Mozzie Mozzie Mozzie
Where do I start? It was a bit of an adventure. We decided to break ourselves in gently to our week off by going through the Kruger Park for some game viewing on the way to the border. We booked a backpackers lodge just outside the KNP. It was a little conservancy where all the lodges and homeowners had access to a fenced in area where they had all of the “Big 5.” The place was called Marloth Park and it was at the very Eastern Border of the KNP. It was quite a cool place and as we were driving to our accommodation we encountered Zebra, Giraffe Kudo and plenty of Warthog. We were told that we couldn’t walk around at night because of these animals in case we frightened them! I thought that was ironic considering they could all do away with you by some means or other if they felt threatened. In fact most game rangers feel that to be done in by a glorified pig (Warthog) or cow (Buffalo) would be the ultimate embarrassment! The guy who owned the lodge was quite knowledgeable and he gave us the ins and outs of the area. He was actually studying for his field guide qualification as well but was struggling to find the time while running his business and doing tours. I’m sure he envied the time that we can commit to passing our exams. We headed out for a bite to eat up the road to a nice traditional Afrikaans type pub. We had a few beers and Kev our Scottish tour member nearly got into a brawl with one of the locals who was well sauced. He spotted a Genet which is a type of cat and started to tell Kevin that it was very rare and that it was a Bush Cat. Well that started Kev off as he knows his cats and in the end Kev had to walk away after being insulted. It didn’t help that Kev told yer man that he was a field guide and gave him the scientific name of this so called “BushCat.” The locals don’t like foreigners telling them about their wildlife! We got a good nights kip and woke bright and early for a bit of game viewing in the morning. Unfortunately we didn’t see much in the few hours we were there and we headed on for what was to become some adventure.
The books when describing places sometimes don’t really do them justice in terms of beauty, topography and of course people. They often provide good tips to the honest traveler which can prove invaluable. In the case of the Lonely Planet they were way off on their description of how to get to a place that we ended up heading for. You tend to put your trust in these books because generally seasoned travelers have been adding advice. I would love to know how the girl who wrote the advice section got to where we went. She must have been helicoptered in! I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here. I’ll start at the border. We arrived at the border and like most borders there was lots of hustle and bustle and a little more of the hustle. Of course we had all kinds of lads offering us their services for filling in forms and getting forms and did I want insurance or someone to watch the car etc etc…..
I’ve seen this before and they got short shift in terms of helping me out! There are scammers everywhere I guess and Mozambique is no exception. We got our stuff sorted out anyway and headed over the border with relatively minor fuss. We all got hassled for something but mostly money. They even have a young fella on the door of the jaxx who only charges tourists to use the toilet. All the locals were walking by him! Administration out of the way we headed for the coast. The road to Maputo the capital is relatively straight forward. It’s a tolled road and it’s better than the M50 by a long shot. A sweet road into any capital. We weren’t heading for the capital though. We were heading down south to the coastal village of Ponta D’ouro. This looked relatively straightforward on the aforementioned Lonely Planet. A straightish road of about 120 klicks or so. I didn’t think it was gonna be a major problem getting there in about 2 hours. We crossed the border at about 4 so that left us 2 hours at a push to get there before dark. Little did we know what lay ahead. We were fine up until a point and when I say that I mean as the road was tarred up to the town of Boane. This was a tarred road of Aughavas in Leitrim standard. Not too bad but if you hit too many potholes your fillings will be hitting the back of your throat!
We thought it best to start as we meant to finish and decided to continue even though the road was deteriorating rapidly as we went further south. We got to a dusty holed road which was literally shocking on the joints as we started to make very slow progress indeed. It wasn’t so much road as more holes with bits of road in between! It seemed that this road swept on to eternity and we were all getting a bit depressed to be honest. Things weren’t looking very rosey. We had travelled a total of 67 klicks in just over 4 hours. It was dark and the townsfolk we encountered on the way had no English and of course between the 5 of us we hadn’t a word of Portuguese! Great craic! We belted on and then things got a whole lot worse. We ended up on sand! Now “Fixer,” has diff lock but it’s not Range Rover or Toyota Landcruiser. It tries it’s best through sand but this stuff was 3 and 4 foot deep. I floored it because I thought that the town must be just around the corner! Corner after corner stretched on and we were all a little bit demoralized and then we hit monster sand. Fixer started to begrudglingly give in and we were rightly stuck. The wheels and chassis were wedged in sand. We were stuck in the middle of nowhere in Mozambique and to top things off. We hadn’t seen another vehicle for ages. We tried to dig our way out but we had gone so far in that we needed to gain serious momentum to have any chance of getting back out. This didn’t look very likely considering we hadn’t been able to budge the jammer in either direction! A little bit of panic set in and people started hearing Lions and all kinds of stuff. Machete wielding marauders was the next thing to come into peoples heads! Now to be honest I was a fair bit depressed myself but I just resigned myself to possibly having to sleep in the car for the night. The mozzies didn’t help matters as they started attacking us in the car! How they hone in on us is mad as apparently they,re attracted to carbon dioxide that we breath out so it’s as if they were just waiting for us there! We had my home phone with me luckily and sorry Domino’s but there will be a hefty bill next time! We called all the backpackers and lodges in the place we were staying but only one answered and ironically it was the most expensive place in the town. They were very decent though and we owe them our debt of gratitude as they set about organizing a tractor to come out and pull us out of the sand.
We were trying to get a bit of kip in the car and limit the amount of mozzies could get into the car by keeping the windows up. This led to a fairly uncomfortable two hours where by the temperature in the car rose by 15 degrees and the lack of oxygen started to make us feel sick. We rolled down the windows and took our chances! We were giving up hope on this magic tractor coming to bail us out. It had been over two and a half hours and there was still no sign. The magic tractor joke beared its head. ( Did you hear about the magic tractor? It drove down the road and turned into a field) Well to be honest we didn’t think this one would appear at all and then low and behold we see lights in the distance. Our spirits soared. We hear this booming sound getting louder and louder. I was expecting a Massey Ferguson 155 to come trundling around the corner. It actually wasn’t nearly as wide of the mark as I thought as a Big Ford something or other came along with one light working and blue smoke pluming out of the back. Down jump two black lunatics who had only a few words of English between them like, Truck (Tractor) and Push ( Drive ). The guy who was the driver of the tractor was either half sauced or stoned. I couldn’t figure out which but he was mad as a brush. He tried to tie the rope to the steering column at one stage and I had to re direct him and the rope to the chassis. I had visions of the engine being pulled straight out of the car along with the bumper and the bull bar.
So Chico as he called himself started to drive with the more sensible Jonas supervising. It was like a scene from the movie Dumb and Dumber with the two of them arguing constantly. Before we had even started to be pulled Chico nearly knocked down his partner when reversing! The signs were ominous. We eventually got going and to be honest even the tractor had difficulty with some of the sections. We wouldn’t have made it without being pulled. We were going great guns until the lads suddenly decide to stop. We didn’t even see the guy standing at the side of the road. It was 3 in the morning at this stage and he was standing there with an pick axe and shovel. I won’t go into what we were thinking! We make a couple more stops on the way for the lads and it was bizarre to say the least. At one stage we stopped to pick up an errant shoe that apparently had been fallen off Jonas’s foot the night before. Weird! We eventually made it to the town and then disaster struck. The lads tractor broke down. The battery was apparently dead. Chico wanted me to pull him and you just had to laugh! They asked James to help them jump the tractor and that was hilarious. Dumb and dumber were holdijng the leads to the battery and tryijng to turn the tractor over while getting shocked by the battery every time. The funny part was they wanted James to hold one end and he was having none of it! Between the 3 of them they shocked each other a good few times. It was mental. Eventually I had to try and by pass the tractor but it was blocking up most of the road. Another bit of digging and making sand ladders and absolutely gunning the car got us away and up the hill and to our destination. It was hitting half four at this stage! We met the poor lodge owner and he showed us the room for the night and we were all out like lights. The day had finally ended and we hoped we would be able to take some time and just chill from there on!
Where do I start? It was a bit of an adventure. We decided to break ourselves in gently to our week off by going through the Kruger Park for some game viewing on the way to the border. We booked a backpackers lodge just outside the KNP. It was a little conservancy where all the lodges and homeowners had access to a fenced in area where they had all of the “Big 5.” The place was called Marloth Park and it was at the very Eastern Border of the KNP. It was quite a cool place and as we were driving to our accommodation we encountered Zebra, Giraffe Kudo and plenty of Warthog. We were told that we couldn’t walk around at night because of these animals in case we frightened them! I thought that was ironic considering they could all do away with you by some means or other if they felt threatened. In fact most game rangers feel that to be done in by a glorified pig (Warthog) or cow (Buffalo) would be the ultimate embarrassment! The guy who owned the lodge was quite knowledgeable and he gave us the ins and outs of the area. He was actually studying for his field guide qualification as well but was struggling to find the time while running his business and doing tours. I’m sure he envied the time that we can commit to passing our exams. We headed out for a bite to eat up the road to a nice traditional Afrikaans type pub. We had a few beers and Kev our Scottish tour member nearly got into a brawl with one of the locals who was well sauced. He spotted a Genet which is a type of cat and started to tell Kevin that it was very rare and that it was a Bush Cat. Well that started Kev off as he knows his cats and in the end Kev had to walk away after being insulted. It didn’t help that Kev told yer man that he was a field guide and gave him the scientific name of this so called “BushCat.” The locals don’t like foreigners telling them about their wildlife! We got a good nights kip and woke bright and early for a bit of game viewing in the morning. Unfortunately we didn’t see much in the few hours we were there and we headed on for what was to become some adventure.
The books when describing places sometimes don’t really do them justice in terms of beauty, topography and of course people. They often provide good tips to the honest traveler which can prove invaluable. In the case of the Lonely Planet they were way off on their description of how to get to a place that we ended up heading for. You tend to put your trust in these books because generally seasoned travelers have been adding advice. I would love to know how the girl who wrote the advice section got to where we went. She must have been helicoptered in! I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here. I’ll start at the border. We arrived at the border and like most borders there was lots of hustle and bustle and a little more of the hustle. Of course we had all kinds of lads offering us their services for filling in forms and getting forms and did I want insurance or someone to watch the car etc etc…..
I’ve seen this before and they got short shift in terms of helping me out! There are scammers everywhere I guess and Mozambique is no exception. We got our stuff sorted out anyway and headed over the border with relatively minor fuss. We all got hassled for something but mostly money. They even have a young fella on the door of the jaxx who only charges tourists to use the toilet. All the locals were walking by him! Administration out of the way we headed for the coast. The road to Maputo the capital is relatively straight forward. It’s a tolled road and it’s better than the M50 by a long shot. A sweet road into any capital. We weren’t heading for the capital though. We were heading down south to the coastal village of Ponta D’ouro. This looked relatively straightforward on the aforementioned Lonely Planet. A straightish road of about 120 klicks or so. I didn’t think it was gonna be a major problem getting there in about 2 hours. We crossed the border at about 4 so that left us 2 hours at a push to get there before dark. Little did we know what lay ahead. We were fine up until a point and when I say that I mean as the road was tarred up to the town of Boane. This was a tarred road of Aughavas in Leitrim standard. Not too bad but if you hit too many potholes your fillings will be hitting the back of your throat!
We thought it best to start as we meant to finish and decided to continue even though the road was deteriorating rapidly as we went further south. We got to a dusty holed road which was literally shocking on the joints as we started to make very slow progress indeed. It wasn’t so much road as more holes with bits of road in between! It seemed that this road swept on to eternity and we were all getting a bit depressed to be honest. Things weren’t looking very rosey. We had travelled a total of 67 klicks in just over 4 hours. It was dark and the townsfolk we encountered on the way had no English and of course between the 5 of us we hadn’t a word of Portuguese! Great craic! We belted on and then things got a whole lot worse. We ended up on sand! Now “Fixer,” has diff lock but it’s not Range Rover or Toyota Landcruiser. It tries it’s best through sand but this stuff was 3 and 4 foot deep. I floored it because I thought that the town must be just around the corner! Corner after corner stretched on and we were all a little bit demoralized and then we hit monster sand. Fixer started to begrudglingly give in and we were rightly stuck. The wheels and chassis were wedged in sand. We were stuck in the middle of nowhere in Mozambique and to top things off. We hadn’t seen another vehicle for ages. We tried to dig our way out but we had gone so far in that we needed to gain serious momentum to have any chance of getting back out. This didn’t look very likely considering we hadn’t been able to budge the jammer in either direction! A little bit of panic set in and people started hearing Lions and all kinds of stuff. Machete wielding marauders was the next thing to come into peoples heads! Now to be honest I was a fair bit depressed myself but I just resigned myself to possibly having to sleep in the car for the night. The mozzies didn’t help matters as they started attacking us in the car! How they hone in on us is mad as apparently they,re attracted to carbon dioxide that we breath out so it’s as if they were just waiting for us there! We had my home phone with me luckily and sorry Domino’s but there will be a hefty bill next time! We called all the backpackers and lodges in the place we were staying but only one answered and ironically it was the most expensive place in the town. They were very decent though and we owe them our debt of gratitude as they set about organizing a tractor to come out and pull us out of the sand.
We were trying to get a bit of kip in the car and limit the amount of mozzies could get into the car by keeping the windows up. This led to a fairly uncomfortable two hours where by the temperature in the car rose by 15 degrees and the lack of oxygen started to make us feel sick. We rolled down the windows and took our chances! We were giving up hope on this magic tractor coming to bail us out. It had been over two and a half hours and there was still no sign. The magic tractor joke beared its head. ( Did you hear about the magic tractor? It drove down the road and turned into a field) Well to be honest we didn’t think this one would appear at all and then low and behold we see lights in the distance. Our spirits soared. We hear this booming sound getting louder and louder. I was expecting a Massey Ferguson 155 to come trundling around the corner. It actually wasn’t nearly as wide of the mark as I thought as a Big Ford something or other came along with one light working and blue smoke pluming out of the back. Down jump two black lunatics who had only a few words of English between them like, Truck (Tractor) and Push ( Drive ). The guy who was the driver of the tractor was either half sauced or stoned. I couldn’t figure out which but he was mad as a brush. He tried to tie the rope to the steering column at one stage and I had to re direct him and the rope to the chassis. I had visions of the engine being pulled straight out of the car along with the bumper and the bull bar.
So Chico as he called himself started to drive with the more sensible Jonas supervising. It was like a scene from the movie Dumb and Dumber with the two of them arguing constantly. Before we had even started to be pulled Chico nearly knocked down his partner when reversing! The signs were ominous. We eventually got going and to be honest even the tractor had difficulty with some of the sections. We wouldn’t have made it without being pulled. We were going great guns until the lads suddenly decide to stop. We didn’t even see the guy standing at the side of the road. It was 3 in the morning at this stage and he was standing there with an pick axe and shovel. I won’t go into what we were thinking! We make a couple more stops on the way for the lads and it was bizarre to say the least. At one stage we stopped to pick up an errant shoe that apparently had been fallen off Jonas’s foot the night before. Weird! We eventually made it to the town and then disaster struck. The lads tractor broke down. The battery was apparently dead. Chico wanted me to pull him and you just had to laugh! They asked James to help them jump the tractor and that was hilarious. Dumb and dumber were holdijng the leads to the battery and tryijng to turn the tractor over while getting shocked by the battery every time. The funny part was they wanted James to hold one end and he was having none of it! Between the 3 of them they shocked each other a good few times. It was mental. Eventually I had to try and by pass the tractor but it was blocking up most of the road. Another bit of digging and making sand ladders and absolutely gunning the car got us away and up the hill and to our destination. It was hitting half four at this stage! We met the poor lodge owner and he showed us the room for the night and we were all out like lights. The day had finally ended and we hoped we would be able to take some time and just chill from there on!
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