, we spent a night at Panorama Rest Camp, a lovely campground near Graskop. It had a horizon pool overlooking the kloof gorge, good facilities including coin-operated washing machines and dryers (which we made very good use of) AND beautiful azalea hedges that were in flower when we visited. Some were 3+ metres high! We were planning on driving north to Blyde River Canyon, then to Manyeleti, but when we got up the next morning it was so foggy we could barely see a car length in front of us. So going sightseeing seemed a bit pointless, and we’ll add Blyde River to our ‘to do’ list.

We crawled down the R533 and heaved a quiet sigh of relief when we were low enough to be able to see a decent distance in front. Headed north on the R40 to Acornhoek where we stopped at a shopping mall and stretched our legs and met a very dapper Car Guard … bow tie, shiny shoes and a lovely man. When we got back to Clancy, he was standing close by, talking to a young Austrian woman. She took a photo of us with the guard, his son and his son’s friend.

Then along the R531 to Orpin Gate. The entrance to Manyeleti is on the right, just before the gate. We paid the day fee of R55 per person, got a map of the reserve and drove south to Main Camp. Manyeleti Gate is about 4kms south of Main Camp.

There are several private lodges/tented camps/other accommodation in the Reserve in addition to Main Camp, which offers cabins, rondevals, campsites and Senate, a tented camp area. We parked Clancy on one of the campsites, which is a large area with a cold water sink, braai and paved area. Ablutions nearby were okay and people staying at Senate share those. We paid R250 per campsite per night  – they charge per campsite, not per person. We only paid the day fee for our first day there.

The day we arrived, we went on an afternoon game drive, being very mindful that the camp’s gate closes at 6pm. Saw a huge herd of cape buffalo and wildebeest, antelopes, a couple of elephants. Next day we went out earlier in the afternoon and found a big group of elephants in some scrub. Largest group we’ve seen! There were 4 or 5 babies including one very tiny one, and I guess the rest of the females are pregnant. They weren’t too bothered by us, or rather, by Clancy, and we sat and watched them for ages.

Poor Clancy has had a bit of radiator trouble, a small leak, nothing too serious, but we’ll be bringing a replacement radiator to add to the spare parts collection. Greg bought a bottle of Bars Leaks when we were in Malalane, just out of Marloth Park, so he added  the contents to the radiator …. problem solved. Magic stuff.

We spent our second-last night at Elangeni Holiday Resort, just off the N4 west of Nelspruit, then drove the 250ish kms back to Joburg to the place where we store Clancy and camp when we’re here.

The hole in a radiator fixed with Bars-leak
Camped at Panorama Rest Camp
the horizon pool at Panorama Rest Camp
the horizon pool at Panorama Rest Camp
the horizon pool at Panorama Rest Camp, with full moon rising over it
The Car Guard, us, and his son and a friend at Acornhoek
A large herd of Cape Buffalo at Manyeleti
Levelling Clancy at Manyeleti main camp
Elephants at Manyeleti
The campsite at Manyeleti
More Elephants at Manyeleti
More Elephants at Manyeleti
More Elephants at Manyeleti
More Elephants at Manyeleti
More Elephants at Manyeleti
Cape Buffalo skull at Manyeleti
A vulture?
Camped at Elangeni Holiday Resort

Meeting new friends

Or: A Series of Very Fortunate Events

I’m sure that we will both remember our day with Lilli and Christa as one of the highlights of this trip.

Christa lives in Marloth Park and Lilli has been staying with her for the last week or so, having a break from camping, enjoying some home comforts and making a lifelong friend. We visited them at Christa’s on Thursday morning and spent several hours swapping stories and getting to know more about each other.

Christa’s place is a beautiful bush haven and she has so much wildife on her doorstep, it’s incredible. At this time of the year, before the rains start, getting enough to eat is very hard for herbivores, so she feeds them pellets which are approved by wildlife experts. They smell like grass, and probably have added extra goodies in them too. Many of the animals come right up to Christa’s back verandah and she hand-feeds some of them. The smaller antelopes are shy and hang back, but some of the larger varieties can become very friendly when there’s food involved!

Christa invited us back later in the afternoon to have ‘sundowners’ overlooking Crocodile River and Kruger, then back to her place for a braai. Fantastic, we’d love to! The previous day, they had seen some lions across the river, so we were hopeful that we might see some too. Christa belongs to a local Whatsapp wildlife spotting group that shares information about what is where. No messages that afternoon and we didn’t get to see any lions, but it was lovely to sit with our drinks and snacks and watch the sun go down. On our way back to Christa’s, we saw giraffes, and then so many different animals visited the back verandah, I’m sure I won’t remember them all. At one stage there were 4 different types of antelope there all at once. I even hand-fed a young Nyala buck! He’s the only one in Marloth Park and likes to hang out with the Impala girls. We  saw tiny bushbabies, zebras, a genet (small nocturnal cat that we had never seen before), and warthogs which Christa chases away as they are already fat and don’t need extra feeding. She makes a noise like a leopard and the warthogs run away!

We shared a lovely braai, more stories and left feeling like we now have 2 more like-minded friends. Lucky us!

I left a bag there and we had to go back and collect it the next morning. As we were leaving, Christa had a message from her Whatsapp group, letting people know that there had been a lion kill near the lookout. We had been there the day before, so headed back there to find a large crowd looking across the river at a group of 5 lions lying on some sand in the shade. Earlier in the morning, the lions had killed a kudu right on the fenceline separating Kruger from Marloth Park. The electric fence was wrecked and the dead kudu was lying just on the Kruger side. Because of the cars and people, the lions had gone back across the river, but would return to the kudu later. And then the scavengers would come when the lions had finished.

I am beginning to think that Greg and I are the opposite of lion whisperers – we just don’t have much luck seeing lions. The day after our sundowners with Lilli and Christa, they saw 7 lions!

Lillli’s car “Toyo” a 1988 HJ60 Toyota Landcruiser parked in front of Clancy, a 1987 HJ75 Landcruiser
Christa feeding antelopes from her balcony
Christa, Lilli and Judy
A giraffe at Dusk

A lion kill, with a dead Kudu and a wrecked fence
the lions sleeping off the Kudu kill across Crocodile river
Us having Sundowners with Lilli and Christa

credit:original

Bushbaby
Judy feeding a Nyala at Christa’s

Marloth Park, South Africa

After our first night back in South Africa at the Hippo Waterfront Lodge, we needed to figure out how to spend our final week here. We had this great idea that we’d just go into Kruger National Park for a few days, so we rolled up yesterday afternoon and discovered that all the campgrounds within driving distance were full … most of them up until the 15th! We later discovered that South Africans can visit Kruger for free this week, so our timing was particularly lousy. And yeah, our forward planning skills could be better too, but this is how we roll. (later edit: It turns out that this week it is free for South Africans to stay in Kruger, thus no campsites)
We did think that maybe we could go back to Bots and catch up with Anna and Henry if they were somewhere in southern Bots, but they’re heading to CKGR, so we nixed that idea.
Next thought was to visit Marloth Park, which adjoins Kruger and has a campground, other accommodation and lots of private residences in it. It’s kind of like a private, gated game reserve. We knew our friend Lilli had been, or possibly still is, here somewhere so thought it might be an interesting place to visit, and also maybe meet up with her if she’s still here. We have followed her overlanding travels for a while and nearly got to meet up with her in Namibia on our last trip, but we weren’t close enough to each other for that to happen. 
Almost as soon as we’d driven through the gate, an antelopey-thing zapped across the road in front of us. There is no shortage of wildlife here. We tried to get a campsite but the campground was full. Being mindful that it was getting late in the afternoon and we try very hard not to drive at night, we asked the receptionist if there was anywhere else in the park we could try. She suggested the carpark behind the service station which we looked at and decided against. Then we consulted our beloved iOverlander and found African Bush Backpackers just a few kms away. The person who had added it mentioned that they allowed her to park in their carpark and camp there, so we thought we’d give it a try. Success! Lovely, friendly, helpful owners, Leon and Sarah, who were happy for us to park Clancy, run a power cord from the office and use their facilities. And, for lots of extra bonus points, they know Lilli and she’s still here, staying with a friend not far from here.
Thus ensued many messages via Instagram, organising a time and place to meet up. 11am this morning, can’t wait!
The wildlife just wanders past the Backpackers – so far we’ve seen zebras, a warthog, a bushbaby (much tinier than I imagined) and a couple of different types of antelopey-things. Leon puts hay out at this time of the year as there’s not much to graze on. There were a mama and tiny baby zebra, only 1 or 2 weeks old. The rest of the females are pregnant, they usually deliver their babies in January, so this new little one was a bit of a surprise. 
Pregnant Zebras from the braai area of African bush backpackers
Pregnant Zebras from the braai area of African bush backpackers
Crocodile River bordering Kruger National Park, just down the road from African Bush Backpackers
the border fence Kruger National Park, just down the road from African Bush Backpackers

Kudu just inside Kruger
Camped on the driveway at African Bush Backpackers

Missing Moz already

After 3 nights at Areia Branca Lodge, we started heading south towards Maputo. On our last afternoon, we had a long visit from the Lodge owners’ 7 year old son Eric. He had a lovely time playing with the remote controls for the LED lights in our living area, changing the lights’ colours and making them flash, and arranging all the stuff on our carpet-lined walls. He told us that he’d had malaria and so had his mum, dad and brothers. The next morning he showed me his fish tank which had 2 newly-caught prawns, 4 puffer fish, a sand fish and some other fish.

We spent another night at our favourite Moz ‘resort’, Sunset Beach and yes, I had another crayfish dinner. Then last night we stayed at Esperanca do Mar, a coastal ‘resort’ about 30kms north of Maputo. Our GPS took us down a very sandy track to the back entrance of the place – we missed the sign pointing us down a much better, more direct road but we used it this morning to leave. We were shown to a campsite with a private bathroom, but Clancy couldn’t get past a low-hanging branch, and a longer, alternate route was completely blocked by thorny branches. I told the caretaker that we really just wanted a place to park for the night, cos we’re completely self-sufficient. She agree to let us camp outside a 2-bedroom cabin and use its bathroom for R200 AUD$20, which was a vast improvement on the R520 AUD$52 that she wanted to charge us for the campsite with the private bathroom. That’s a ridiculous price for a campsite! We wouldn’t have paid it, would have gone elsewhere. I’d misinterpreted the pricing, thinking she was quoting in Moz metacais, and there are 4 MZN to the Rand. I should have realised that the pricing in MZN was too cheap, but it just confuses me when prices aren’t quoted in local currency.

We drove through the outskirts of Maputo this morning and headed west to the Moz/SA border at Ressano Garcia/Lebombo. There’s a well-known scam on the Ring Road just out of Maputo – the road isn’t finished yet and there’s a bit of a detour through a few side streets. Local teenage boys try to earn money by ‘showing you the way’, and we had several offers including one on my side who tried to hang on to Clancy for a while. With 2 GPS and a few vehicles in front of us, we didn’t need any help.

The border crossing was fairly smooth, although there was some confusion about the stamp in my entry visa. I think the Immigration officer thought it should have been embossed rather than just stamped, but as we’d come in through a very small border post with no fancy stuff at all, he finally accepted that the stamp was legit and I hadn’t just done it myself. Ha! As if!

Just outside Immigration and Customs on the Moz side, a table was set up with 2 workers offering free malaria testing. We’ll do that, thanks very much. Drop of blood on a slide, mixed with 3 drops of solution, wait a few minutes, read the results. Both negative, thankfully, but we do have antimalarial treatment medication if we need it.

The South African side was fine until we tried to get a TIP Temporary Import Permit for Clancy. We’d read that it can be a bit like extracting teeth, getting one at Lebombo, so we were prepared for a degree of difficulty.

Up until now we have used a Carnet, sort of like a passport for the car, but it expires in November and we have to return it to the AAA Australian Automobile Association. We want to leave Clancy in SA until early next year, so need to switch to using TIPs instead, which allows us to bring Clancy into South Africa for up to 6 months at a time. The first Customs officer wasn’t sure about any of it, so she called her colleague, who informed us that we must use the Carnet, and then go to Pretoria to get it sorted out. Um, no, we’re not doing that. First woman called her supervisor, who was incredibly helpful and understood exactly what we wanted after it was (again) explained. He also took the time to explain it all to the first Customs officer, so hopefully she is now better informed about the process. From then, it was easy, we got our TIP and were on our way.

And hey, we got through a whole country with no flat tyres. Hurrah!

We called into a shopping centre in Nelspruit and went grocery shopping at Checkers. Wow, there was so much choice and so many things and stuff we hadn’t seen in a while. We’re staying just out of Nelspruit tonight at the Hippo Waterfront Lodge. We’ve heard hippos but haven’t seen any.

So, a few thoughts about our time in Moz. When we first arrived, I asked Greg what he wanted to do while we were there. He wanted to spend time at the beach. I wanted to eat seafood and spend time at the beach. I’d say we achieved what we set out to do. Even though Moz is a much poorer country than Angola, we saw far fewer beggars. Having noted that though, both countries have a large percentage of their populations living at subsistence level.

As we were driving south from Pafuri, I really couldn’t work out what the locals ate apart from beef and goat – they weren’t growing any crops. When we got to the coast, we saw a lot of agriculture, mostly small plots being grown for the household’s consumption. Lots of cassava, which we also saw in parts of Angola. Here’s an interesting article about how to prepare it safely to avoid cyanide poisoning. I saw it for sale at the market I visited in Inhambane with Johnny, but didn’t buy any.

There’s a general election next month and the ruling party, Frelimo, has plastered the country with posters, flags and banners. I predict that after the election, the majority of those flags and banners will become shawls, skirts, sarongs and home furnishings. We’ve already seen one woman wearing one as a skirt and another using one as a shawl. You read it here first, folks.

One of my abiding memories of Moz will be the red and white colours of a lot of the shops in towns and villages. 3 brands have used bars, food shops, restaurants, cafes and mobile phone shops to advertise their products. Vodacom, Mac Mahon beer and Coca Cola have all plastered their advertising over buildings everywhere. We drank 2M ‘dos m’ beers a few times and  enjoyed them.

Just one of the many groups of sellers that line the main road in many towns
Crossing the Limpopo River
Toll both before the Limpopo bridge at Xai-Xai

 

Cashew sellers with many bags of cashews for sale
Cashew sellers with many bags of cashews for sale
Bus stopped before the toll at the Limpopo River bridge surrounded by sellers

 

the beach at Sunset at Sunset Beach Lodge
A very hand made fence of branches from African thorn bushes. This fence was about 100m long in total
Locals use these boats to fish out from the coast of Mozambique
Camped at Esperanca do Mar
the beach near Esperanca do Mar Mozambique
Two kids running towards us as soon as they saw us, to hound us into taking their “directions” to get off the half-built ring road around Maputo (for money, we had been warned before). We had two GPS’s with the route, we did not need help.
The still under construction Maputo Ring road (its been about 6 years)

 

Camped at Hippo waterfront

could not see any Hippos but we heard them later

 

Still at the beach

We are now staying at our 4th ‘resort’ in Moz. This one, Areia Branca Lodge, is at Praia da Barra, north east of Inhambane. We got here yesterday and will stay until tomorrow or maybe Sunday. Very nice campsites with individual thatched shelter, outdoor sink with large concrete bench, braai (of course!) and indoor bathroom. Again, we are the only people here, but Sth African school holidays are in a couple of weeks so it will fill up then. 

It’s overcast and raining off and on today … first rainy day we’ve had since we arrived in Joburg 6 weeks ago! We’re now as far north in Moz as we’ll travel on this trip – we’ll head south from here and cross back into Sth Africa next week.

Prior to arriving here yesterday, we spent a couple of nights at Paidane Beach Resort south of Inhambane and were the only ones there. They were having trouble with their water pump, which didn’t really worry us as we travel with plenty of drinking water and other water. They gave us water for flushing the toilet. Very, very sandy campsites, with lots of warnings about lowering tyre pressures. We had a site that overlooked the  beach and Greg got some sunrise photos as he was awake early one morning. There are a couple of different ways to get to Paidane – a shorter, more direct route and a longer but much easier route. You can guess which one we took, but we wouldn’t recommend it … low-hanging branches on trees that had Greg getting out his 20V reciprocating saw, soft sandy track. We lost the track at one point and the locals kept on pointing ‘over there’. One helpful young man actually walked for a km or so to show us how to get to the right track.

Yesterday when we were in Inhambane we met Johnny, a young electrical engineering student. I was walking to a local grocery shop and said ‘hello’ to Johnny and a younger boy Manuel. Greg stayed with Clancy and when I got back, he had a group of 5 or 6 boys and young men around him. Johnny offered to take me to the local market to buy some fruit and vegetables and he told me about his studies, his favourite food (Matapa – cassava flowers or leaves boiled with peanuts, coconut milk, seafood), where to find stuff at the market and general chat. He had been very interested in how Greg built Clancy and we told him that once he had his engineering degree, he could get work in Australia.

a town on the way that we found a vegetable market in to get some supplies
Cutting low tree branches with the reciprocating saw to clear the way through down the “short-cut”
On the “short-cut”, a tiny track between villages mostly used by people walking
Camped at Paindane. We got there close to dark because of the problems with the “short-cut”
Dawn over Paindane
Looking up from the beach to our campsite at Paindane
the beach at Paindane

 

We suddenly came upon a very low electricity cable strung across the road. Judy guided me past it and everyone else in town came out to look
the commercial/industrial outskirts of Inhambane

 

The northern end of Inhambane
Mozambique is covered with election posters for the October election. Most of the posters are for Frelimo the ruling party since independence
main street of Inhambane
camped at Areia Branca Lodge
a Dhow boat of the coast
the clouds come over and the rain starts at Areia Branca Lodge

 

 

 

At the beach

We’ve spent the last few days at a couple of ‘resorts’ on the coast a couple of hundred kms from Maputo, the capital of Mozambiqe. The first one, Montego Resort at Xai Xai, was … okay and a very welcome break after the long dusty drive down from Pafuri border. The campsites were all deep sand up a steep hill, with power but no water. Washing up sinks and taps were located a fair way up the hill, and there was one tap the gardener used down the hill. The shared ablutions were fine, the beach across the track was okay at low tide and we had a nice meal at the restaurant.

We paid $40 per night which seemed on the expensive side, but then, on our last trip we paid USD$100/night for a site at Third Bridge campground in Botswana. A week or so ago, we paid AUD$70 to camp at Kubu Island in Bots. Our free wild camps help to dollar-cost average it all.

Now we’re just a bit further up the coast at the Sunset Beach Resort at Chidenguele and it’s lovely. I do laugh at the choice of name, though. The sun will never, ever set on this beach! Our campsite is grassy sand and each site is powered, has its own shelter that has a washing up sink with hot and cold water, and a bathroom with a really good shower (plus toilet and handbasin). There’s a lovely pool, the beach is good and the restaurant is excellent. We ate there last night – Greg had ‘line caught fish’, I had grilled crayfish. The fish was less than $10, the crayfish was $17 and our site is $20/night. We’ve already extended our stay here by an extra night. Might be hard to leave! 

We’re planning on going to Inhambane, which is about 200kms further north along the coast, and that’s as far north as we’ll go on this trip. Then we’ll head south to the border at Komatipoort and re-enter South Africa. We have to be back in Joburg in a couple of weeks.

Judy’s crayfish dinner at Sunset Beach resort
afterwards – not much left!
Abandoned homes along the coast near Xai Xai. Probably beach houses that date from Portuguese times
Locals out fishing on the rock reef at low tide
Locals bringing their catch back in as tide comes in
Our campsite at Sunet Beach Resort
The “horizon pool” at Sunset Beach Resort
Doing more repairs/maintenance to Clancy
The journey from Botswana through Mozambique so far