the best was yet to come

when we finally got down further south into mozambique we happened upon the most amazing beaches. we spent our time doing absolutely nothing only lazing about soaking up the sunshine and sampling a few local african beer. the daily routine was a little different here thou, morning began at 5am, lunch time was at 9am, the hottest sun of the day was between ten and one ...

after our well earned rest we headed further south to maputo. camping here in the city was a whole new experience. high up on a concrete platform with an almost vertical ladder seemed a little scary to both cathy and me. tom's concern was sleeping on concrete !! from here we were south africa bound ...

we left maputo after one night and boarded a small bus to south africa or so we thought !! we believed we were going to transit through swaziland but when the bus driver stopped at the swaziland border, dumped us there, turned and drove off we realised there was a misunderstanding and 'yes i can take you to where you need to go' really means 'i will dump you at the border and you can find your own way from there' !!

we walked across the border from mozambique to swaziland doing the usual passport control procedures. we almost got ourselves a lift with an old south african couple but they decided not to take us. we weren't concerned as we expected to be mobbed by bus and taxi drivers but it was not the case. we headed off on foot until some local spotted 3 struggling backpackers and helped us with a bus ticket. we went into manzini and from there made our way to the outskirts of the malkerns valley. after some time on foot the long and winding road led us to sondzela's. our mishap into the middle of swaziland was a blessing in disguise. what a perfect place, we even upgraded from our tent to a bed in a dorm !! dinner was cooked for us too on a camp fire, pumpkin and bean/beef stew ... it felt like 5 star treatment even though it was still in many respects completely basic. we spent the couple of days here walking through the fields, mountain biking over the hills and cathy even convinced us to spend our breakfast money on triple chocolate cornetto's which was a delight !!

click on the link on the top right for our photos of mozambique and swaziland ....

photos at last !!!

it's taken almost 8 weeks, tom has perservered endlessly, the internet cafe refused to allow us to upload ... when they did the computers crashed repeatedly but thankfully cape town has helped to sort this all out, enjoy the photos of tanzania and uganda ... hit the links on the top right (Our travelling pics) you should see our scruffy travelling heads !!!!! more to follow soon ...

more mozambique

so our monster journey through mozambique continued. it was a tough one especially those damn bus journeys, the worst been a 23 hour trip from queileman to maxixe. it was the usual story, a scheduled 18 hour journey turned into 23 hours of pure hell. we set off on this sort of old battered school type bus. in the first 3 minutes we narrowly escaped a bus topple ! then the nightmare completely unfolded as they opened the door 2 minutes from the bus station and let any one who wanted onto the bus. each seat held about 3 people and the likes in the middle was jus rammed with children all lying on top of one another. then this women across from me who had 3 children (one hanging from her shoulder, one on her knee and one at her feet) decided to hand me the youngest child who we guessed was about 10 months old. for about 10 minutes it was fun until he kept really forcefully pulling my hair (i think everyone the child ever met had a shaved head or braids) to the point where he was really annoying me, he was teething too so he was slobbering all; over me ! finally i got the child onto someone else's knee but that jus left me wide open for another one. this time i got a girl about 4 years old we guessed. her brothers and sisters seemed in their teens and were lying on the floor so threw her on my knee. 11 hours later i was getting agitated as she was moaning and crying and with a big language barrier i didn't know what was wrong with her. i asked her sister what was wrong and she said she was cold !! obviously her english was not up to scratch because at this stage the child started poo'in on me !! i freaked out and tried to life the child up and push her through the bodies back to her sister !! seriously i'll jus leave the rest to your imagination but it was a horrible final 6 hours ! tom didn't get away lightly either thou, he had a guy next to him who kept piss'in into a bottle and then leaning over and pouring it out the window. how there wasn't a serious fight between tom and this man i will never know. tom now seriously agitated was having words with this guy to the point where they were having a 'staring at each other competition' ... been the only whitey's once again on the bus we decided it was best for him not to pull a punch and eventually we left quietly. cathy somehow managed to sleep through it all