Tag Archives: South Africa

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….

High level of AIDS myth in Recent Study Caused by Zuma – Zille

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Zille blames Zuma for Aids myth – Mail & Guardian Online: The smart news source.

Not quite sure why this lady is continueing to attack Zuma and the ANC. She brought the full brunt of the ANC and ANCYL on her when she said he put his wives at risk for HIV/AIDS (which no one seemed to think is a given seeing as he has had sex with an HIV+ women and presumably continues to have sex with his wives), but now Zille is using a new study by the University of Stellenbosch that 27% of those youth survey believed  “they could prevent HIV infection if they bathed after sex”. 

I have to admit that during my time in South Africa, I would never have guessed that 1 in 4 youths believed such a myth. Perhaps it was because I was in a university setting that filtered out some beliefs, but this has to be a shocking finding to those in the Health Industry and HIV/AIDS groups. 

This Zuma-slant seems to be a reoccurring problem with the DA’s tactics at the moment. They start fights and say things in interviews that they know will get the ANC’s attention and cause a backlash. This carries over from the campaign of ‘Stop Zuma’. The DA needs to quickly get over that mindset and start to function as a proper opposition or they’ll soon alienate all those people they seek to win votes from.

Instead of going after Zuma over the wives stuff, the DA should be showing that the example that Zuma sets on HIV/AIDS does indeed filter down to the young people of the country. But now the debate is going to be construed in a Zille-Zuma fight and not about the real issue of education people on protection from HIV/AIDS. This also has to surprise people who believed that since the era of AIDS denialism in South Africa that significant progress had been made. The study shows that much more is needed in terms of broad public education, as people in university would see AIDS myths exposed, students that are not fortunate enough to get into that academic setting must be targeted by the education campaigns.