we are on the road again, like the littlest hobo, we just keep movin’ on.
but first things first, after my later posts from the bush it seems that i need to set the record straight. several friends have commented that they have been worried about my state of mind- i’ve had several comments that i sounded very sad in my October posts, and have presented a somewhat downheartened figure.
i didn’t meant to give that impression- i have really been fine, just a little introspective and philosophical perhaps. i’m sure that it is understandable that towards the end of a long hard busy season i’d be getting a little tired, and the novelty of bush living does start to wear a little on the soul of one unaccustomed to such a lifestyle, so my initial raving enthusiasm could hardly have lasted out the whole 5 months (if it had i’m sure you’d have wanted to strangle me! there is only so much ‘WOW! THIS IS AMAZING! IT’S ALL SO BEAUTIFUL! MY LIFE IS AMAZING!’ that any reader of a blog can take!). and inevitably, being out in the bush without all the usual trappings of modern life to distract, does lead one to more introspection, and thus perhaps a more melancholy blog.
but i never intended this to be a vessel for whinging and whining, nor did i intend it to be downbeat and disheartening, just an honest rant and rave about my feelings and the day to day of my slightly unusual life. and i definitely didn’t want to worry any of my nearest and dearest that i was chronically unhappy- not once, even on my most homesick of days have i ever regretted the decisions we made to take the job as bushcamp managers. we have got to have the most amazing experiences, and i am so grateful that we have had those opportunities. as with anything, you have good days and bad days, and i was just being honest in my representation in this blog.
and all i can say is thank goodness i lost my blog entitled ‘The End of Dreams’, or else i’d probably have mum trying to find the number for Zambian branch of The Samaritans!
but, with those things sorted out, let me tell you of our past week since leaving the Valley, and touching down in Johannesburg. oh, it has been so much fun! the things we’ve seen; the things we’ve done; the road signs that are still making me laugh now, days later… even on our first afternoon there was the predictable randomness that you are pretty much guaranteed and that i love about South Africa.
we navigated our way pretty successfully out of Johannesburg airport, and after a nervous few minutes when the road seemed to pull us straight in towards the city centre, we managed to skirt the massive dirty smoggy sprawl that is Jo’Burg. a few kilometres past the city we pulled in to a service station to top up our little hire car, Sparky (it is a Chevrolet Spark, so the naming of this one was easy. this, our last hire car on our ‘big trip’ is small, silver and serviceable, though lacking the character and years of our first, Grover. )
there was a little grassed area just to the right of the petrol pumps, which seemed to house a kind of petting zoo. a little strange for a petrol station, true, but what really raised an eyebrow was the choice of creature to ‘pet’- there were a pair of pissed off looking, those most notoriously unpettable of birds, ostriches strutting haughtily around. i shook my head, blinked a couple of times, but no, this petrol station did indeed have an ostrich petting zoo, alongside its choice of leaded, unleaded and diesel, and dodgy looking fast food. fair enough.
then i glanced at the car parked next to us, and saw that the man sitting in the driver’s seat had a little meerkat with a sky blue collar and lead perched on his shoulder. suddenly the ostrich petting zoo seemed normal…
we hit the road, and the surrealism continued as we saw the same road sign flashing up repeatedly. it had me in fits. it was a large exclamation mark in a red rimmed triangle. surely something very worrying to warn us about? you would think, but the lettering underneath the warning sign said simply ‘Owls for 5 kms’. i’m not sure exactly what the driver is meant to do to prepare themselves for these vicious and terrifying road hazards, but frankly it all felt a bit ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’. it didn’t stop me from taking up the war cry “OWLS!!!” every 30 minutes or so to keep the husband on his feet as he drove!
our first afternoon and evening in South Africa was just one long drive to Piet Retief, a little logging town that has nothing special to offer other than it was a half-way point on our drive to the coast and Sodwana Bay, our first real destination. we had been warned of road works along the way, which could make the drive to Sodwana take nine hours, and pretty soon we were indeed snared up in extensive road works. there was one particular point when we hit a stop sign and some traffic lights at the start of a one way traffic flow that took about 15 minutes to change (it was a very long one way stretch!). at this point the husband muttered something along the lines of “it’s all just got a bit African…. i have absolutely no sense of humour anymore…”. i shouted “OWLS!!” in response, which seemed to raise a smile, and we were shortly on our way again.
the whole situation quickly rectified itself upon our arrival at Piet Retief where we were swiftly welcomed into a massive homey room in a very Afrikaans backpackers, full of chintz and velour but with a very comfortable bed, and we spotted a KFC drive through just opposite. i’m not embarrassed to admit that we got a family meal, and made a very good attempt at devouring the lot- i may have lost momentum towards the end, but i did at least peel off and inhale most of the crispy, salty, familiar flavoured chicken skin. and it was DELICIOUS!
i slept prettily heavily that night with the greasy chicken in my belly, occasionally wakened by what i thought in my sleep addled state was the low rumble of lions roaring, but which of course was only the sound of the heavy logging trucks rolling down the main road.
the next day dawned clear and bright, and we got straight on the road to Sodwana Bay, arriving in the early afternoon at a friendly diving lodge that we had picked at random from the Lonely Planet. the welcome there was relaxed and warm, and my delight at being at our destination was matched and compounded by the affections of a resident massive 8 month old great dane puppy, that bounced around us and was generally adorable. we got showed to our little chalet, which had plug sockets (oh the thrill!) and a little en suite bathroom that was… inside!! A-MAZ-ING!
i admit, after 5 months of living in a tent, my standards may have slipped somewhat, but it was great to finally be at our destination, and have nothing to do other than relax, plan some diving, and think about ourselves. firmly in the mind-set of thinking about ourselves we had a beer, and then went to get some food for that evening’s dinner. being in a supermarket was a massive thrill in and of itself, as was the prospect of cooking for ourselves on the communal braii.
the afternoon’s happy activities were only briefly interrupted when we got the spare blanket out of the cupboard and spread it on the bed, in preparation for a night’s sleep at less than 38 degrees. as i unfolded the blanket over the bed it became apparent that i had inadvertently just unwrapped a surprising little package. i don’t remember my exact words, but the husband said i uttered something like “there is a mouse in the blanket…and another mouse is coming out of it… your job, your job, man job!”. it appeared that we had uncovered a mouse nest (or possibly even a little ‘lat’ nest- we didn’t look too closely) that had been built in the thick folds of the blanket whilst it had been out of use in the cupboard. after a few moments of panic the husband dragged the blanket outside, nest, mouse (rat), mouse-babies (rat- babies) and all. end of the issue. i felt a bit wussy when i requested a clean blanket, and it was only then that i realised how ‘bush-i-fied’ i had become- after our months of living with a resident rat in our tent, snakes in our bathroom and any multitude of creatures just a sheet of canvas and a zip away having a couple of teeny mice (rats?) on our bed seemed frankly like nothing to make a fuss about!
for dinner we cooked steak, corn, and potatoes over the big fire pit, surrounded by the other guests at the dive lodge who were all very friendly and chatty, and after a very satisfying supper and a lovely bottle of hearty red wine we promptly fell into a deep sleep in preparation for an early start the following morning.
we were awake with the dawn, as is now our habit, but lay in bed a little before we headed down to the beach to get in the water for our first dive in a year, and the husband’s 100th dive.
sadly, it didn’t go exactly to plan- the swell was massive, and unaccustomed as we were to the motion of the ocean after many months in a landlocked country by the time we had got out to the dive site and kitted up we were both feeling a little seasick. nonetheless, regs in and masks on we flipped off the boat and attempted a negative entry down to the dive site 30 metres below. unfortunately, my buoyancy had some other ideas and had a bit of an argument with me- i’d asked for an extra weight, but had been told by the divemaster that 5 kgs should be fine. i suppose this should be taken as a compliment- generally the heavier you are the more weight you need unless you are a very good diver, so the master had either assumed i was less fat than i am, or a better diver than i am, which is nice. but after a few minutes of having my head and torso under water but my feet desperately kicking into thin air above the waves it became obvious that i wasn’t going anywhere deeper than a metre or two without the extra weight. the husband was my dive buddy, and he realised instantly that something was wrong, we both met up on the surface, and called the dive boat over. the skipper gave us the extra kg, and we finned down together towards the buoy line, but the swell at the top of the water hadn’t diminished at all and so we soon found ourselves swimming against the current, 17 metres down but entirely unable to see the rest of the dive group. after a few minutes of this we were both exhausted, and not really enjoying ourselves so we decided to abort the dive and return to the surface and the boat. disappointing, after we had been looking forward to it for so long, but ultimately sensible.
we dived again later that morning, which went much better, though i did still struggle with my buoyancy due to some trapped air in my BCD that i just couldn’t dump. i spent the last 10 minutes of the dive with my bum somewhere above my head, and by the time we returned to the lodge that afternoon i had become known as ‘bubble arse’ by the rest of the Afrikaans divers in our group and had lost any dignity! not that diving is a particular dignified sport at the best of times- too much struggling into wetsuits, hauling your exhausted body in and out of RIBS and spit and snot in the mask for dignity to play a massive part!
we had another couple of days in Sodwana Bay, punctuated by dives, puppies and lots of sleeping and catching up with ourselves and the rather excellent HBO series ‘Game of Thrones’ which one of our guests had downloaded to our hard drive earlier in the season. life was good!
after a final dive on Sunday morning (some go to church, we go to the beach!), we reluctantly packed up our bags and hit the road, headed further south to Durban, and Tekweni backpackers, our spiritual home in South Africa.
we drove down the motorway, accompanied the entire afternoon by grey storm clouds and heavy pelting rain, but no OWLS! thankfully... which brings us almost to present day.
we’ve been at Tekweni now since sunday evening, and are just thinking of extending our stay by another night. we are lodging in Room 7, which is rather a grand name for the little shed we are in (seriously, it’s a garden shed, but with a double bed, electricity and a fan, so it’s pretty classy by our bush-standards), and have made ourselves very comfortable. the weather has mostly held, cooling down and sometimes raining in the evenings (its currently pelting down), but being gorgeously sunny and comfortably warm in the day time.
we have whiled away the past couple of days down by the beach, and today we submitted to the glorious cheesiness of UShaka Marine World- a complex of shops and restaurants, a ‘Sea World’ and a water slide park. it was the kind of thing that i would have probably been very snotty about a few months ago, but we just gave in and totally went with it. and we actually had a really great afternoon watching dolphins, testing our fish identification at the aquarium, surrounded by kids and brightly coloured amusements and fake shipwrecks. it was all just so different to what we have been living the past few months, and that in itself made it fun. the aquarium gave me a real craving for one of my favourite things, sushi- funny how the mind works- and we shared a surprisingly great platter at a chain restaurant called Ocean Basket, all of which was made right in front of us. we concluded the afternoon with a purchase of a beautiful tan and white Nguni skin (these are the Zulu cows, and the patterning on their coats is stunning), which is something we have been planning on buying for our as yet imaginary home back in the UK since we left Zambia in February.
so all in all its been another great day in Africa, and i am fully relaxed and falling in love with this laid back life on the road all over again. just keeping an eye out for the OWLS!....
