Windhoek, Namibia

As we were being stamped into the Namibian side of the border post a truck driver was also being processed. He looked us up and down and then asked if we would like a ride. We could see that there were no buses or shared taxis and it was not long until sunset so we were grateful for the offer. The driver was from South Africa and was driving from Johannesburg to Angola to deliver a load of waterless eco toilets. His name sounded like 'rreahn' but it may well be Ryan and pronounced with a strong Afrikaans accent but we are not sure.

First we had to drive to a nearby petrol station at the Namibian village of Buitepos where Ryan wanted to get some money from an ATM to pay his road tax. We also needed to get Namibian dollars as well and John went first and as he was withdrawing he said he hoped there was enough for Ryan. When Ryan made his withdrawal there was actually no more money left so we had to lend him ours. He needed the exact amount that we had taken out and we would stop later and get more.

Initially Ryan was going to take us to Gobabis, 130 kms up the road but we decided to stay on with him all the way to Windhoek. We learnt a lot about Ryan's family and their life in Krugersdorf outside Johannesburg. His father had been a diesel mechanic and truckie and so Ryan had been around trucks all his life. He found the trucking business pretty competitive and had to do international loads to make a reasonable living. He was not that affected by the American financial crisis as he owned his own two trucks and his wife worked for an insurance company.

They lived on a few hectares with their preteen son and daughter and had a house there for his parents as well. He would often be away for a week at a time but always wanted to be involved in his children's sporting activities so would survive on 3 hours' sleep a night so he would be home on the weekend. His son played rugby and was a boxer. As Ryan was also a boxer they had built a huge gym on their land for the local boxing club. The daughter was also sporty but I have forgotten what she played. Ryan felt that by being involved with his childrens' sports they would not get involved in drugs and other antisocial behaviour.

They had recently got crossbows and liked to go hunting. They would go to a hunting ranch to shoot game. We have met a couple more South Africans who like to hunt. They can choose what animal they want to shoot, be it a zebra or lion, and the ranch would organize it for them. Ryan told us about a giraffe they shot on their last trip. It took 3 days to cut up the carcass and store the meat and it cost 22,000 Rand.

He didn't have any airconditioning in his old non-computerized truck and was so used to the heat that it didn't seem to bother him. He kept an old truck as he had learnt how to repair anything on it if it broke down and said he had met drivers who were stranded for a month or so waiting for spare parts for some small computer component that had caused their trucks to stop. He commented on several new trucks that passed us on the road. They arrived at the port in Namibia as a basic cab and deckless back and were made in America. He said they were not able to be registered in SA as the Scania and other European brands were protected there but more expensive than the American trucks.

We drove through the dark to Windhoek and saw several warthogs and duiker along the sides of the road. We arrived on the bypass road to Windhoek and Ryan dropped us at a petrol station where he was able to replace our money and ask the staff to point us in the direction of some accommodation in the city. We didn't have any bookings as we had only planned to stay at Gobabis or at the border in a tent. A patrolman in a van working for a home security company offered to drive us to a backpackers we had the address of, so said our goodbyes to Ryan and put on some warm clothes, as it was unseasonably freezing, and crammed into the single bucket seat and headed off at 11pm to find a bed.

At the backpackers a nightwatchman was sitting on a seat at the gate. We asked if he had any beds and he said he only had two. A couple who had booked the room hadn't turned up so we were able to have it and counted ourselves pretty lucky not to be wandering around Windhoek looking for a room at midnight in a city where 50% of the people are unemployed.

Windhoek (Windy corner) is pretty small with about 240,000 people. It has a few small hills and you could see the desert not far outside the city centre. The main street is pretty wide with lots of modern shops and a small mall. We knew we would be in Namibia for a few weeks so decided to buy a local SIM card and a mobile modem so we could have internet access to do research and catch up with the blog. Internet shops and backpackers charge about $6nz an hour and with a mobile 'stick' we can use a local SIM card and buy data bundles from street sellers or online and it is so much cheaper and more convenient if you have your own notebook like we do. We have learnt so much about the internet in our travels that others ask us to tell them about how we do it.

The most interesting thing about the people in Windhoek is the mix of races. Although South Africa is called the Rainbow Nation, we would say that Namibia is. People of all shades of black, brown and white mingle together and as they walk by you can hear Portuguese, Afrikaans, English, German, and all sorts of 'click' languages. Some of the click languages have 4 different click sounds that are made by placing your tongue in 4 different places in your mouth to make the click. I can make the clicks but can't connect them to a word. The word has different meanings with a click, without a click and depending on which click is used. I like to ask people we meet how to say various greetings in their language and there are so many languages that they have to use English in some cases to communicate with each other.

We stayed at a place called Cardboard Box Backpackers. It is supposed to be a party backpackers but was pretty quiet when we were there. Several tour guides and drivers stay and several locals come to drink at the bar so it is interesting to chat to them. Some of the safari truck groups stay and they don't seem to mix with anyone except those in their group as they have bonded like a family and don't move outside it. It is easier to meet single travellers as they have no 'family'. We met a man from Bangladesh who studied telecommunications and was paying all sorts of people who knew people who could get him a work permit. He was trying to get a online phone business going, something similar to Skype. The walls in the lounge were covered with photos of nursing student groups from Netherlands, Sweden and other European countries. The groups stay about 3 months at a time from the photos it looks like they take over the place.

John had his eye pressures tested again and they are fine and stable so won't have to have them checked so often now. I managed to get the blogs from SA, and Zimbabwe up to date with the fastest internet in Namibia!

Maun, Botswana

Klaus and Constancia were heading for Johannesburg and their flight back to Germany and they invited us to go as far as Maun with them in the 4x4. The 300km drive was on a pretty good sealed road through dry farms with few small trees and not much else.

We had to stop a couple of times at the foot and mouth disease control points. Here we had to take all our shoes and press them into a mat soaked with disinfectant and drive through a dip or wait to have our tyres sprayed. This didn't take long and we were on our way again after declaring that we had no raw meat.

There were no real villages to speak of any where near the road but we passed a few places where they were selling reed for thatching houses. This particular community was quite large and the bundles of thatch leant against the wooden fences around their huts which were made of black polythene. They looked really poor and their huts were tied together with pieces of rag. There did not seem to be any kind of settlement or shopping area that we could see so we were not sure if they were a refugee settlement or a temporary workers' camp but there didn't seem to be anything other than small scrubland amongst the reeds for them to work on.

We arrived at the junction town of Nata where Klaus and Constancia were going to continue onto SA and we needed to turn off. Just as we arrived so did a huge 71 seater bus. What luck. The bus waited for passengers from a bus from Gabarone and then we had a quick toilet stop and grabbed a bun from the petrol station and said our goodbyes to Klaus and Constancia and headed for Maun. If the bus had not have arrived at the same time as us, we would have had to hitch a ride with someone going our way. There is not much public transport and not many people seem to know when buses come or go or if they go at all.

When John got out of the 4x4 he noticed that he had cracked the plastic casing on the camera so will have to let the insurance company know.

The bus stopped in Maun near a brand new shopping complex so we were able to stock up on some fresh food and catch a taxi the 10+ kms to Audi Lodge where we read we could get a bus to Namibia from.

For a little bit more than the price of putting up our own small tent we rented one of the camp's 'bedded tents'. It had a light, two single beds with all the bedding and towels and mats on the floor. In the 30+ temperatures the fan was a treat though. The large canvas tents permanently sit on a concrete slab and were pretty comfortable. The people at the camp were not very friendly and made us move a couple of days later as they had booked out all their bedded tents but we never saw anyone use them at all. The 'domed tents' they put us in had a light, a fold up aluminium camp bed and a mattress. We used our silk sleeping sheets and opened up the windows to get some air moving and it was surprisingly cool.

We used the poorly equipped kitchen at the camp and met a French couple on the last leg of their Round the World Trip and were able to get some advice on places ahead of us. There were not many people in the camp and it was very hot, dry and extremely dusty. Although the publicity on the camp said it was a party place it was pretty quiet as there were not many overland trucks in and quite a few older folk in their twin cab 4x4s.

We could have flown over the rivers in the area or gone in a dugout canoe to see animals but we decided to rest up as we had seen so many animals since we started our trip. The camp was a long way from the town centre and a hassle to get in and out so we walked around the neighbour hood talking to the locals we met. We visited a nearby backpackers to see if they had any news of onward transport for us and enjoyed chatting to other travellers there.

We met a group of 4 Chinese men who told us they were working on a site building a college in the local area and had come from Eastern China.

These boys were spending their Sunday catching fish with worms on small hooks. They had a pretty skillful technique where they tossed the line into the shallow pond and as soon as they sensed a bite, which must have been tiny, they yanked the line to ensure they had hooked the fish which was the size of a small sardine in most cases. The larger fish they got were bream but even they were tiny.

We heard singing in the town and went to investigate. There was a group of men in a circle in the yard and they were singing what sounded like the same refrain over and over and when it finished they would jump in the air with both feet and come down with a heavy thump. While this went on and on a circle of women about 50 metres from them sang a different song and they went on and on as well. Being a Sunday we presumed it was a church group but the place where they were looked like some one's house.

After our rest and enough of the heat and dust we caught a taxi into Maun town centre and happened upon a bus heading for Ghanzi, where we thought we would take a break before continuing to the border with Namibia. Ghanzi is the administrative centre for the Kalahari and has nothing of interest to travellers. Once we arrived at the dusty bus terminal in Ghanzi there was a small 18 seater bus waiting to continue to the border. It had 3 seats across and then another fold out seat in the aisle and in no time it was packed with locals and their boxes of shopping.

Typical rural housing.

This lady was on the bus with us and she belongs to the Herero tribe. In the 16th and 17th centuries this Bantu group migrated from the Zambezi River Valley to Namibia. The women cover themselves from neck to ankle in a Victorian style dress and a large hat in the shape of a cow's horn. The fashion comes from contact with the German missionaries at that time. The women fasten the elaborate headdress with pins and brooches. One lady we saw had puffy sleeves like Emelda Marcus of The Philippines used to favour. Under the dress is a long lacy petticoat as well. The Herero men with these women wear leather 'cowboy style' hats and vests over their shirts. They look like very proud people.

We arrived at the Botswana-Namibian border at about 4.30pm and crossed over with no problems only to find there were no buses, taxis or any transport further on.

Kasane, Botswana

Had no problems at the Botswana border post, just had to fill in a form and then got stamped in for one month. Had to walk to the other side of the border complex and then Eddie joined us and flagged down a local who was coming out of a side road. The local spoke Setswana, one of the Batswana languages and couldn't understand why Eddie didn't understand it but Eddie spoke Shona so they had to communicate in English. We headed for the Thebe River Lodge while Eddie continued on his way to find tour groups to sell his tee shirts to.

The lodge camping ground, where we had planned to stay, was pretty exposed, without any shade and very dusty so we managed to negotiate a reasonable room rate in the lodge. We had a room with an ensuite and air conditioning but squeaky beds. The place filled up with middle aged people from Italy then Netherlands and Germany so our neighbours kept changing as safari trucks came in and out.

It was a 50 minute walk into the town centre to pick up some supplies and get money from an ATM machine.

Surrounding the lodge were areas set up with thatched roofed shelters, a braai area, electric light, power plug and a brick and concrete 'table'. These were used by the safari tour trucks and they would cram their dome tents into the area beside the shelter and begin preparing their meals. Not far from these were shelters was a restaurant/bar, and pool overlooking the Chobe River.

We found one of these cooking shelters unoccupied so set up our cooker and began to prepare food. When it got dark a 4x4 Landrover pulled up. Klaus from Germany and Constancia from Chile had booked the site and luckily they were happy enough to let us share it.

The 4x4 was well equipped with a tent that folded out on top along with a ladder to get up to it. They had a fridge that could also turn into a freezer and was well set up with everything they would need for their travels from South Africa to Botswana and return.

We joined a sunset boat cruise along the Chobe River to watch the animals come down to the river and this little building on the riverside was the ticket office for the National Park. The river was pretty busy with all kinds of boats taking tourists along the river. We saw dozens of elephants, crocs, hippos, monitor lizards, a couple of giraffe, several sea eagles, red lechwe (antelopes) which are only found in Zambia and here, and lots of birds.

We had a great time eating and chatting with Klaus and Constancia and when they decided to move to another lodge closer to the town we went too. Klaus invited us to join them on a drive through the park along the riverfront from Kasane to the Ngoma Bridge and we were thrilled to be able to do that as it can only be done by a 4x4.

Our first stop was at a foot and mouth disease control veterinary checkpoint. We had to take all our shoes and dip them in the disinfectant soaked mat and drive the vehicle through a dip of disinfectant. An officer checked the fridge for uncooked meat products and then we were on our way.

We saw large groups of zebra, elephants and buffalo and they would have been the largest groups we have seen so far. The park was pretty dry and sandy and we only saw a few other vehicles the whole time. Saw our first sable and pelicans.

Near the Ngoma Bridge we took a wrong path and ended up outside the park and had to re enter and explain why we were where we were. Constancia was rather worried as she thought we may have inadvertently entered Namibia for which she cannot get a visa on a Chilean passport so she was relieved to know we hadn't.

Someone had told them that the Chobe Safari lodge that we had moved to served a buffet with game meat so we headed there for our evening meal. It was a long walk from our camp but it was a pretty flash place with tables on different levels overlooking the river. We had several kinds of vegetarian pates and salads to start then prawns with fresh vegetables that were stir fried while you waited and covered with sauces of your choice. We all tried the impala casserole and the warthog pie, which was the best. Klaus is a great meat eater so he chose a steak that was cooked by the chef to his liking while John piled up his plate with roast pork. We had several helpings of cappuccino mousse, fruit salad, with vodka and pineapple sorbet and two other types of ice cream. After camping food for so long we were in food heaven.

Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

The owner of the backpackers sent us to the wrong place to get a bus to Victoria Falls and after asking some of the locals we were able to find the bus and get a ticket. We are not sure if the mistake was genuine or if the owner wanted to sell us an expensive driver and car to the Falls. We boarded the City Link bus and were the only foreign travellers on it. The first stop was around the corner at a takeaway place called the Chicken Inn where they collected enough cardboard boxes of fried chicken and chips and soft drinks for all the passengers. This was included in the ticket price. In no time the bus warmed up and smelt like a chicken fryer!


We headed off through rural Zimbabwe and could see a few old colonial farm houses along the way and most were pretty run down. The farms were mostly unfenced and we saw goats, sheep, donkeys and horses in the fields. There were lots of small clusters of thatched rondavel houses surrounded by fences made of small branches to keep the animals in. Most did not have electricity or running water. There were no large trees anywhere and no fields of pastureland, just small scrubby trees.







We stopped at a place called Halfway Hotel where we could stretch our legs and have something to drink or use the toilets. A few people were collected from here and headed off on the dusty roads to their homes.The hotel had a lounge where the walls were covered in huge game animals' heads, a restaurant with no one in it and a bar. Surrounding the main building were small thatched chalets for guests. Out the front was a pump for fuel and nothing else.





Quite close to the falls we went through Hwange which was pretty polluted from the coal-fired power station there. There were also a few other factories and coal mines nearby and they were the only industries we saw on our trip.





Arrived at Victoria Falls at the Rainbow Hotel after dark and got besieged by taxi drivers wanting to drive us to our backpackers because it was a long way and there were a lot of wild animals on the road. We had met others who had been to the Falls and knew that none of that was true so headed off to look for somewhere to stay.





Found the Shoestrings Backpackers but it was fully booked as the tour trucks stay here and there were about 4 trucks in at that time. They rang around and found us somewhere to stay and sent us up the road to the Savanna lodge where we dropped our gear in our cell of a bedroom and returned to the Shoestrings for a meal.

A bonus was that our room had air-conditioning and we were able to sleep well. The lodges are nothing like backpackers as they too cater mainly for the safari tour trucks. It had no facilities where we could cook and a cup of tea cost $1US and usually you can help yourself to tea and coffee in a backpacker place. It did have a nice garden with grass so we didn't have to put up with dust all day and there were loungers around the very cold swimming pool where we could read and relax.

This lodge ran Zambezi rafting trips and we could watch the guides give the pre-raft instructions and watch the videos on the big screen when they all got back. The tee shirt printers would arrive with the tee shirts in the colours and designs that each person had chosen and collect his money. The company making the DVDs would have them all ready packaged for sale. The rafters would be adrenaline pumped after seeing the video of their 3 wipe-outs and were glad to have survived it and have a great tale to tell their friends and family. We spoke to some seedy people who rafted and were unwell after gulping too much of the Zambezi River water and were still shaken by the ordeal.

Although it is the dry season the Falls can still be heard thundering from the town. We were only able to find one spot where the sun on the water made rainbows and there was hardly any breeze so we were not drenched with spray. It was a nice place to watch the verwent monkeys and eat lunch. While we were looking towards the Zambian side, the tourists there were sitting above the falls looking at us looking at them.


We were also able to recognize the disguised cellphone towers on the other side as well.

A bridge crosses the river that marks the border between the two countries and we were able to get a stamped piece of paper that gave us permission to walk on the bridge to watch the bungy jumping, and bridge swinging that is in the middle of the bridge. There were also a couple of canoeists playing on the waves below the falls and along the side rivers. With a passport you could cross to the Zambian side and zipline back to Zimbabwe, but for some people the cost of the Zimbabwean visa made it an expensive activity if you didn't have a multiple entry visa already.





Compared with Bulawayo this is a full on tourist place. The touts are on every corner trying to sell wooden carved animals or wooden dishes and lucky charms called yum yums. They also want to sell full sets of the old Zimbabwean currency where the largest note is a 300 trillion dollar bill. If you don't want to pay for them they are happy to trade the notes for running shoes, shirts, shorts or hats.

In 2005, the government spent 3 months destroying markets and urban homes, and arresting street vendors and street children. These people were sent back to work in the rural areas under a programme called Murambatsvina translated as 'drive out the trash', but slowly the vendors are coming back to the streets.

As we couldn't cook at our lodge we ate at Shoestrings and met a Kiwi couple who live one street away from us in NZ and are close to our own ages. We were able to catch up on some of the local news before they joined a safari truck tour group for a few weeks. Angela was on dish washing duty on the first night and was not happy to be washing dishes in cold water and floundering in the dark with no lighting to put dishes away when she had no idea where they went. It will be interesting to hear how the trip to Nairobi went.

We found a taxi driver, called Dexter, to take us from the town to the 'hitching point' (a junction) so we could get a shared taxi to Kazungula and the Botswanean border. He couldn't take us all the way in his taxi as the route from the hitching point is run by a set group of taxi drivers. He introduced us to Index who already had one passenger in his car and we still needed to wait for one more before he could leave. Index told us that he works the route every 5 days waiting his turn with the other 5 cabs. He picked up school kids on his other days.

Eddie, the other passenger is a screen printer and takes the taxi to Botswana to get orders for his tee shirts that he sells to the safari tour groups in Kasane. He has to set up contacts with the tour guides to get access to the customers and then when he gets the orders he has to return to Zimbabwe and print them and then take them back across the border to his customers. He told us he married at 22 and had a 16 year old girl, a 14 year old boy and a 6 year old. His eldest daughter is at a boarding school in the Halfway hotel area and never comes home but he goes to see her when he can afford it.

After about 20 minutes we were joined by a rather large lady who squeezed in the back with John and I. She had a broken shaft for her Hyundai van and was heading to Botswana to get a second hand part or to make an order for a new one. We had read that Mugabe wanted his finance minister to put aside $200million US for the upcoming elections. When we asked them about the elections Eddie said the opposition party had a strategy in place this time and this would mean that Mugabe would not get in while the large lady was sick of the politics because people were trying to feed and look after their families so she didn't seem to care about it.

It is times like this that we are glad to be travelling independently and although it can be frustrating at times we can learn so much about the lives of ordinary people.

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

We had a wonderful time in South Africa and met some fantastic people and would recommend a visit there to anyone, and especially those who want to travel independently.

We had heard many stories about Zimbabwe and most were from people who said not to travel there. We even met White locals living in Bulawayo who told us we would be unsafe and be ripped off by the Blacks. We decided to keep an open mind and if we found someone who had travelled there independently then we would consider going. While in Soweto we met Christopher from the UK and after chatting with him about his travels we decided to go.



We crossed the border at Mussina on the South African side and as we had bought a few things in SA we were able to get the 15% VAT back if we exported the goods so after passing quickly through immigration we lined up with a dozen or so Zimbabweans traders. We were supposed to have the goods checked by customs to prove we were exporting them but they didn't bother and stamped us through so we collected our refund cheque and walked crossed the bridge over the Limpopo River into Zimbabwe. There were lots of traders on bicycles carrying boxes of oranges and bedding into Zimbabwe. In the truck lane there were lines and lines of trucks from SA waiting to cross the border.



On the road from SA, the N1 highway, we passed dozens of utes overloaded with household furniture, families returning to Zimbabwe. Sadly we also saw several of these utes or their trailers with punctured tyres or broken axles on the side of the road. We had read in the newspapers that the SA government was asking Zimbabweans to get passports and work permits if they wanted to remain in SA and they had a deadline of January 2011 to do that or they would have to return to Zim. We also saw that the Zimbabwean government had reduced the cost of Zimbabwean passports by 20% and were not sure if this was a coincidence or not.



As we approached the Zimbabwean immigration building we passed by a huge deserted new duty free shop advertising spirits but it had obviously only been used for a very short time and then left to decay as no one could afford to buy such luxuries when the inflation was running at 1000%. We had no problems getting a visa for $30US while Brits had to pay $55US.



A short stroll from the border and on a dusty road outside the Zimbabwean border town of Beit Bridge we negotiated for a shared taxi to take us a few minutes up the road to a mini van bus stop. It is the custom to have lots of mini van buses running particular stretches and it keeps more people employed compared with having huge buses but it means shared taxis have to get you to those 'hitching points' and they can charge more than the vans for short distances.



There were 3 minivans waiting for passengers and we were the last two to fill the first van to leave for Bulawayo so didn't have to sit in the dust and heat for very long. The conductor put us in the front two seats and we were able to chat to the driver, although his accent was pretty difficult to understand. We nevertheless had a great laugh with him and the other passengers.



One of the most obvious differences between SA and Zim was the use of donkeys and carts to carry people and goods along the dusty path beside the road.



The roads were in pretty good condition with long straight stretches and hardly any traffic on them at all. We passed through small villages and there were police checkpoints before and after the villages and the driver and conductor would have to get out and take their papers to the traffic inspector or police officers and pay a bribe to continue, this must have happened about 8 or 10 times. Some of the stops also included the payment of a road toll with the toll booth being a few officers sitting on chairs in the middle of the road. The driver told us that the government didn't have enough money to pay the police so they had to be given free rides and supported by taking bribes. We could have taken a Greyhound bus that started in Johannesburg but it would have arrived at the border around 6pm and would probably have been full so we opted for the minivan bus instead to go the 300+kms to Bulaweyo.



A lot of passengers got off in Gwanda so we had to hang around there waiting to refill the empty seats for about an hour. The locals selling bananas on the footpath wanted us to take pictures of them. The Gwanda area had a lot of grazing for cattle in the sparse vegetation and some peanut plantations.



We passed by a couple of areas where they used to mine asbestos.


We arrived on sunset in Bulawayo and the friendly driver dropped us at the Packer's Rest backpackers just out of the CBD. Conveniently there was a tennis club with a sports bar and restaurant next door to the backpackers where we could eat. It was such a modern popular place that could have fitted in any European city and not be out of place and was such an unexpected sight. The place was packed from Wednesday to Saturday nights with mostly Black people and they mixed happily with the few Whites who frequented the place.



We enjoyed the seeing the old colonial buildings around the city centre and wandering around the streets.








A White lady approached us on the street asking for money. She had an involved story to tell about how she had not seen her children for 9 years and how she was supported by World Vision and her church. She said she had no work but was a hairdresser and a sales assistant. She was very well dressed and stayed with a guardian although she appeared to be in her mid forties. We bumped into her a few more times as the city is pretty small. She seemed to be known by the souvenir sellers on street.



Christopher had told us to visit the National Art Gallery and find a lady called Cynthia who would show us around. As we rounded a corner a Black lady called out to us and asked if we were tourists and had we visited the Art Gallery. I asked her if she was Cynthia, to which she replied "Yes but how did you know that!" She was most surprised we would know her name! She showed us the artists' studios at the gallery and introduced us to them and their work.



One artist told us that his wife was a teacher and she earned $150US per month but they had to pay $200US per month for rent. He was trying to make money as an artist but wasn't doing so well and would probably have to trade his small art brushes for a broom and get a job as a cleaner if he wanted to make ends meet.





The drains and parks were not looked after but there were lots of schools and an enormous polytechnic near our backpackers. The school children were all dressed in uniforms of different colours and styles depending on which school they were at.

We had thought about going to Matobo National park but the tours run by the backpackers were $120US per person. A Japanese man who had waited 3 days to get a party of 3 to go eventually went alone and he never saw one animal on his day in the park!

The electricity goes off a couple of times a week as there is not enough to go around so the backpackers had a gel fuel they could use in a portable cooker when guests needed to cook.

We found the people friendly and not at all pushy. There were many SA chain supermarkets and they were well stocked with goods from SA and the prices seemed comparable. There was even a new huge shopping mall with lifts and escalators and very few people. We didn't see any tour buses or other obvious looking tourists about.

The currencies used now in Zimbabwe are the US dollar, SA Rand and the Botswanan Pula so when you purchase anything you could get a combination of all those currencies in the change. The exchange rate used in Balawayo is less than that used in Harare and at the checkout in the supermarket they could give your docket in any of the currencies. However they do not use any American coins so prices jump up in whole dollars or you have to have sweets or biscuits for change, and this makes things expensive for the locals!

Johannesburg, South Africa

Headed back to Johannesburg in our rental car calling in at Centurion on the way. Seeing our 30+ year old multi-fuel Optimus cooker blew up we had to order a new cooker. We found Hiker's Paradise in Centurion and ordered a 'Whisperlite Dragonfly MSR' cooker from there. We have been hanging around the area for a while because there has been a public servants' strike and then a transport strike which meant that our cooker, which should have taken 4 days to arrive, actually took 2 weeks.

We went to Boksburg in the south of Johannesburg and stayed with Patrick at Mbizi Backpackers. Patrick is an interesting man. He is separated and in his middle 40s and used to work for Army intelligence. He told us about how he had been held up at knife point and gunpoint 3 or 4 times and how he has had burglars break into his place. He was brought up in the area and eventually bought the family home off his parents when his dad died and his mum moved to the UK where she is in a Frail Care Home.

Patrick felt that violent crime was a threat all the time and he would like to get out of South Africa and go to New Zealand. He personally knows a couple of hundred people who have had their cars hijacked or been held up. At his age he will find it difficult to get to NZ because of the immigration rules but maybe he will find a Kiwi lady who will marry him.

As the backpackers is 15 minutes from the airport his guests usually stay only one night before heading off to other places or they get up at 5am to take a safari trip to Kruger National Park. There is no safe public transport into Johannesburg CBD so those of his guests who want to go there have take a tour with a driver. We were not interested to go into the centre and Patrick told us that there are even areas where they have warning signs telling you 'This is a smash and grab area'. Criminals smash car windows and grab what they can find. Fortunately we never saw any of these things happening.

The newspapers are always full of stories about foreigners being attacked. These foreigners however come from Somalia, Ethiopia or other parts of Africa where there has been unrest. The influx of these people has been tolerated because some of the neighbouring countries gave refuge to the outlawed ANC party members during apartheid and now that the ANC is in power they are indebted to the people who helped them. However, the unhappy locals who have no work, or who are not progressing as well as the foreigners with small stalls or shops are showing their displeasure by burning property and beating up the foreigners. An interesting point is that many locals like to employ illegal migrants from Milawi as they are honest, reliable and hardworking gardeners or maids rather than employ locals so I am sure this adds to the number of illegal foreigners working in the country.

As we got off the highway to Boksburg we saw huge yellow hills. We were told that they were tailings from the gold mines that were worked in the area. Many of the houses sit on top of a huge underground mine and in the past they could feel shakes from cave-ins in the mines. We could relate to that with the earthquakes in Christchurch, NZ happening while we were in Boksburg.


Patrick was a great rugby fan so we were able to watch SA get beaten by Australia in the Tri-nations match.

We were not able to add any more blog postings in South Africa because our mobile network connection expired even though we hadn't managed to use up all the data bundle that we had paid for. We still have a lot of things to learn about how the internet works when you use mobile modems.

Patrick is waiting another 3 years when his son turns 18 and can join him on a Cape to Cairo trip by Landcruiser. He is unhappy with the violent crime but absolutely loves Africa and wants to see as much of the continent as he can. Maybe we will be able to run his backpackers while he is away!!

We were really looking forward to meeting our friend Sue's sister Jane, in Bryanstown, but her mum was unwell and she had to rush off to Cape Town to see her. We also couldn't connect with Colleen's friends as they were off on a month's holiday.

We had a few maps and photo CDs that we were carrying and as we are soon to return the rental car we have to reduce our surplus gear and make sure everything fits into our packs. Since we left home we have bought a small tent (really small as it doesn't fit our packs), a double mosquito net, foam sleeping pads, a new cooker, an extra guide book, 2 cutlery sets, and a shopping bag with provisions for tea and coffee, on the road snacks, as well as emergency food!

Drove 350 kms on the N1 through wheat fields, cattle grazing ranches, and private game parks to Louis Trichardt where we spent a night. The next morning we got pulled over by the Limpopo police doing some kind of check. A policeman made us move away from his colleagues and spotted a can of coke in the car and wanted us to give him 10 rand so he could buy a drink. John mumbled his way around that and distracted the man with comments about the World Cup soccer and the All Blacks and he sent us on our way without his 10 rand!

Crossed the Tropic of Capricorn and handed in our rental car at Mussina, being the nearest town to the Zimbabwean border. The Avis lady was kind enough to say the crinkle that John made under the sill of the car, when he backed into something, was not significant to worry about and arranged a driver to take us to the border. What a great company!

Soweto, South Africa

Drove from Ermelo to Johannesburg where we booked into a backpackers at Bokburg on the outskirts of Johannesburg and about 15 minutes drive from the airport. We had no interest to go into the CBD or even to remain in the city for too long. The backpack owner told us about how he had been held up with knives and a gun several times as well as about his 200 friends who has been held up or had had their vehicles hijacked.

After a bit of shopping and another check on the pressure in John's eyes, which have gone down since his last check, we headed off for Soweto.

The name Soweto comes from South West Township but there is no way it could be called a township now. It is a huge city. We got lost a couple of times but the locals were very helpful in giving us directions even though they were saying things like 'you know the place that used to be old hotel on the corner'. So with such descriptions we were able to find Lebo's Soweto Backpackers.

It was a quirky place with friendly staff and surprisingly comfortable. We had a double room that the previous day had been a bunk room. They try to make the place fit what ever the guests want. The place used to be Lebo's grandmother's house and he converted it and then moved his grandmother to another place which he also uses as an overflow place.

A sign near the gate says 'to the beach'. A fine gravel path that looks like sands takes you to the outdoor area that has 4 small rooms. They are made of corrugated iron and brightly painted and then covered with bamboo and have dry palm leaves on the roof to create a beach bungalow. A hammock is slung between two trees and one room has table soccer another has a pool table while the last two have a bar and a seating area. A peacocks makes itself at game and a parrot sits on a perch screaming for guests to play with it. In a corner opposite the bar is a seating area around a tiny firepit where you can relax in the evening on cushions on top of logs. The tree beside the fire is black from years of soot and if you didn't notice the 3 hens roosting in the tree and keeping warm above the fire, then you would when they pooped on you. The chickens seem to disappear at night but are after the crumbs under the patio dining area at meal times.

The backpackers supports a local youth group with sport and art activities. A young German lad was staying at the hostel and he would train the kids 3 times a week in exchange for a bed and meals. He got a bit frustrated as the older boys wanted to play in the weekend games but not commit to the practise sessions.

An Irish guy staying at the same time as us won a photo competition and had to make a video on the affects of the World Cup Soccer to their businesses in Soweto which was sponsored by a charity. The backpackers used to be next door to a huge rubbish dump but that got cleaned up and turned into a park with play equipment, braais, and bamboo shelters with seats and tables. During the World Cup soccer the park was used as a campground. Now it is back to being a play park but still has the flags and shelters.

We joined a bicycle tour for 4 hours with the guide from Lebo's along with a Canadian guy and a Frenchman with his 22 month old son. There are 3 distinct areas in Soweto, a first class area called Beverly Hills that could fit into any expensive residential area in Johannesburg with its watered grass lawns and comprehensive security systems, and its private rubbish collectors. The second class area had much smaller houses with fences and some with barbed wire and others with high fences, and a weekly rubbish collection. The third class area were one roomed hostels all joined together for which they paid 45 rand a month, had 4 families share one locked toilet in the street, no running water and rubbish collection once a month. This meant that the rubbish piled up in the street and every now and then it got burnt. To afford the rent they built shacks in the yard and rented them out. We visited one of these places and chatted with the tenant.

An election promise by the ANC was to replace the single housing hostels with new public housing complexes. Residents were told that they would get an apartment with the same number that their hostel had but once the elections were won the residents were told that they had to qualify for a house and it wouldn't be automatic, so the new buildings have been vandalised even though they are still under construction. Some have airconditioning units but there are no tenants in any of the apartments.

Later we visited a shebeen, a local drinking place which is frequented by old people, to sample sorghum beer from a black communal pot. Of course we subsidized the patrons who would know when the bike tour was coming around and come for their free drink. It was a dark corrugated shed with bench seats lining the walls. There were a couple of women inside and when they were passed the pot of beer they clapped their hands first. I asked why they did that and was told that women were not allowed in shebeens in the olden days so to show how grateful they are for being allowed to be there, they clap their hands before drinking.

The little French boy was a hit with the young locals. They jumped up and down in front of him, patted his head, fingered his curls, rubbed the skin on his arms and babbled away to him. These boys had the lids off a tin can and were pretending they were steering wheels and raced around making car noises.

All around Soweto are huge yellow hills, the tailings from the gold mining days. A landmark is the two water cooling towers that are colourfully painted and where you can bungy jump between them.

Visited the Hector Pieterson Square which is a monument to the 1976 student riots in, where they were protesting at having to do secondary schooling in the Afrikaans language.

Ate a traditional Soweto lunch called kota, half a loaf of bread covered with tomato sauce then filled with fried chips, fried egg, slice of processed cheese and a couple of pink coloured slices of processed meat, which is eaten without cutlery.

Later we rode through Vilakasi Street where Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Tutu had both lived but did not know each other as children but both went on to win Nobel Peace prizes.

One day we drove to the Apartheid Museum and saw Soccer city stadium on the way.At the museum we bumped into 2 NZ women from Kaikoura who thought the museum would have gold and diamond displays. Doh! On our return from the museum we were told the room we had booked was not available because a group of 26 American students and their chaperones wanted Lebo's and the overflow house to themselves. The 4 lads staying had to sleep in tents in the 'beach area' as the students were not allowed to share the dorm with them. We had to move into the luxurious B & B near Nelson Mandela's house but only had to pay backpacker prices. It was quiet as we were the only guests and we missed the firepit story telling from Lebo's place.

After a bit of

Ermelo, South Africa

Ermelo is not the usual tourist destination but it was a convenient break on our drive from Swaziland to Johannesburg. The area is surrounded by pine and eucalyptus plantations and on our way we stopped under the shade of some trees for lunch and had a couple of Black guys ask us for a job.

Once in the city we found a tourist office and they were reluctant to direct us to the only backpackers in town which was just around the corner from them. We later learnt that the backpacker owner would not pay them the 30 rand commission they wanted on his 100 rand dorms.

We were the only people in the backpackers and got the only double room as the rest of the place looked like it was used mostly by young people as it had a huge room walled off for about 5 dorms. The place was covered with signs for what to do and not to do and threats of extra charges if you used the sofa as a bed or put your gear on a bed that was not yours etc.

As we were leaving in the morning I discovered a book on the local area and wished we could have stayed an extra day to see some of the sights that they were promoting.

As we drove into the area we saw place names like Amsterdam, Chrissiemeer, Hendrina, Jessedale, Carolina, Gloria, and Bettiesdam and wondered at the stories behind these place names.

There are several groups of people who have started historic societies and are encouraging tourists to these historic places, many of them having been abandoned for years. They have towns that show life as it was when the Afrikaners were working the land.

In a valley in the area there was a large concentration of Batwa San people from Mozambique who existed 2500 yrs ago but 'disappeared.' The Swazi people had their cattle stolen by the Batwa people so the Swazi warrior impis 'wiped out these people at a place called Murder Rock.

The Ermelo area had a lot of gold too and some stone circles have been discovered and some archaeologists believe that they were used by Dravidian Indians in ancient Africa when they came to look for gold for the Hindu women. Apparently some of the Swazi words used by the locals can be traced back as originating in India. It would have been interesting to do the Roots of Africa tour in the area but alas we could only read about them.