Author Archives: Alex Laverty

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About Alex Laverty

Recent graduate from USC's Master of Public Diplomacy and UCLA's Master of Africa Studies programs. My interests lie in understanding the interactions between digital ICTs & society. I try to make sense how are these interactions are changing democracy, diplomacy, and development.

The Mozambique Decision

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For the past week, Alisa and I have debated on whether we should include Northern Mozambique in our travel plans during our stay in Southern Africa this summer. We have two weeks in the region before we need to pick up our car at OR Thambo and head to Rustenburg for the England – US match. We have debated whether to spend those two weeks in Mozambique and endevour to head north to the Ilha de Mozambique. It’s a place that has been on our radar since we first looked into heading to Moz on our spring break in 2007 while in Durban. However, we learned that to get all the way up there it would take at least a week to make the journey through the countryside.

I’ve yet to find only one resource that has talked about traveling that far north and it is dated in 2007. Reading the author’s further blogs makes me worried that having only two weeks to get up there and come back would put our plans in South Africa during the World Cup at risk. However, I’m wondering if we’ll ever be so close and have that much time to get up there as we will this summer. We are considering using the four weeks after the World Cup to make the journey, but what state will our funds be in by then?

Most of the blogs I have read on traveling in Mozambique never convey much confidence in the transportation, and while that’s to be expected, I have yet to find a recount of someone pressed for time in getting around the country. The one instance that I did find someone in a time crunch, they had the fortune of teaming up with someone with a 4×4; a luxury that is out of our price range. We also can’t head there in the hopes of someone else making the same journey we are and wanting to split petrol costs.

The question that we posed to the famous backpackers, Fatima’s, was how long would it take to make the journey north. They replied that the roads to Beira were quite good, but going further north was playing roulette. Unfortunately, Beira looks to be a 2-3 day’s drive at the least, and if that’s the best part of the transit system, it would surely be close to double that to reach our destination, thus putting us 9+ days away from Johannesburg if we turned around as soon as we arrived. It looks as if the easiest way to the region would be through Cuamba, which we could then catch a train to Nampula, and then onto the Island. However, it looks like the best way to Cuamba is through Blantyre, Malawi. Even that route sounds challenging. Plus, Alisa does not have the best memories of the 35+ hour bus ride from Joburg to Blantyre…

Alisa is worried that I am too enamored by the challenge and will take us on the journey just to prove that it can be accomplished, and as I read more and more blogs about the journeys through Northern Mozambique, I am starting to agree that it is simply a route that cannot be navigated by two people with limited time. However there is a travel agency offering a $500 dollar package for a three night stay on the island, including airfare. Even though would make a serious dent in our budget for just three days, I am serious considering whether this might be our best and only chance to make it. I am not sure what the allure of the island is beyond the difficulty in reaching it. But I have always had a fascination for seeing the ‘oldest’ or the ‘first’, and on the Ilha de Mozambique, there is the oldest European building in the Southern Hemisphere: a Chapel built by the Portuguese in 1522. It was the first capital of Portuguese East Africa, and has since been named a World Heritage site. All cool facts that increase the desire to be able to say “I’ve seen that”.

The other part of wanting to make it all the way up to Northern Mozambique is the fact that most of Mozambique is still wild. It’s not yet a tourist location, yet on every travel site, that fact is repeated over and over, thus it can only be a matter of time till the beaches of Mozambique become world-renowned and ‘civilized’. A part of me wants to make this journey not just in spite of the difficulties, but also because of them. If we return in 20 or 30 years and make it to the Ilha, and take a chartered tour, or hire a nice car with aircon and set it on cruise-control up the nicely tarred roads all the way from Maputo to Nampula and over to the Ilha, there will be a sense of failure. Challenges like this inspire me and drive me forward, and even as I read how difficult it is to make the journey, it makes the possibility of accomplishing it so much more tantalizing.

So as our accommodations for the World Cup are nearly complete, Alisa and I will spend the next month finalizing the rest of the journey. I’m afraid I won’t be able to convince Alisa of the merits of a adventure to Northern Mozambique, but perhaps we will find another challenging adventure that will satisfy even more…

Trip Planning Software for Mac

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As I started planning our trip to South Africa, I searched the web for software that would help me manage it better than just writing out an itinerary in iCal or Pages. I immediatley noticed the dearth of software until I came upon Knapsack (new link – 2011). It looked the perfect solution.

The ease of use, and ablitiy to print great itineraries made it seem the solution I had been looking for and well worth the cost. That is until I started exploring their application and website, where it was posted under their blog that their company, TinyPlanet Software  was up for sale. AND, there had been no significant update for their software since Aug 2008. That was devastating. Looking at other Mac Forums, many others had lamented the company’s demise and that no one else had stepped into this barren landscape with a competitor.

The biggest draw back to using it now is that their demo only lasts 30 days, and I thus I would have to pay 40 bucks for a piece of software that is nearly defunct. Plus, their maps function makes planning that much more difficult because there’s no Google Maps integration. It would be worth the $40 if it did integrate and allowed directions to be placed into the itinerary or created inside the program.

The integration with iCal would’ve been great to use and then publish via MobileMe, but alas I’m stuck drawing it out by hand and then simply typing it up. Perhaps there will come a solution before June?

[UPDATE]: Find Knapsack here, at Outer Level.

Underwhelming ticket sales? Not when it comes to finding Accommodation

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Finally had time to start booking accommodation today. I immediately regretted taking nearly two months to start looking. I was definitely not expecting such long term planning by those who had partaken in the ticket process. For months, I had heard anecdotes of people who had turned back tickets or who did not know how they would get to South Africa. This definitely lulled me into false sense of having no urgency in booking places to stay.

That sense was reset today as Alisa and I went down the list of backpackers and hostels and Bed & Breakfasts in the areas located near in the host cities (Rustenburg, Joburg, Bloemfontein, and Pretoria). Granted it was only one day, and I have been able to map out our first 10 days, it is no where near as affordable as we had once thought. I had figured 50 USD per day including food, but we are looking are more like R450 (60 bucks) only on lodging. This is going to significantly impact our budge, but seeing as its only a 16 day stretch that we need to be near match locations, hopefully we can balance it out by staying at some lower end places later on our trip. Many of the more affordable places were predicably already booked, so we’re having to go more midrange, but even that doesn’t help considering most places are raising their rates by 400%. I knew rates would be higher than when we were there in 2007, but this is quite the extreme. We can only hope that rates will come back down once the world leaves ZA in mid July.

In more uplifting news, we got a great rate on a car for a 15 day period between the 10th and the 25th. We went through Tempest Car Hire, who far and away had the best rates. Seeing as Alisa, nor I, have much experience driving with an automatic (our ‘privileged’ upbringing playing a part), we decided to simply stick with an automatic, and we were able to secure a Toyota Corrolla (or like model) for less than 1,000 USD for that period (R6300 to be exact). A significant amount of coin, but this is the most critical period for getting around, and not making it to a match because of transportation delays would simply make any money we saved worthless in the end. If you’re looking for a car hire in South Africa, definitely check those guys out. We looked at Avis, Thrifty, Aroundabout, Budget (who require international drivers licences), Imperial/Europcar, Kenning, Kulula, and 1First. Europcar was the closest by R500.

We’ll be sure to let you know the service and support that they offer for their discounted rates.

Hopefully tomorrow will see finalizations on the lodging part as Alisa and I are waiting for South Africans to wake up right about now and start writing us back….

2010 – Year of African Football

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Since the World Cup in Germany in 2006 concluded, I have had South Africa on my radar as the place I want to be in 2010.

Since graduating from UC San Diego, in my free time that I haven’t been interning, I have refereed over 250 youth and adult soccer games in an attempt to save up enough to fund my the expenses that a return to South Africa and the events of a World Cup would entail.

The football calendar in 2009-2010 has been packed with major tournaments taking place all over the African continent. First, the U-20 World Cup in Egpyt followed by the U-17 World Cup in Nigeria produced exciting football and two new world champions in Ghana and Switzerland respectfully. The African Cup of Nations picked up in Angola at the beginning of the 2010 calender year, starting off with the attack on the Togolese football team, who inexplicably traveled by coach, were attack in the enclave of Cabinda, where a civil war as not concluded. Why Angola thought that Cabinda was sutiable for matches, and why CAF allowed this site selection still has not been explained. The tournament ended with Egypt cementing their status as a legendary team with a third consecutive championship (oddly though, this team has yet to qualify for the two World Cup during is era of dominance).

When FIFA told me that my application for tickets came through with all 5 games that I requested, the pieces started to fall in piece.

Now the plane tickets are booked, the task of planning out the trip pre- and post- World Cup begins. As the three weeks that I have tickets for during the tournament writes its own itinerary, the 2 weeks before and after have to be planned to make sure that our time is best spent getting to where we want to be.

The first match starts in Rustenburg on 12 June, where the US will play England in their opening match of Group C. Then it is on to Johannesburg for the match against Slovenia 6 days later. We head down the N1 to Bloemfontein for South Africa’s final group match against France on the 22nd, then straight back up the N1 to Pretoria where the US will play Algeria 24 hours later. Finally, we have tickets to the Second Round game back in Bloemfontein on the 27th, where if the US finishes second in their group, they will meet the winner from Group D (Like Germany, but could be Serbia, Australia, or Ghana). If the US finishes top of the group, or does not advance, obviously that game would not mean as much, but considering my previous ties to England and Slovenia where I spent significant time growing up, it would not be a loss to go to that match to cheer them on instead.

Time is fast approaching to arrange for accommodation and travel during the tournament. It will be curious to see if it is as tourist filled and as crazy as some predict or whether it will be a bust as some naysayers are predicting. I have been surprised to read how many people who won tickets in the lottery subsequently will not go to SA due to cost of travel. Alisa and I have no intention at staying at hotels during our time in SA if it can be avoided, thus hopefully escaping the heightened prices that established places will be set to charge unknowing visitors. However, planning in advanvce at the places that we frequented on our previous jaunts around Southern Africa has proved best when done weeks in advance, not many months. Thus our planning does not have the same urgency as one who needs to book nice hotel reservations months in advance. Though, we do need to sit and plan where we want to be and how to get from place to place.