Limpopo River Mouth

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After all the hours we spent on the bus we were all really eager to stretch our legs.

The previous day we had seen a lighthouse up on a mountain so we all decided to go there and check it out.

The place really reminded me of all those movies of the Second World War in the pacific...

There were some fantastic views from the top.

In the afternoon though we decided to go for another walk, but this time by the river. We started by the beach and followed the river up-stream.

Below is the point where the river meets the sea

It was a nice walk although sometimes it was required to get wet.

After sometime walking we found a place with some tables and a dirt track leading back to the place where we were staying

And again we had a great opportunity to take some nice sunset pictures

Above you can see the lighthouse we climbed to in the morning

This was our last night in Mozambique, the following day would be our last day in Mozambique and we had a long journey in front of us. We were going back to South Africa.

Heading into Mozambique

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In the same way I was positively surprised by the standard of living in Botswana I was also surprised but very negatively by the standard of living in Mozambique...

It is a poor country, and it is as poor as it gets. You can see the devastation of the civil war on the people and the way the live. The Limpopo National Park (The part of the Kruger park that belongs to Mozambique) had no animals whatsoever... not due to the predators as you may think but due to the soldiers and the hungry villagers...

Roads had no asphalt, the "national road" joining Mozambique with South Africa was a dirt track... and there were a couple of places where the "road" disappeared due to some flood in the past so you had to get into the jungle and find the road.

The villages looked like something taken straight from a documentary...

I'm afraid that's not the poor part of the village... that is the village.

But let's back track and start from the beginning before you all get depressed with this story...

The border crossing was a bit more involved than all the others we had done since in this occasion we all had to buy a 50 US dollar visa which is the one you can see on the right hand side

And for that sticker we had to wait for 2 hours and pay 50 US dollars each, not to mention the amount of forms we had to fill in...

When we all got our visas and passports stamped we made our way out of the border and into the "road" which as I said earlier wasn't a road but a dirt track.
Below you can see the "road" and a "road bar" as well.

In a couple of occasions the road just disappeared in front of us and here I have to give credit to the driver, driving a big truck through the jungle it's not an easy feat... The driver just got inside the jungle and found a spot from which we could cross over to the other side of the gap left by the flood that took the "road" with it. Some of the crossings were really tight and narrow but the driver seemed to navigate through them with ease... Not sure what kind of test they have to pass in order to become a truck/bus driver for this kind of adventures but I can assure you not many people would be able to do what he did...

Anyway, for our first night in Mozambique we were to camp nearby a village like the one on the photograph above. The campsite was pretty good, so we put up our tents, made a fire and had dinner...

And at night all the crawlers come out...

I had never seen this type before but it was huge (for an insect, that is).
Mozambique is an endemic area for malaria carrying mosquitoes and there were plenty of those around but for some reason I never got bitten, although I cannot say the same for some of my companions... This campsite however wasn't too bad with mosquitoes, there were some but not too many since we weren't nearby a river nor any other source of water but in our next destination it was a very different story...

The plan in Mozambique was to spend a couple of nights by the Limpopo river mouth. There was some kind of resort there owned by some South Africans. It was nice but we were the only guests in the place. Which is not surprising considering how inaccessible it was and the state of the road from South Africa... clearly not a place for the mass tourism.

The views were fantastic

And we took the opportunity to go for a walk on the beach, after all those hours in the bus we were all really looking forward to stretch our legs.

And when the night came, we all learnt to play "werewolf", a game that I learnt there and I were to export quite successfully to Australia in a later trip. :-) We all got so involved with the game that even when the generator went off at midnight... we carried on playing using our torches in order to see other people faces.

For the following day, we all wanted to do some exercise, after all the time we spent in the bus for the past few days we couldn't wait to move our legs so we had big plans for the following day...

South Africa - Botswana - Mozambique

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This was an organised excursion throughout the Kalahari desert and a tiny bit of South Africa and Mozambique that I did back in September 2009.

When I started preparing this trip I thought Africa would be a dangerous country to go to so I opted for an organised excursion instead of going on my own as I usually do. As it was an organised excursion with a Spanish company I thought I would minimise the risks... but as you'll see in some of the posts...the risk of getting eaten by some wild beast were always present and I felt, sometimes, that the risk was way out of my comfort zone. The good news though is that I survived the experience and I enjoyed the experience so much that I intend on going back to Africa again...some other time. :-) Everyone needs a little bit of adrenaline in his/her life...that makes life worth living!

The trip started in Johannesburg from there we headed north to Botswana were we spent most of the time, then we went back south towards Mozambique and made it back to Johannesburg in order to catch our flight back to Spain.

It was about 25 days, we had a guide, a cook, a driver and someone helping the cook. Nonetheless we had to do the washing up after every meal, set up our tents etc, in other words it wasn't the kind of excursion where they do everything for you, you actually had to do some work! :-)

This is an overall description of the itinerary:

First we went from Johannesburg to the Madikwe Game Reserve

From there we went to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve

Then back to South Africa in order to visit the famous Kruger Park and then off to Mozambique, where the Limpopo river meets the sea.

There were many miles ahead of us, great extensions of land most of it without any road and through some of the most inhospitable terrain well away from civilization. If you are looking for an adventure, this is it! it doesn't get much more adventurous than this!


But I think it's time you get to meet the rest of the gang. Unfortunately I've been unable  to remember the staff's names, it's been a long time and their names weren't the easiest to remember. Cook's assistant was from Botswana, the driver from Namibia and the Cook from Zimbabwe.

Front row, from left to right:
Cook's assistant, Reme-DIOS, Paca, Belén, the driver


On the back row, from left to right:
Moi, the cook, Fran, myself, Carlos, Héctor (the guide), Luís, Mercé and Victor.

 The only person missing on that picture is Ina, but you can see her on the next picture at the front fixing her hair.

The trip in itself was very good but what made it exceptional was the group of people I travelled with, they were all well travelled and some were pretty funny which made the trip far more enjoyable than it would have been otherwise and thank God for that!, otherwise imagine spending a month with a bunch of people you can't stand all together in a bus... Someone would have ended up killing somebody else!