No Stopping for Lions (22 page)

On the road south of Beira we give a lift to a young Austrian hitchhiker. He's a music producer/documentary-maker currently living in Mozambique. We talk of many things to pass the time and the craziest thing he tells us about is the giant rats trained to detect landmines. Because the relationship relies on trust from both sides, the rats are treated like pets by their handlers and are fed and housed handsomely. For their part, they sniff out live mines and indicate their position then the handlers go in and detonate them before the rats blow themselves up.

Five hundred kilometres south of Beira is Vilanculos, a busy port and beachside tourist town. It's the stepping-off port for divers, anglers and honeymooners wishing to visit the islands of the Bazaruto Archipelago just off the coast, and it is bursting with restaurants, resorts and backpacker hostels. We find Casa Rex, another of those slightly eccentric guesthouses owned by an expat and run by friends or lovers. The room we are given looks out across a vivid blue sea towards the archipelago and below us a broad sweep of beach is patrolled every evening by a resident pack of curl-tailed dogs. The temperature is steamy and for most of the day we are content to sit in the breeze of our terrace or go on short excursions in the air-conditioning of the Troopy. Mornings and evenings we go down to the beach despite the fact that the sand has a suspicious texture and smells as your feet break the surface.

Soon after we arrive a trio of Italian girls checks in. They all work in Malawi and surprisingly not with an NGO or volunteer group, but on salary in the private sector. They're young and friendly and we get into the habit of chatting with them over breakfast coffee. At first just small talk, plans for the day, what we've seen and where we all are going. Then, as can happen on holidays when talking to complete strangers, more personal questions find their way into the conversation. The girl with the best English asks how long we've been married then apologises and says that they've been wondering and couldn't decide whether we were long-time married or newlyweds. ‘You are the partners,' she says, and it takes a minute for us to understand that she means to each other. So after all those miles we've travelled through all those years, this is what Africa has given us in just a few months: the understanding that marriage isn't a competition but a partnership.

Two weeks later Vilanculos is flattened by Cyclone Favio and footage on the news shows Casa Rex looking like Pompeii after the eruption.

Further down the coast is Barra Beach and it would have to be one of the best beaches I've ever seen. Palm-tree lined, wide firm sand, no beach boys pestering us to buy crummy jewellery; there's good surf and clean clear blue water. This shouldn't warrant special mention but does, because in some of the coastal towns — Vilanculos for one — the plumbing infrastructure hasn't been replaced after the neglect of civil war and, out of necessity, people use the shoreline as a bathroom.

Driving out of Barra Beach we pass a middle-aged man standing on the side of the road. Straight-backed and in a shirt buttoned formally to the neck he holds a tin plate in one hand and a small bunch of bananas in the other. On the plate are two avocados, polished until they shine, and he holds his goods out for sale like he's holding the collection plate in church. His pride is clear and I try to imagine what it would be like to have to stand on the street for hours trying to sell the food off my plate.

Xai-Xai is another 500 kilometres further on, through dusty towns now looking more European than African, and on a road which improves the closer it gets to the national capital of Maputo. We book into a lodge for a couple of nights at Xai-Xai Beach, and it is here that we come across holidaying South Africans for the first time in a long time. They don't seem to venture much further north than the relatively safe countries of Namibia, Botswana and southern Mozambique, and many times when we've described our trip to a South African they've looked horrified and told us we are foolhardy and asking for trouble. I suggest to Neil that this reaction must be because they live with danger on a day-to-day basis and assume that it's worse in more ‘uncivilised' countries, but Neil has a simpler explanation: the general population can afford neither the cost nor the time to travel to Uganda or Kenya. If they are going to fly to a holiday destination they're likely to choose Europe or Egypt or Madagascar, where they'll be able to have a new experience and a different culture to explore. This time I'm backing my theory.

Back at the Xai-Xai Beach Resort our neighbours unload iceboxes from their
bakkies
(utes) and talk to each other loudly with snapped grainy Afrikaans accents that I find hard to understand. The men are all big and noisy, wear flip-flops and short shorts and have unruly hair and straining beer-bellies. Their women wear tight Capri pants and glitter on their tops and sandals. They busy themselves wrapping potatoes in foil and making big spiralled coils with long links of
boerewors
, those thick, meaty sausages so loved by South Africans. In no time the group has taken over the pool and
braai
area and a ghetto-blaster is positioned in a strategic spot. The smell of frying
boerewors
and the pop of brandy bottles dances our way and the ghetto-blaster starts up. This music is a strange marriage of styles, half German oompah military and half country and western, but it's good. They are having a marvellous time and invite the rest of us to join them.

After Xai-Xai we drive straight down to Maputo and look for a hotel. We choose one on the beach, a little distance from the noise and bustle of the city centre but close enough to walk to restaurants and cafés.

Another deciding factor is the free Internet connection it offers, as it's time for Neil to start contacting all those to whom we've promised first option when it comes to selling the Troopy. Timing is now becoming an important issue. If the Troopy is sold, we'd like to hand it over as close to our departure date as possible. On the other hand if no one wants to buy it, we'll have to ship it back home, which means finding a sail date that corresponds more or less to our leaving, and then pre-booking container space on the vessel. Negotiations for both eventualities will need to start soon and they'll have to run in parallel until a cut-off date is reached. Neil sends off emails to five of the most promising interested parties and while we wait for responses to filter back we make forays to different parts of the city. Now that we're conscious of our days with the Troopy being numbered we become clingy and drive everywhere on these daily excursions, even though most of the places we want to go can be reached on foot.

The city seems to have been spared some of the destruction wreaked on the rest of the country during the independence battle and civil war. We find some beautiful old Portuguese buildings still standing and in good repair, although there are many that have succumbed to neglect. My favourites are the Natural History Museum, a perfectly proportioned confection of ornate white plaster, and a wonderful private home on a main
avenida
, its ornate façade heavily decorated and tiled. Neil's favourite by far is the railway station. It's still an imposing, well-maintained building, but the tracks terminating inside are rusty, and the numbers have long ago fallen off the arrivals and departures board.

The goal each day is to find somewhere serving coffee as good as we got in a café in Kampala and a restaurant with food to match Beira's. This becomes an uncontested challenge in a city now so influenced by South Africa that all we encounter are Wimpy outlets and cappuccinos made with boiling milk and burnt beans. The food in Mozambique generally has been pretty good. Apart from the chicken at Club Nautico and the grilled tiger prawns at Pique Nique, my favourite is sultana jam, which is
the
best thing to spread on toast and pastries. And at Barra Beach I had
matapa
for the first time, a southern Mozambique staple of peanuts, coconut and clams cooked up with pumpkin leaves. Sounds a ridiculous combination but the one I had, which substituted prawns for the clams, was out of this world despite looking like vomit.

By our own measure we've zoomed through Mozambique — 2000 kilometres in ten days — but there really hasn't been anything to tempt us to stay longer. Until the country sorts out its national parks it only offers beaches, islands, diving and fishing for tourists, and for us they aren't enough to make us stay longer.

Before we left Beira we thought about heading up the coast to Pemba and the Quirimbas Archipelago in the northernmost province, close to the Tanzanian border. We'd read that Ibo Island in particular would be worth a visit — an atmospheric, crumbling blend of Muslim and European in an unspoilt area of great natural beauty — and the island reef ecosystem in the surrounding Quilálea Marine Sanctuary is said to be the most significant in the Indian Ocean. However, the diversion would have involved a number of days driving through regions not geared to tourists, on bad roads, with few attractions along the way. Worth the effort? The truth is that our heart just wasn't in it. It felt wrong to turn around and head northward after being in a big clockwise circuit for so long; it would have been going backwards at a time when we were on the homeward run.

So now here we are at the southern tip of Mozambique, poised to enter South Africa again ten months after arriving in Cape Town last year. Then, we thought we were prepared for any outcome and had considered most possibilities on the practical side. And we had, as it turns out. Neil has been thrilled that the Troopy has performed so magnificently, and I'm impressed that we managed to pack the right clothes and the right equipment to meet all eventualities so far. What we couldn't have anticipated, however, was on a more personal level. The thrill we both continue to get from visiting national parks and seeing their wildlife, enjoying the hospitality and friendship of strangers and, more than anything, the satisfaction of travelling together and sharing experiences, both good and bad. Even though I was confident that our nation of two would be united and strong, I couldn't have anticipated that it would be this good, and feel this true. When I've said from time to time throughout the journey that I've never been happier than doing what I was doing at the time, I meant that I've never in my life been happier.

Strangely enough, we weren't concerned about our personal safety before we arrived, and now that we're here and the months of travelling have rolled by we've become even less so. We've never felt wary of anyone, nor have we ever thought that we've wandered into a dangerous situation. We've taken few risks because few have arisen, and anything different, even confronting, we've chosen to see as an adventure.

But I think that, beyond the animals and adventures, it is the heart of the people of Africa that has affected us the most. Their infectious optimism, their stoicism and grace in the face of hardship, and their understanding and acceptance of life's calamities. Even though Neil has taught me to look beyond the pathos and to look for the rhyme and reason, I am still, every day, inspired.

The South African border is just a short 100 kilometres from Maputo on a wide, multi-lane, tarred highway. It's good to be back on this sort of road, and after months of being in the Third World I'm excited when we reach the town of Nelspruit. It's modern and thriving, and we can stay in a stylish B&B and go shopping for familiar things in a well-stocked supermarket. As we first drive through the streets we can tell that here things are run efficiently, and rules and regulations are adhered to. The houses have been built by people with tastes similar to ours and there's a comforting amount of rage on the road as people speed around in expensive new cars.

The Troopy needs a service so we agree that while Neil takes it to Toyota I'll go window-shopping in the centre of town. I'm very excited and head for the first department store I've seen in many months. In Women's Wear there are new-season clothes and, even better, racks of sale items to browse through, and there's a Homewares department with interesting things like slingshots and big plastic pestles. But something isn't right and I'm not really enjoying myself. In fact, I'm losing interest fast and getting anxious, wondering if Neil has found the right address and whether he's taken something to read while he waits. The time drags. We're both early when we meet up at the appointed café for lunch and chat away as though we've not seen each other in months.

It's in Nelspruit that it starts to sink in that we really are on the home stretch; that the hardest but more rewarding part of our adventure is coming to an end. The dream run has run its course and we'll soon be back to a world of responsibilities and obligations. As we've driven through country and village, and weeks have turned into months, we've begun to think of ourselves as free spirits, detached from everyday life. Now there's a time frame to consider and business to attend to — the despatch of the Troopy — that involves a certain amount of attention and forward planning.

Neil has received the first positive response from one of the people he emailed in Maputo. We never really doubted that we'd be able to sell the Troopy here when the time came — the possibility had turned into a given by the time we'd granted first option for the fifth time. We know that it's the sensible thing to do; we'll have no use for the Troopy back home and all indications are that we'll get a better price for it here, plus we won't have to fork out for the return shipping expenses. But now that the prospect is becoming a reality, not just something on the horizon to be dealt with later, the sense of imminent loss first experienced in Maputo sits permanently behind us on the backseat.

Regardless of what's on the horizon there's still a lot for us to discover over the next month or so. Places of history and nostalgia for Neil, and one of the most well-known national parks in the world just a stone's throw away. It's weeks since we've been in a wildlife park and the prospect of visiting Kruger National Park makes us eager to get moving. Neither of us has been to this park before and our expectations are high, for not only does it have a reputation for exceptional game viewing, but it will enable us to recapture the thrill of the wild that we've become addicted to.

Kruger, South Africa's largest game reserve, sits in the far northwest of the country, bordered by Zimbabwe to the north and Mozambique to the east. It's huge, nearly 2 million hectares, and is home to large populations of game as well as an impressive diversity of flora and ecozones. It has a reputation for responsible park management and is a leading participant in the world of endangered species protection and breeding. Kruger is now part of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, a peace park that links Kruger with the Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe and the Limpopo National Park in Mozambique. Combined, they will all form a truly monumental park once Zimbabwe's present woes are overcome and the depletion of Mozambique's game during the civil wars can be addressed.

Our plan is to enter Kruger roughly halfway up its western border, travel to the north then sweep down to the bottom in a big S. We've booked chalet accommodation in seven of the park's rest camps and bush camps, as Neil is convinced that rainy patches will prohibit camping. In truth we abandoned the idea of camping long ago, but we feel obliged to justify our extravagance with a token excuse every so often.

The road, which runs parallel to the western boundary of the park passes through townships, farmland and private reserves. The drive is uneventful until we hit a swarm of bees. Splat! Suddenly the windscreen is totally covered with yellow fatty bombs making visibility nonexistent. Luckily Neil knows what has hit us and straight away uses the windscreen wipers and water spray before the stuff sets hard. Other drivers aren't so quick off the mark and we see them swerving to a halt wondering what the heck has hit them.

Each day in the park brings something special and unexpected. Like parking by a riverbed at dusk to watch two fish eagles hunt using daringly executed teamwork. They launch themselves from a tree overhanging the river, trapeze artists calling to each other in their high, haunting language, swooping and dipping right over our heads. With one long shrill call the first one swoops down low and fast over a crocodile. As the croc snaps the air in annoyance, the second bird drops from the sky and whisks up a fish from right in front of the croc's jaws.

One morning we come upon two young bull elephants, sparring, practising for more serious times ahead. One uses a branch held in his trunk while the other repeatedly whacks his opponent over the head and shoulders with a trunkful of grass. He doesn't look as though he means real harm, more like a transvestite wielding a handbag in a backstreet brawl.

Overall though, our visit to Kruger has been a little flat. Try as we might, we can't shift that pesky feeling that we're in a large, wild but ultimately controlled environment. We try not to compare it with the raw excitement of parks such as Katavi but there is no ignoring the mass of visitors (6000 available beds at any one time), the tarred roads, and the atmosphere of a well-run metropolis that the main camps exude. In retrospect we've been a bit too ambitious in the distance covered, and it's been too much driving for Neil when you add morning and evening game drives. He's a bit gamed out at present, and even the sighting of three male lions gazing out over a waterhole from a thorn thicket so all-concealing that the cars before us have failed to see them receives just an ‘Oh yes, good spotting', and a brief pause for photos before we're gone.

On our last day we're driving out of the park, having just left the night's camp, when we come upon cars pulled over, binoculars and cameras trained on the river below the road. ‘Look, look at the crocs!' comes from the nearest vehicle. ‘Oh yes, lovely,' replies Neil, then he rolls the Troopy past, intent on continuing on. ‘No, the hippo!' insists our friend. We get the binoculars out to see what all the fuss is about: in the middle of the river are dozens of crocs feeding on the body of a hippo while 40 or 50 more are fanned out in formation, waiting for an opportunity to sidle in. I have just enough time to attach the telephoto lens and take a photo when I feel the Troopy moving off. ‘But what about the lions?' our obliging neighbour whispers, pointing into the bush beside the road. A group of adult females has apparently just crossed the road in front of his car, heading for the river. ‘Great, let's sit here and wait for them to move into that clearing,' I whisper to Neil, while I hurry to now remove the telephoto lens, but the Troopy is already slowly rolling away, heading for our next destination. I didn't think I'd see the day when there'd be no stopping for lions.

The tiny kingdom of Swaziland is a few hours' drive south from Kruger, bordered on three sides by South Africa and by Mozambique on most of its eastern front. It is a mountainous land, with bare rolling peaks interspersed with large-scale agriculture. Ruled by a unique system of dual monarchy, its king, the world's last absolute monarch, shares the balance of power with the queen mother. This is one of the places I've wanted to visit from the start, as I've always had in the back of my mind a newspaper photo of the colourful ceremony in 1968 when Britain granted autonomy to Swaziland.

What was I expecting? Intricately woven beehive huts and warriors in exotic costumes like the ones shown in the newspaper? Instead, what I see are people dressed no differently to those around them in South Africa, poor villages and a wealthy, Westernised capital. To the casual eye, it's a clone of South Africa, but here's a nation that's always been a kingdom and never had apartheid. It has its problems, though. It seems that the natives are restless, that the pro-democracy movement is alive and sometimes subversive and that there is dissatisfaction with the extravagant spending and lifestyle of the king, but he does have an expensive responsibility to bear. He must take many wives from across the kingdom in an ongoing quest to bring new blood into the royal family and to ensure national unity. Maintaining the hierarchical lineage while avoiding inbreeding has been managed through a brilliant but simply executed plan, but I still can't see how everyone isn't related to the royal family by now. And sadly, the king's subjects could be emulating his approach, as I see in a recent paper that Swaziland recently overtook Botswana as the country with the world's highest rate of HIV/AIDS. This might also explain the announcement in the same paper for the Swaziland International Trade Fair, proudly sponsored not by Telkom or Mercedes-Benz but by Trust Condoms.

There are many new and expensive cars on the streets of the capital Mbabane, and sophisticated men dressed in designer casuals frequent the bars of clubs and hotels. The traditional dress is nowhere to be seen except in photos of the king looking paternally down on his subjects from every hotel lobby and shop wall. In one or two of these he's draped in a colourful but decidedly unregal cloth and has cut-out red feathers on his head, a proud secretary bird trying to attract a mate.

By now Neil has had two more positive responses from prospective Troopy purchasers. The others have declined or moved on, so Neil becomes absorbed in reeling in one of the three interested parties. At this early stage he's still buoyant, sure of a sale and hopeful that it'll be at the price we're after. He's adopted the salesman's focus that I saw in him during campaigns at his work, and he's forever scheming, constantly looking at alternative ways of baiting the hook. He's in his element.

We stay overnight at a place called Nisela Safari Lodge, recommended by a local, and which turns out to be a hunting game farm. A game drive over its acreage is somewhat unique when the guide points to a handsome antelope and says, ‘Kudu, 15 000 rand,' then at a female impala, ‘500 rand'. It doesn't take us long to work out that these figures are the cost of shooting the unfortunate animals, but the accommodation is good and very cheap, subsidised by the hunting season, I suppose. We're given the Impala Honeymoon chalet and it's terrific. Large, with a dressing room, a big bathroom decorated to give the impression that we're in the forest, and a wide, shady verandah where in the evenings we sit and watch the wildlife wander past. Incongruously, two donkeys graze nearby and the next morning the guide informs us matter-of-factly that the donkeys are purchased locally to feed to the lions. Yes, the lions. Unfortunately, there are only two males left because the females have recently been sold off. I tell myself that this is to avoid inbreeding, but deep down I know that they went to hunting lodges. We're taken to see the males and as our vehicle approaches their enclosure the guide whistles loudly and beeps a little tune with the car's horn. Time to perform. But this is Sunday, and on Saturdays the lions are given a quarter of a donkey so all we see is one magnificent mane in the long grass in the distance, a contented nod the only recognition of the paying public.

I'm not against farming wild animals and I can see the argument for breeding some species for the hunting industry, but it still irks me to know that there are people out there who get a kick out of shooting an animal that doesn't run away or that is confined in a cage. It's cowardly and unsportsmanlike and wealthy people do it just because they can afford to. Perhaps our stay at Nisela follows on too closely to footage shown on South African TV of the shooting in a hunting concession of a lioness, just separated from her cubs and put in an enclosure no bigger than the average Sydney backyard. Some big brave hunter shot her but couldn't even execute a clean kill with one shot. The force of his overpowerful gun threw the lioness into the air more than once before she mercifully died. Her cubs watched on through the fence. The scenes were so horrible that it forced the South African government to phase in legislation banning what's known as canned hunting. Then there are the hunters who can't afford a lion and just want to shoot something, so they'll kill a zebra or a hippo, both of which are hardly moving targets and present no sport whatsoever. The letters to the editor pages of hunting magazines I flip through are overflowing with explanations from shooters trying to justify their bent, and some of the reasons are so ridiculously philosophical that they inadvertently reveal the true nature of the writer.

Back in South Africa, we head for the Weavers Nature Park near Hluhluwe. It's advertised as being a secluded private reserve and the cottage I particularly like the look of is called The Canopy, another honeymoon suite as it turns out. The pictures on the website make it look comfortable and classy all at once, and the kitchen looks to be large and very well equipped. Neil isn't so keen and is unimpressed by the photos, the location and the isolation. He wants to be near an Internet café where he can keep his finger on the pulse of the Troopy's sale. We arrive at the managers' house and as we pull up a back tyre slowly hisses to a flat. We're parked in loose sand and at a slight angle, which presents a bit of a problem for changing tyres, so when we finally arrive at our little love nest Neil just wants to sit down with a beer and have a cool shower. I open the front door to a room dominated by a massive and over-dressed king-sized bed. ‘Where's the chairs?' grumbles Neil. We look in the bathroom, which has a giant spa, twin basins and a whole wallful of storage space, but no shower. This is too much for Neil, particularly after the manageress wouldn't come to the party when he asked politely for stand-by rates. Luckily, I find a light switch and pull open the heavy curtains to reveal a wonderful lounge area with big comfortable-looking sofas on the verandah, and in a few minutes we discover an outdoor shower on the back deck. From then on it only gets better and we wander the reserve in the early mornings and late evenings, and are visited by monkeys, buck and bush pigs throughout the day. The seclusion is addictive and in a couple of days Neil stops talking about offers and counter-offers and can be found on the verandah dozing, an old copy of the
Economist
flopped open but face down on his chest.