But that’s in 7 days. Today I want to publish some photos from my second overland trip in Africa. After visiting Apartheid Museum & Soweto in Johannesburg, Lion park in the vicinity and watching dozens of DVDs at Mufasa hostel, I was ready for another group exercise only two weeks later to make a vow never to travel this way in my life. But since I only had two weeks at my disposal before moving on to India “14-day Discover Mozambique” trip with Nomad was perfect.
We headed south to Swaziland where we went on a game drive in Hlane Royal National Park. We parked right next to the lion family with the cutest cups ever, almost crashed head to head with an elephant and watch white rhinos at the sunset.
The next two days we spent at Tofu beach, which can be easily reach individually from the capital, Maputo, on a hostel shuttle bus. I did snorkel with a whale shark, the largest fish in the world – breathtaking experience I have to say. The fact that the animal is incapable of biting half of my body off did not really calm me down – the size does matter!
Traveling north of Praia do Tofu is as I understand a bit more cumbersome, but very possible with the right amount of time and patience. We, however, needed not to worry as our half-empty overland truck was jumping over potholes of horrible road on the way to Vilanculos.
I fell in love with Mozambique immediately as it was different from South Africa, Namibia and Botswana; in the latter two you hardly ever see a person with the density of population at 2 pps per sq. km. Mozambique was much. North of Tofu (basically everywhere expect closer to the capital) people seemed to live like Himbas but dressed – in huts, no sewage, no electricity. All women wore sarong skirts and carried everything on their heads. Mozambique is a country of countless banana and coconut palm trees that was still curious about us, tourists.
From Vilanculos we did our two day “sail away safari” on Dhow boat to different islands. We were spoiled by the delicious food served on the beach, crazy clean blue waters, dolphins and sun. Snorkeling near Bazaruto Arhipelago at the Two Mile reef was a dream comes true for me. I cannot think of anything more beautiful than color combinations of those fishes. Were even names for those colors invented in any of the languages?
We spent another two days on the beach at Barra Lodge close to Inhambane and with a stop over in depressing Maputo we came back to South Africa. A small incident did happen at last in my travels! My small camera (and a bottle of perfume!) got stolen from the overland truck on the border of Mozambique and South Africa.
The next two days we spend in Kruger National Park. I finally saw plenty of giraffes that were crossing the roads, blocking the road – in other words, picture perfect behavior.
We took Panorama route on the way back to Johannesburg that absolutely gorgeous as well as touristy. My favorite stop was at the Bourke's Luck Potholes.
And a very logical ending to my African travels was a visit to the Moholoholo Rehab Center where the founder was screaming at the top of his lungs about the worsening conditions of pretty much everything in Africa for the wild animals.
The next night I flew to a very different world of India...
The album on flickr as always
