OK, hitting the road, looking forward to the trip! It 10:00pm and ETA Hazyview is 20:00 tomorrow night…
There will be a blog blackout until I find some internet up there, so sing amongst yourselves.
Hopefully I’ll get some nice road-trip pictures to post on the way, not ones of me changing tyres.
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We are planning a family trip up to the Kruger Park next month. This is when the bulk of the tourism has slowed down and things are a bit more relaxed for us and the animals. Like us, I am sure they are not keen on bumper to bumper traffic in their back garden. The end of summer is traditionally a good time to view animals as the vegetation is at its thinnest, but seeing the unusual amount of rain we’ve been getting this summer, I am not so sure.
We are staying at the Kruger Park Lodge in Hazy View …
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After much deep and profound brain things inside my head. I relented and bought 2 “new” cars for myself and Sarah. I was very close to buying another camper van, “because they are so practical” I tell myself, but they tend to need a lot of maintenance and are very expensive for a decent one.
So we got 2 mid 90’s Merc’s a 220e and a 230e from a car #!cough#$spit*#hack! dealer. I have been told by many practical and sensible people that these are the cars to buy. That they do not go wrong, ever and that all the mechanics …
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Beautiful, vivid, but elusive comet Mcnaught could hide no longer this evening. A massive audience had gathered all over Cape Town (and probably the sub-equatorial continent) to view the little pest that has been hiding behind clouds all week. It’s long tail seems to go on and on for what we call in astrophysics, a very long way.
In fact the bright head, a cloud of dust is more than 100,000 kilometres across wrapped around a dirty iceblock a few kilometres across.The comet’s tail has been estimated at 15 million kilometres long.
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Well its very nice to back. Although it is not nearly as hot here as in Mozambique, the humidity was getting painful and although the caipirinhas help, two weeks is not enough for the blood to start thinning. The trip back was fairly straightforward. We drove from Maputo to the border at Komatiepoort and then on to Jo-burg on very good roads. I was dreading the border a little because I had seen the queues on our way in, but it was not a problem and we were through in under an hour.
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On Saturday morning we were up at 05:30am (did you know it is still dark then) to go fishing up the West Coast. Famed for its bounty of sea life which we were intending on decimating, the West Coast is dry, sandy and wide open. As with most places of this nature the more inhospitable the land, the more welcoming the people.
The first and second people we met in the sleepy town of Laaiplek, were both Police officers who paid no attention to the beers in our hand, but were far more worried that the tide was not yet right and that our hooks were too big for the “Harders”. Harders are a West Coast delicacy, they are strung up, salted and dried in the wind, at which time they become “Bokkoms” or fish Biltong. You can see them hanging in bunches in most places along the West Coast “Weskus”
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(The Crystal pools are a beautiful place to visit and relax, please do not let my experience, (or the smell of the rangers) put you off visiting and enjoying them. With a permit!)
It has been such a long time since I visited the Crystal Pools in Gordon’s Bay that I had forgotten the inane fact of needing a permit to enter. Bad idea! There are a number of the usual signs and one of them (which no-one sees) mentions the permit.
Gordon’s Bay is about an hours drive from Cape Town, along the N2 highway, you can either turn off at Strand or carry on to the GB turn-off. Once there, keep going along the coast road until you come to a bridge which spans the river mouth. This is where to park your car AND BUY A PERMIT AT THE GUEST HOUSE.
Sarah is by no means the most adventurous of sorts and I had explained to her not to bring anything heavy due to the walk up to the pools. I had distinctly remembered the rock pools as being about a 15 minute walk up the ravine…. Apparently they have now been moved and are now actually closer to 40 Minutes, or an hour with flip-flops and a 6 year old. Add to this 35 degree heat and me being a bit of a slave master, we have a very unhappy wife. Talulah was loving it, bounding up the rocks like a little goat, but we were all getting very hot and (me carrying al the bags!) were looking forward to the cool mountain water that awaited us……BUT NO.
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Today and yesterday have been the first solemnly HOT days this summer. The tarmac gets tacky and anyone without AC looks like a rotisserie chicken, getting redder and sweatier until I think they PoP, further down the road .
I have decided that I need to get some decent vehicles if we are to survive this summer. So I spent today and yesterday trying to find some cars.
Cars are disgustingly expensive in South Africa due to shortsighted and communist restrictions on imports. Incredibly cheap and fantastic cars are being shipped into Durban harbor and sold to Mozambiquans, Angolans amongst others. It is illegal for South Africans to import Second hand cars so we are forced to “feed the hand that bites us” to phrase a coin.
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We did not eat out that much while in Mozambique, mainly because the people we were staying with had a chef, who made the most incredible food every day, so I will sum up the best in one review.
Since we were with locals we were not allowed to make any mistakes with the restaurants we chose, so these recommendations should be pretty spot on.
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This whole weekend has been crazy on the road we are staying on. It is the beach road from Maputo to Costa do Sol and is THE hangout for every man woman and child it seems. The Friday night was moderately busy, with perhaps a few thousand revellers, singing, drinking and cooking chicken. Saturday seemed very busy with closer to 15000 people, all having fun, swimming, drinking and grilling piri-piri chicken. But Sunday night was the shocker.
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