These past few weeks have been very hectic and non stop! I haven’t had a chance to write on my blog since my trip to Mozambique! So for all who haven’t heard, my trip was awful!! I mean don’t get me wrong the beaches were beautiful , but i would have much preferred just looking at postcards then actually going there! To start things off we had a late start and ended up getting lost a few times and driving on the worse road in Africa! It was nothing but potholes and dips for 4 hours! when it got dark we didn’t have a clue where we were going anymore and it seemed like a scene from a horror movie, we just kept driving down this endless dirt road and every now and then would pass a person walking along the side with a machete for protection. We were so lost we ended up driving through a couple of villages that were anything but safe! lets just say there was no warm welcome and they wanted us to leave, we couldn’t even stop for more than a few seconds or we would get mobbed for all the luggage in the bed of the truck!
The dirt path we were on suddenly turned to sand and after about 20 minutes we were wandering if we were driving on the actual beach? the very next thing i knew we got stuck in the deepest sand you could imagine! in disbelief we all got out of the truck and worked for the next hour to get the truck out , using everything we could think of, literally laying down digging out the sand with coffee mugs and propping little sticks underneath the tires, but no luck . I did not want to just give in and admit we weren’t going anywhere like everyone else so i was very persistent to try again and again , but by this point everyone was getting pretty tired.
I have never been in a situation where there was nothing at all to be done except just sit and wait. The problem was that we hadn’t seen any sign of life for the last 3 hours of driving, so a chance that someone would come along and pull us out was slim to none. To make matters worse we had to sit in the car with all the windows rolled up because it was too dangerous to just sit outside next to the car and the mozzies were starting to bite like crazy. It was literally so dark where we were you couldn’t see your hand out in front of your face! By some miracle one of the guys cell phone picked up a small signal and we called the most random numbers we could find in a travel brochure until someone picked up ( mind you it was already 1am) Luckily someone picked up and said they would send a tractor our way and it would get to us in 3 hours. Ruling the fact out that we weren’t going to get mugged in the middle of the night or attacked and cut up to pieces , i could finally start to breath and relax.
The heat and long day started to catch up to us and everyone fell asleep in the car or more like passed out because there was absolutely no air ! around 4am we heard the sounds of a tractor pulling up in the distance and just when we thought we were hallucinating we wiped off the humidity on the front window and saw a tractor light pulling up! I felt like i had been trapped on an island for days and i had just seen a plane fly overhead! I was so relieved i jumped out the car, jumped up and down and waved my arms in the air, as if they hadn’t seen us already. Two local African men hoped off the tractor and without even greeting us tied up a massive rope to the truck and connected it to the tractor. The only problem was , they were very drunk and had been out drinking all night before they got our call, so it made me a little uneasy, but who cares ! we were safe! they pulled us for 3 hours through nothing but sand, and it made us wonder A) how do people get to the beaches through a sand road and B) why didn’t anyone tell us we needed a 4*4 truck to get to our destination? when we finally got within minutes to the small town the tractor battery had died ! at this point it was morning and all we wanted to do was find a nice warm bed and collapse! the two men thought they knew how to fix a battery and were shocking themselves one by one trying to fix it , we tried to explain to them that we would drive them to town to get help , but their English wasn’t very good, so after another hour of sitting around thinking of a solution they finally gave in and one of them came with us , while the other stayed behind with the tractor.
Just as we were driving to town , we got stuck about 3 more times and had a routine by then to jump out and start pushing the back and jump up and down on the end of the truck while turlough put the petal to the floorboard. Just when we thought the sand was shallow again, we got stuck and the drunk African who was helping us yelled at turlough to get out of the car so he can show him how to drive through sand! without hesitation he jumped in the car reversed about 50 feet and gunned it with all of us standing in the middle of the path. I knew when i saw those headlights coming that he wasn’t going to slow down or stop for anyone so i looked around for a place to jump out of the way, but on each side there was a steep sandy slope! I jumped up and literally grabbed onto a small patch of grass that was sticking out of the sand and was praying i didn’t slip or i would have been hit! When he passed us i noticed one of the guys Ben wasn’t around and when i looked ahead i saw him running full speed from the car with nothing but socks on in the sand , It looked like a scene out of speed or something, at this point we forgot the fact that we were almost ran over and fell to the ground laughing at this hilarious sight. The guy just kept driving with our truck and we pretty much figured with all the luck we had that night, he was going to just drive off and steal it, but he stopped in the distance ahead , after he had cleared most of the tough sandy areas. He then told us to hop onto the bed of the truck for the remainder of the drive and he gunned it again , going so fast that a couple of times he almost threw us out of the truck! at one point i was compeltely thrown into the air , with not one inch of my body touching the truck, when we got to our destination the man said ” Daniela , Daniela are you ok? and I yelled “of course I’m not ok ! you almost killed me!” he casually said he was sorry and laughed. We paid him 700 rand for the help and checked into a beautiful resort with the most friendly and understanding Portuguese man i have ever met, who owned the place. We were a little concerned with how much it would be to stay at a place as nice as that, but he kindly said “lets not talk about prices tonight, you guys have had a rough night”so we didn’t argue and passed out the second we got into the room. The next morning he had sent us complimentary breakfast and let us off with a fair price.
We hit the beach ASAP and it was absolutely gorgeous and gave me the first sigh of relief after a long night. Just as we were laying on the beach and enjoying rest and relaxation, we heard two familiar voices approaching us , and when i looked up i saw the two men who had helped us the night before. Apparently we got a call earlier that morning from their boss accusing us of not paying the men , which was a lie! I was so outraged when i saw these men i asked them about the payment, and they acted like they didn’t know what i was talking about, giving them a very unfriendly welcome, they left within minutes. Later that day the electricity was out throughout the whole town for the next 2 days, and no one had any bank machines, or credit machines at all! so we were dirt poor and pretty much had to scrape by with what we had. When it came time to leave, i was more than happy! We decided since we knew we had to go back on the sand path to be prepared, so we asked a couple of local south African boys who were there on vacation to drive behind us with their truck and help pull us out every time we got stuck. They weren’t really interested but did it anyways , after they had helped us and followed us out of town for about 2 hours we thanked them with beer, rum, and a little bit of cash and headed to our next destination Maputo ( the capital of Mozambique) When we arrived it was enormous! and dirty ! and overpopulated! we found our little Backpackers Inn luckily and to my surprise it was a hostel! Never have i stayed in a room with 10 other people who were complete strangers of both sexes! man talk about uncomfortable! the thought of waking up next to someone you know nothing about put me out of my element, but i didn’t have much of a choice, so i became open minded and decided to bear it.
We went out and walked around the town and within minutes got stopped by the police who patrol the streets and act as parasites, waiting for the next tourists to come along to harass them for anything they have! They would ask for your passport and find the stupidest reason why it was wrong, and say there is only one way to fix it , go to jail or pay money, so the easiest thing to do is to give them money and leave! the next 2 days in Maputo we got stopped at least 4 more times, by the police and it was starting to make me very upset, I couldn’t help but to open my mouth and start talking back to them, but my mates who were with me, basically told me to shut up or ill be going to jail. To make a long story short we got back through the border with no problems , i should have paid attention to the sign at the Mozambique border that read beer, prawns, and beaches because that was the only and i mean only good thing about that place! We took the path through Kruger to get back home! never have i been so thrilled to see the gates back into the wildlife!
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