Day 15 - White River - Maputo - Macaneta (258 km)

We were on the road by 05:15 it seems. Two hours earlier I had been scoffing a cold punnet of sloppy peri-peri macaroni dowsed in mayo. Good for the gut after the heavy night. I was very glad Christiaan was behind the wheel of the monster truck and not I, I must sheepishly admit. Quite an uneventful drive brought us to the border, or should I say the petrol station in Komatipoort just 100km from White River. Here we topped up the petrol tanks yet again in order to save on the fuel costs in Moz. As Chris attended to the fuel I attended to another matter: Mozimbican Meticas. The previous day we wandered into the largest Standard Bank in Nelspruit in order to check on the exchange rates and maybe pick up a few bob. 4.2:1 was the rate they offered. But they were all sold out, unbelievably, of the currency of a popular touristic destination 100km away. So, naturally the only alternative was to look about for opportunistic Bureau de Change tellers in the Shell forecourt. I approached the traffic barrier whereupon sat a line of hefty, disinterested and out of place looking big mommas. Only one made her way toward me, the rest didn't bat an eyelid - it seems they've a taxi-rank type system going here, very civilised. Anyway, R2000 later I was far richer in Meticas, drawn expertly from the ATM that seemed to be tucked well inside Big Momma's cleavage. And at 4.5:1 a far better deal than the swindling bankers could offer us.


05:15 - Pulling onto the main road outside White River RFC, the essential rack of cling peaches stuck to the dash.

Ten minutes later we were at the border post, and swiftly through the SA side of things. Again, no issues with siblings Christiaan and Adriaan Smuts rolling through the rigourous passport identification procedure. Things were already far more exciting and African, now, even though we were still stuck in No Man's Land by the Mozambican side. Immediately after we pull up we're hounded by hip young lads with good English asking if they can "help" us, for a nominal fee. All well and good and tempting, except we'd already sorted out a quasi-legal "fixer" to aid us through the otherwise excruciating border process. Ivan, a confident though not too cocky debonaire young man, diamond earring, sharp kicks, recommended by Mr Smuts, was certainly up to the job. The mandatory and quite pricey foreign vehicle 3rd party insurance was purchased (a very clever scheme I think, if it is actually implemented) from a reputable agent. Following this we handed our passports over to our fixer, with R50 stuck inside them. Off he sprinted, into the back door of the passport office, returning less than 4 or 5 minutes later, passports stamped. We gave him R100 for his troubles and drove through the border boom without a sideways glance from the military man at his post. In the entire process no official had seen our faces or any document in our possession. At last, corruption working for me, the little man! As we pulled away, an English couple in a Rentacar we lent a pen to earlier were still in their position in the seemingly stationary passport queue, while our friend and his peers dashed in and out of the back door all morning...


Wonky plate #1: Team Baizan!

Immediately we were in a different country. What was recently the ups and downs and forests and pastures of the Highveld/Lowveld was now some sort of sprawling flat green land as far as the eye could see. No jungle or even trees or grassy fields. Just green and flat. Not a house or a cow to be seen. I can only assume the land was fierce boggy or sandy, but in any case unirrigable. Weird really, having come from a very fertile and developed province only an hour ago. It's the EN1 that runs from Joburg to Maputo (N4 on the SA side) and is indeed the finest of roads. A lot of foreign cash has gone into this road lately as SA are very dependant on this "Maputo corridor", the Port of Maputo being the nearest large shipping port to Joburg/Gauteng, with plenty of room for development unlike the Durban route and port.
These were the glorious Port Engineering thoughts running through my pounding head as we rolled into the busy outskirts of Maputo at the same time as every other rush hour commuter with a car. Here I first began to notice the Mozambicans' sheer disregard for the country's standardised number plate format. Akin to the Cowboys back home, the more twisted your number plate, the hotter the street-cred. In addition, any taxi driver (remember "taxi" in Africa means an off-white Toyota HiAce with 800,000km on the clock) worth his salt had a personalised windscreen sticker boasting some nonsensical english slogan or another. And the creme-de-la-creme of taxis, and quite often the small old Merc buses boasted their uber-chic status by cable-tying an old wooden squash raquet or tennis raquet diagonally across their front grills. Classy.

(A free can of 2M beer to the first person to figure out the font used on the plate on HiAce #1.)


Scoop wrong!

By 09:00 we were seated at a breakfast table on the verandah of the infamous Costa do Sol "restaurant" on the golden waterfront of Maputo's Riviera. I knew I was in love with the place even as I dragged my wearied and hungover legs up the chequered steps in the already baking sun. The place screamed of kitsch 1950s/1960s colonialism and still maintained a quaint though tired charm that only stood the test of time thanks to some fairly determined Portuguese holidaymakers and architects back in the good old days. The curves of the banisters, the excessive columns, the marble floors and handrails, the colonial verandah and pastel green/white mosaic floor! How wonderful it must have been! I'd say there wasn't a better coffee or cocktail served in 1961 this side of Cuba.

Strange, this flood of purely imagined nostalgia.


The Costa do Sol - not retro, just real.

After several coffees and some sort of breakfast we took a bit of a drive around Maputo just for a sconce. An absolutely fascinating looking city. Still a few and new well-to-do villas down by the waterfront and the exclusive Clube Maritimo and Clube Naval, not to mention the opulent President's Residence (all on Avenida da Marginale). Continuing down Av 10 Nov & Av 25 Sep there's a pretty bizarre and mazzive statue at Praca dos Trabadores, along with some beautiful old (and preserved/renovated) buildings with typical colonial facades. I wish I had a better architectural vocabulary to aptly describe the features, periods and styles of said buildings. In any case they were lovely, just lovely.

The same can't be said for the other remnants of Portuguese civilisation around the city centre. Old townhouses with solid walls now had tin roofs, broken windows three families within and 16 chickens and dogs without. High rise apartment complexes that were the epitome of 70s funk are now shot to shit, filthy and have old bedsheets and babies hanging out the windows to dry. You see the occasional half building, which, despite still standing its original 15-odd floors is missing an entire face. You can still make out wardrobes, bathrooms, bedrooms and old plumbing poking out of the sky. Weird. There was no shortage of fancy cars driving the streets it must be said, though poverty is rife. And no sense of "High Street Shops" either. I saw a swish Nike store at one stage, all glitz, with run down pissy-doored burnt-walled shopfronts flanking it on either side. No other recognisible brand for two more blocks, then maybe a fancy clothes boutique or something.

After this merry bout of civil war sightseeing we belted back to Costa do Sol for a fine feed of calamari and a few hair of the dog beers. I've never tasted any sort of seafood quite like the grilled (not battered) lulas and put it down to only ever having eating frozen or inferior calamari in the past. The things were massive too. It was a welcome intro to a country renowned for its fresh fishes and it's distinct lack of freezers.

In a while we got going again, back on the EN1 heading north. The first 10-20km out of town were horrendous, with between 4 and 6 lanes of traffic occupying 2 official lanes of road at any one time. And most of us seemed stationary, except for the psychotic taxi drivers who cut and weaved through ditches, rubbish heaps, footpaths, front yards, forecourts, workshops and oncoming traffic to make up the odd second here and there. I don't know who they were fooling. It was a joy to watch though, and not too terrifying as the speeds involved were low enough. Just complete madness that took years off the vehicles I previously believed to be indestructible.


Good work lads. By the looks of things unemployment is fairly rife, though not many seem to mind.

The road began flowing again after about an hour or so though. Soon enough we were at our turnoff just outside Marracuene on a fierce dangerous bend in the road. Our trusty GPS told us to pull clean across the road and down a blocked off bumpy old lane so we did just that. A town popped out of nowhere and we drove in and around it for a while on what we assumed were (or once were) its streets. As ramshackle as this little village was you never did see a prettier town square, gardens or town hall. About the only respectable sights about. Again I was rushed by a wave of the how it must have beens. Somehow or another we found the tiny little mud road that leads to the concrete slipway that receives the small ro-ro ferry servicing the island. The island being not an island but a fairly inaccessible delta leading to the Indian ocean. Though connected to land elsewhere I don't see how the hell you'd get onto it.

We'd a bit of a wait for the ro-ro so I crawled into our freezer for a few Black Labels. As soon as the tabs were popped - the glorious hiss of the icy tin - the Cruiser was surrounded by an assortment of young men trying to sell us a manner of things and to tell us a wealth of tales. All with the goal of getting a sip or two, naturally. We eventually did purchase some Tipo Tinto, but more of that later. Eventually the barge steamed up and flung itself against the estuary bank, slowed by the reeds and stopped by the thud of the concrete. Cruiser was second on board, by far the longest vehicle and vying with a fancy (Indian?) tractor for weight. Twas a fairly tight squeeze in the end and the extreme listing of our vessel crossing the sound was none too comforting.
(Remember to click photos to enlarge).

Vroom! Cruiser shapes up against a Swaraj tractor - the pride of the island.


Next in line for the ro-ro. The closest building on either side of the water is, naturally, a bar. A lifesaver, as you can't go an hour in this heat without a beer.


All aboard! Cruiser climbs on without the assistance of some fairly buckled looking ramps. Check that clearance.


A tight squeeze - she's listing to port even before the Swarage potters on board. Luckily I'm the closest soul to the only lifevest on board, which appears to be impossibly strapped to the railing for some reason or another. The currents sweeping between the two landing points wouldn't be worth fighting. You'd be swept out to Madagascar in the blink of a hat.

A quick trip across. We met with the woman whose lodge/campsite we'd be staying in - a complete hard nut from Christiaan's part of the world. A family friend, if I have it right. All roads from hereon in were sand, pure sand and she completely floored it, us following. The going was very heavy and we barely made it, huge revs running. We were still running on quite a high tyre pressure having just come off the tarmac, and only 2WD to boot. Her campsite was well off the beaten track, about 5+km down sandy lanes and well away from any other lodge. It was before dusk when we began setting up though it fell fairly lively. We finished setting up our bivouac in the dark and by God were the mozzies biting! I've never felt any irritation like it. The hoors stang like hardy horseflies only there was an eternal supply of them. We made sure to braai within a fortress of slow burning mosquito coils. The braai? The fattest lamb chops of the finest cut I've ever had. Must've been 3cm thick each. I'll be a long time dead and buried before I forget those choppies. A couple of beers, barely, each, and we were out for the count. I think I was tucked in by 21h00. What a day!


Base camp at Macaneta. Rough lodgings.










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PS, if anybody is a fan of Gary Larson and The Far Side comics, they'll recognise this chap as being the generic Joe Soap type character that always seems to fall foul of woman problems, alien abductions and hilarious pranks performed by his pet or farm animals. It's him - the hair, chin, glasses, gut and clothes - to be sure.

Day 14 - Still in Whiteriver

Goodness it was great to jump up out of bed without a hint of fatigue, tinnitus or babalas. Not much to do today either - only the finishing touches before heading into Mozambique the next morn. First things first: time to stock up on some grub for the trip. Immediately we began to fill the designated ammo boxes with whatever we could pilfer from the Smuts family's larder - old tins of beans, cereals, UHT milk, pasta etc etc. Typically all the tins and preserves and nothing fresh as the gaff had been empty for a fortnight already. A quick spin to the metropolis of Nelspruit then to round off the "dressings" to our meals: some spuds, mealies, eggs, rashers, rusks, jammy dodgers, more beans, butter, and to be honest little else. It goes without saying that our food pyramid was somewhat inverted in its nature, with red meat due to occupy 80% of our (solid) diet over the coming days. Keeping in line with the diet of the previous week of course. What else are two large red blooded males to do in such a scenario? The meat we picked up in a popular butchers appended to a petrol station a bit out of Whiteriver. The butcher/petrol combo is quite the popular setup here it seems. A double helping of thick boerewors, lamb choppies, rump steaks, prego steaks and sosaties (meat-only kebab skewers) would have to see us through the coming week or so. Unfortunately butcher Mario's famed droewors wasn't quite dry enough yet so that was a bit of a let down.


Yep, 227L of petrol in one shot. I didn't think pumps went that high.

While at the butchers we killed a second bird with that stone and took the opportunity to fill our tanks to the brim, as petrol is a bit costlier over the border. Many moons later and around R2000 poorer we hauled the girl and her 4 petrol tanks out of the forecourt and back into town. We still had 2 crucial items on the checklist: malaria area pills and liquor. Thankfully Chris has a good family friend in the apothecary game so our "doctor's prescription" for the high strength doxycycline pills was not strictly necessary. Regarding side effects we were given a stern warning to 1) stay out of the sun as we'd burn very easily and 2) take just before going to bed after a very large meal. The third, as with all medicines, was to avoid alcohol consumption. Done done and done. Finally our very large liquor cabinet had to be stocked for fear of keeping the plastic glasses without company. A fine stockade of Black Label cans was acquired along with what was at the time assumed to be sufficient quantities of brandy and whiskey, and some Cape to Rio cane for those sundowner moments and post braai digestifs. Mixers, too, were sourced, but in scant quantities as the 2L bottles took up too much room. We'd have to man up a bit on the watering down.

So shopping done, bar stocked, meat into freezers and tinned beans into plastic boxes - we were practically set to go. Oil, batteries and petrol - check. High viz vest and 2 triangles (the law in Moz) - check. Bog roll (or White Gold as CCS puts it) - check. Hell, we could roll away right now and it only lunchtime! But no, a plan is a plan and no point in rushing into things. Worse, that'd mean arriving into Maputo at some ungodly hour - unwise methinks. So, as a timefiller we decided to give Betty that little service we'd promised her some days back. That included a change of oil filter and a renewal of brake pads. We both knew that the brake pads were a bridge too far at this late hour but the oil & filter were certainly doable before the early tropical dusk fell. Chris produced some front-wheel stands from his garage that he regularly raised his 4x4s with and plonked them on the driveway. The damn things were about twice the height of the front bumper/floor clearance. And Betty's bumper was already questionably low. I had tried to figure out before how it was held on; if you tipped it with your fingertip it would oscillate for minutes and seem to hover effortlessly in front of the car. No obvious clip or bolt points and no questions asked. How the bumper was so loose yet so steadfast I'll never know.

Anyway, as I'm sure the dear readers have guessed by now, all that was about to change. On the first shot up the steel ramps the momentum wasn't quite great enough and the clutch (getting slippier by the day) was a bit too weak to drag the wheels to the top. Predictably the girl rolled back down the steep 30 or 40cm high ramps but decided to leave the bumper at the top. Oh dear. Well, another job on the list. The second time she pulled up the ramps no bother- sans bumper.


1980's Standard edition Betty Bantam....


...vs. 1950's Hot-Rod edition Betty Bantam. Vrooom!

In hindsight the bumper mishap turned out to be quite beneficial. It was much easier get under and change the filter, but it also gave me an opportunity to fix her gammy headlights. And a proper grill inspection revealed the cooling system was in ship shape. Most importantly though it forced me to fix the bumper in place for once and for all - something I should have done years ago. After scratching around the garage we finally found some matching 6mm cheapy galvanised nuts and bolts and a cordless drill. Twenty minutes later and even more skinned knuckles hey presto! brand new bumper. And also cable tied some old dings to prevent some impending crack propagation.


Seamless bumper repair


More seamless bumper repair

And job done just before dark. A quick freshening up and we forged our way back to the bright lights of Nelspruit for good grub - Half Price sushi. We really tucked into the stuff and amassed quite a number of empty plates. Not understanding the limitations of the offer we accidentally overate our way into quite a hefty bill. However it was entirely unintentional, bizarrely, and we got off the hook. We legged it out of there for fear they'd change their minds and went to a wee gathering of friends Chris knew from more youthful days. Arriving early we of course intended on leaving early with the aim of arising early the next day to beat the border rush.


Midway through a "quick" stopoff at a friends house to say hello. It was here I saw a large country man in some few dozen minutes sail his way through 12 cans of Amstel without respite, ill effect or delay. Fascinating and exemplary.

One thing led to another, as they always seem to do when you least expect or deserve it, and we crawled out of there about seven hours later, a heavy knock taken out of our Black Label and cane reserves we so delicately and caressingly packed earlier that day. Bah!

Still, a good night was had by all and we had a healthy 2hr sleep to look forward to before arising and finally making our way toward Africa proper!


Carboloading at 03:12 before hitting the hay. Good tack, whatever it was!

Day 13 - Whiteriver - Belfast - Return - (300km)

Twas nice to "lie in" for once though we were still up relatively early. This was an exciting day for me as I was going to hop into and soup-up a Toyota LandCruiser for a trip into real Africa. Unfortunately Betty would have to be hauled up into the dry for the next few days, but God knows the girl needed a rest. I'm sure the previous day's 570 odd km was a PB for her.


The two girls side by side. Spot the difference? (hint: Betty is on the right).

Now the Cruiser bakkie was certainly a very capable thing, renowned for its feats of strength, endurance and reliability. Though not strictly comfort. Adriaan Smuts Snr, a keen camper and adventurer was well aware of this, so got a custom built canopy made up in order to house all the little luxuries of life a middle aged man may expect to follow him around wherever he may roam on holidays. The canopy however was on the family farm near Belfast, a cool 150km away.


The beautiful Smuts beef farm between Belfast and Dullstroom. Altitude 2000m.

So off to the farm we went - a beautiful holding right at the top of the Highveld - and promptly began to assemble the canopy above the bakkie's bed. A tricky operation. The thing was hung inside an old tractor shed, suspended from some sort of block and tackle device, and had to be lowered in a vertical manner onto the 4 corner posts of the bakkie bed - milimetre perfect. The trickiest part was reversing the vehicle under the frame into the exact location. She was hard up against the wall and even the slightest scratch was not an option. Anyway, much cursing, broken nails, trapped and bloody fingers and tyre marks later we got it mounted. With a 75L water tank and 2 x 75L petrol tanks inside. Oh and an enormous battery pack that weighed half a ton.


Canopy on - finally. Only 3 knuckles left unskinned after the operation.

After a quick drive around the farmlands and handrolling the heavy old Massey back into the shed we got back on track to Whiteriver. We were in the mood for work and loving it so we powered on through lunch and kept on going with the packing. Next into her was the most essential and valuable item in our possession: two Engel 40L freezers. These freezers, which would reliably keep our rumpsteaks and G&T ice at a steady -18C for the next week, were an absolute godsend and a miracle of engineering. And I didn't even know such a thing existed. Talk about posh! After filling the water tank and stocking the kitchenette (the rear left hand panel, above) with plastic cutlery and crockery, steak knives, a tin opener, red wine glasses and champagne flutes we began filling the aluminium racks inside with ammo boxes full of essentials. One full of 4x4 tools and spares, one full of clothes each, one of snorkelling gear and around 6 others which we'd fill with food and drink the next day. By dusk we were done with all the hardware aspects of the packing, leaving only the consumables for the next day. We had surely earned our bit of supper out in that heat so upon nightfall we lit up the braai and seared some dandy sirloins that were lying in the fridge. The one or two Windhoeks that accompanied the steaks more or less evaporated once they hit the tongue. There's really no other pleasure in the world like it.
After some digestion, and a little hesitation, we went down to the Mango Lounge in town. Perhaps one of White River's two to four pubs, and with 6 customers inside, the busiest in town this night. We took a drink and that was it. Company wasn't great (loudmouth 1st year college students) and to be honest we weren't the most talkative either what with the fatigue of the day. My God was I glad to haul my little legs into leaba that night.


Packing the Cruiser - see if you can spot the following: LandCruiser, 2 spare wheels, awning, roof tent, camping chairs, cooler box, several ammo boxes, fold-out kitchenette, Rhodesian Ridgeback, Jack Russell, some Hairy Thing, Cadac gas tank and skottel, binoculars, socket set, snorkel gear, camping mat, Engel freezer, Christiaan.