My eyes widen as my jaw slowly drops. I am staring to one of the most beautiful creatures I have ever seen in my entire life. For a moment, he looks right at me, before he turns his head and looks away. He yawns slowly and I can see his big teeth. His long mane waves when he shakes his beautiful head.
I am eye to eye with a full-grown white male lion. Not a ‘normal’ lion, but a white lion. A different species and very rare. I smile and almost forget where I really am.
Near Pretoria is Lion Park. It is very commercial and we don’t really get the aim of the park. Are they breeding animals for release? It does not look like it. On the website they have a list of movies their lions appeared in. We forget the conservationists in us for a while and just walk around. In a small fenced enclosure we see wild dogs, cheetahs, brown hyena cubs (too cute), striped hyena, giraffe and, yes, lions cubs. The cubs are surrounded by a lot of people and every 5 minutes 10 people are allowed in the cage to touch the cubs.
On one side I’d love to pet a lion cub, on the other hand I feel sorry for the babies. But I do it anyway, because, well, when do you ever have a chance like this? One is very interested in Tinus’ flip-flop (slipper) and starts chewing on it. We are on the ground playing with the cubs when the ‘trainer’ warns us not to get too close, they are wild animals…Tinus takes his hand out of the mouth of the baby lion and we look around. Hmm, the ‘wild’ is far away from here, but we leave the cubs and move on.
We make friends with the giraffes. One is very interested in Tinus. I’m not sure if it is a boy or girl, you never know with giraffes, since they have a lot of gay-stuff going on there. If you like some more information on this, read an earlier weblog ;)
The Lion Park has also 4 lion camps and we drive around. Besides the beautiful male white lion, we see a lot of lions, male, female, cubs – both white and yellow - and we make a lot of pictures. And I have to admit I absolutely love to see them this close. I would almost just walk out of the car to sit next to them and just observe them. But looking at the size of their paws I reconsider…
Big Bertha Back in Business
We let the Lion Park to be for what it is and head for Nelspruit. We have been there before in 2005 and took the same route then, but by bus. We don’t recognize anything, but the road is fine and Bertha has no problem going up hill anymore. What a relief! We drive the 450 km that day without any problem!
She is doing better than ever before and driving like a smooth mean machine!
Massive thanks to Saurus who has spent a couple of days working and swearing on the mean machine to solve the original problem and fixed some other stuff as well. When we got Bertha back, we hardly recognized her. After doing the best we could to make her dirty in the desert of Namibia, she is clean and shiny again and ready to go!
Besides that, he and Cecily showed us a great time in Pretoria (not such a bad town after all). Sorry we lost your snake in the sofa and you had to rip it open for the rescue ;)
Thanks for everything!!! Hope to see you guys at Rock Werchter next year :D
Swaziland
Now we had the spirit back and continued to Swaziland. Why not? It’s not a big detour on the way to Mozambique and it’s supposed to be a scenic route... And scenic it was.
The road meanders through the mountains and some parts were quite steep. Not for a ‘normal’ car, but Bertha was climbing like a fully loaded truck. Very slow. Going up the first steep hill, Tinus had the common sense to remember Bertha has Low Gear as well. We hadn’t really needed this before, but what a difference in the mountains! Nothing can beat us now! And the trip was beautiful.
We stopped at a petrol station to get some cold drinks, when a guy warned us that the next toll-station was for pre-paid cards only. We could get one at the ATM-machine. At first, this seemed plausible. But when the guy was becoming a little bit too helpful and three others appeared around us, we told them to go ‘help’ somebody else. He would probably have tried to switch the cards, since he was already holding one and told Tinus to look up all the time (which he did not). Very strange. But luckily no harm done.
We drove to Mlilwane Game Reserve. Swaziland is a Kingdom and this used to be the royal hunting grounds. A very blessed King as well, since he has the obligation to choose a woman from every tribe to keep harmony in his kingdom ;)
The nature, green, forest like and hilly, is beautiful, but the few impala and blesbok we see, don’t convince us to stay another day. The setting is very nice though. At dinner (we hardly ever cook ourselves, yep, we have a hard life) we were surrounded by Germans, Dutch and Belgian tourists. It is amazing that wherever you are, you will always find them…
The next day we thought we would take it easy, stay another day in Swaziland before continuing to Mozambique. But when we drive past our chosen location of the day at about 1pm, it looks like a waste of time not to continue. Bertha is doing fine, we are doing fine, so we continue.
Mozambique
After all horror stories on Mozambique and the border crossing, we are extra careful. And as always when you expect the worst, it’s not that bad after all. We crossed the border without any problems and now we are in Mozambique! The only country on our route where English is not the main language. But Portuguese. And that’s not the same as Spanish ;)
Mozambique gives us the feeling we´re getting closer to Malawi. The women along the road are dressed in a similar way, the food stalls with plenty of tomatoes and fruit and the road is getting worse. And it’s hot in Mozambique, hot and humid!
Mozambique is also the first place we see a 109! And another one, and another one! This is 109 heaven. And a lot of 110´s as well, this is Landrover heaven. Bertha is happy to see so many new friends and shakes her big African bottom like a proud big Mama!
The route is beautiful. Palm trees on every inch. Blue skies. But where is the Indian Ocean? We drive through Maputo. A crazy chaotic town and we are happy we decided not to stay here. We continue another 50 km and stay at a campsite called ‘Casa Lisa’. Nothing special, but okay for a night.
We go to bed early and wake up, feeling refreshed, awake and ready to go. It’s not light yet, but the nearly full moon gives a bright light. We check the time…and it is 0.05 am, midnight!?! Since it would be foolish to continue and drive in the middle of the night, although we would have made it to Tofo for breakfast, we fall asleep again.
The next day, surprise, we wake up early. Today we are going to reach the Indian Ocean. Goal number 4 of our journey!!! What the other ones are?
1 – Getting out of Malawi (check)
2 – Reaching the Atlantic Ocean in Namibia (check)
3 – Reaching the Sossus Vlei in Namibia (check)
4 – Reaching the Indian Ocean in Mozambique
5 – Making it back to Majete
Happy Days. Sun, Palm Trees, Good Road (good enough), Bertha started in two tries. All is well! We only had another 460 km ahead of us before we would reach Tofo paradise.
Lalala, on the road again. Mp3-player with the splitter connects our two head phones. Good music. No problemo!
We reach Tofo in the afternoon. We settle in at the Turtle Cove. Which takes about 1 second with Bertha. That’s absolute bliss. You just park her and done. You don’t have to put up a tent or anything. You’re just done! So within no time we find ourselves running of the dunes towards the beach of…the Indian Ocean! We made it, she made it! We’re standing barefoot in the waves, feeling very proud. Tinus runs into the rough ocean, I run with him, but abruptly stop and run the other way when I see hundreds of creepy crawlers (crab fish) walking around the beach. No dear, you go, I’ll make pictures ;) Yep, that’s me, the hero. No problem with anything that lives only on the land, but I have an instinctive fear of the ocean and everything that lives in it. There’s just, well, so much water ;) and I’m not a good swimmer.
We have a beautiful dinner of fresh grilled Barracuda and the biggest prawns I have ever seen, before going to sleep with the sounds of the ocean on the background.
We wake up in the middle of the night. It is unbelievable hot in the car (from driving all day) and there’s no breeze to cool it down. On top of that, there are one or more mosquitoes in the car that drive me absolutely crazy at that hour of the night. I try to wake up Tinus to share in my misery, but he turns around mumbling something about Dolly Parton (?). I try to wake him up again, stating: If you don’t wake up now, you must be low on sugar! This does the trick and Tinus shoots up like a meerkat ;) Yep, I’m terrible. I get out of the car to think of different scenarios which can make sense to solve my enormous problems in the middle of the night. One: pitch the tent to have cooler place to sleep – status: declined by Tinus. Two: go mosquito hunting – status: declined as well. Three: get the mosquito net and sleep with the doors open – status: approved. And after fixing a huge net in a small car I finally go back to sleep.
Moving on…The next morning we decide to find another accommodation. Turtle Cove is too far from the ocean to our liking and the hot water is broken, so we move on. We enquire here and there at some cottages on the beach. For € 50 per night it’s ours. Okay, where can we find the ATM? 25 km of potholes back, in Inhambane… *sigh*. We continue to Fatima’s backpackers. Right on the beach and camping for € 3 per night. Ah, that sounds better! We pitch the tent and run to the ocean, again.
This time I overcame my fear (only after I decided that it would be okay to wear my red sneakers in the water and the promise of Tinus to rescue me when necessary). The water was tempting blue, as well as the sky. The sun was hot and the beach was totally ours. Funny thing, even for one of the most touristic places of Mozambique, there’s hardly anybody here!
So here I am, writing my blog overlooking the Indian Ocean. Now and then I see a sort of fountain in the distance. The proof of humpback whales playing in the water. There should be dolphins here as well, and the beautiful whale shark.
We made a reservation for the snorkeling boat trip today, but since this morning the weather was grey and the wind quite strong (although it’s still hot), we rescheduled for tomorrow.
I almost feel guilty towards you guys, sitting here and enjoying life as it comes ;p. But just think that the ocean is always bluer on the other side (true for the Indian – Atlantic comparison). We’re slowly regenerating from our hard work the last couple of years and are actually looking forward to coming back to Holland for a while. We´re making a lot of plans. We will continue Gift4Gift of course, but also set up a lot of other stuff. And of course we are really looking forward to see all of you again!!!
We will chill here in Mozambique for another two weeks or so before we go back to Majete. There we will also stay some weeks to check on the G4G projects, before we will be back in Holland in November.
Lots of Love,
Amy, Tinus and Bertha
PS For all of you who are wondering if we drowned our camera…nope…it’s a nifty plastic bag specially designed for a small camera to play with in and under water ;)
PPS Distance covered so far: 9100 km!!! – Distance to cover back to Majete: app. 1400 km
PPPS Just now in the bank in Imhabane a guard (one of many on the streets and in buildings) taps me on the shoulder and mumbles something I don’t understand. Impatiently he repeats it a little bit louder 3 times until I get the message. Take of your cap. Ah! Maybe it was not a very good idea indeed to walk into a bank with an army skirt and an army cap…lesson learned!
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