Enter the Karoo. We made it through the stinking heat to Cradock that day and headed straight to the Fish River for a swim. While filling up our water bottles the kind owner of the house asked many questions and then gave us 100 bucks. In town we met the bearded wanderers – two brothers who had been on the road for 16 years. They had a small dog on a rope, bags and buckets, a radio and apparently even a TV – luggage with legs. The next day while hitching in the middle of nowhere a massive thunderstorm struck in the middle of lunch. We were drenched thru and standing ankle deep in water in the space of five minutes. Later a truck dropped us off at a Police roadblock on the edge of the Eastern Cape, our roads splitting. We made our way thru the drizzle to the police caravan to ask for water and some petrol for the cooker. The police insisted that we sleep the night in the caravan and dry our clothes under the tarpaulin as it was getting dark and we looked like drowned rats. We agreed. We strung up a wash line; hung up the contents of the bags – even our books – and sat there under cover drinking tea and watching the cars roll by. There had been an outbreak of swine fever in the Eastern Cape and the cops had set up roadblocks on all the exits to try and stop the leaving pork. Dustin and I chuckled quietly to ourselves – the irony of the pigs trying to prevent pigs from escaping was just too much. Consequently we never saw them searching any vehicles. They were a good bunch and asked many questions, not believing that we were doing such a mission without a firearm. I awoke the next morning to the sounds of the boss going mental. “Wie se bladdy goed is dit?” I hastily showed my face, made friends and was given coffee. We escaped to our road, hung out our damp clothes on a barbed wire fence and made mieliepap. As the sun broke free of the clouds the road erupted. Ants attacked us mercilessly and breakfast was eaten while dancing around wildly to some hidden beat.
By nightfall we were in Kimberley at the Big Hole Caravan Park. We walked into town to Steers for the WackyWednesday Special (pay for 1 burger, get 1 free) only to be laughed at and informed that it was, in fact, Thursday. During the night the caravan down the way was robbed of their cell phones. I gave chase but couldn’t catch the bastards. Woke at 4.30 the next morning to avoid paying for the night – alerted a German couple next door: Conney and Aggie: who were driving around SA in a rent a car and were also trying to save a buck. Met them later at the Big Hole (Groot Gat) where we chatted over breakfast made in the car park. The Big Hole is now almost completely filled with water – soon to be the Deep Lake. After walking most of the morning we eventually got to the mine dump town of polluted people, Orkney.
Ryan, a friend from Cape Town who is working out his apprenticeship3 km’s underground on a gold mine, was overjoyed to see some normal people. Over the next 2 weeks we all had much fun climbing mine dumps, swimming in the Vaal, drinking in the madhouse pub, Musketeers (must-get-beers) and discussing the utter stupidity of gold. To get one ounce of gold five tonnes of rock must be blasted out from sometimes five kilometres underground by thousands of sweating Africans who need to drink 8 litres of water a shift just to stay alive, and hauled to the surface where it is treated with sulphuric acid and other hazardous chemicals to extract the gold. If you work underground for more than 3 years you are cursed to die a horrible death of some lung disease. The waste product of the mines are huge mine dumps of rocks and massive dams of sulphuric acid and rock sludge that, when the wind blows, covers the surrounding towns with a fine white poisonous dust causing everyone to look like members of the Adams family. Billions of Rands are needed to start a gold mine; millions of Rands are paid out every month as wages, yet somehow a profit is made – imagine the rape of the earth. Underground it looks like Swiss cheese and this causes tremors and earthquakes. These are actually quite fun (tremors) and happen on a daily basis – luckily not while I was in the dentist chair. And all this for some shiny little piece of metal that has absolutely no practical value. But that is the world’s economy; what can you do? The idiocy of man.
The highlight of our time in Orkney was our visit to Le Tsatsi Big Cat Farm. We paid R35 each and got to follow the man with a death wish, Corné, around the compound as he fed all the wild beasts. We saw leopards, cheetahs and the scariest Bengal tiger, ever-scary when only a flimsy fence separated us from them. “Do they ever escape?” I asked. “Oh, ja”, Corné replied, making it sound like a regular occurrence, “but we usually get them back.” Then the lion cage. Twenty or so lions paced around hungrily as the red bakkie drove through the open gate full of sheep carcasus and one very scared looking black man on the back, clutching desperately to a length of black PVC pipe, his only protection. Corné strolled in also carrying a black pipe and began shouting and smacking the beasts on the head as they surrounded the bakkie and the now white African. While this happened the gate was open and one male lion, seeing the open fields beyond, made his mad dash for freedom straight for us, the open mouthed meat in clothes. Well to run meant death, so the three of us just stood there in shock, my heart forgetting to pump and my hands rattling all over my camera as I tried to change the battery. What do you do, besides foul your breeches? Let me tell you this: a human is absolutely no match for a lion no matter what you might think. Corné came to the rescue with his little black straw, shouting at the man eater like it was some under-achieving pupil. Corné looked worried – he had forgotten to make us sign the indemnity forms at the gate. The lion faltered, unsure of himself and then slunk back into the cage. Whew!! My heart slowly settled back to its normal rhythm. We had all felt man's primal fear, and lived.
We went with Ryan to his dad’s house in Welkom for a full on Christmas dinner on the 16th, prepared by Ray’s girlfriend Liz and her pretty daughter. Crackers, party hats and bloody good food, lekker. After supper the whiskey flowed and out came the WW2 303 rifle and the pump action shotgun. Swam in the pool the next day and chatted with Katie’s ridiculously hot friends Monica and Jo. Got kidnapped for another night and then left the next day headed for Nelspruit.
Ryan dropped us off outside Kroonstad in his dads BMW in the middle of a lightening storm (luckily we had bought ponchos in Klerksdorp). Shot bru.
Over the next few days we passed thru Harrismith, Ladysmith, Volksrus and then into Swaziland at the Oshoek border post. Many lifts, including 3 single women (must be doing something right) and a South African kung fu champ George Coetzee in a truck. Bumped into a friend while at a police roadblock.
Well, got to Swaziland in the early evening in thick mist – couldn’t see more than 20 metres – we walked into a strange country and couldn’t see anything; we had to find a camp spot. After many misses we finally found a patch of grass in the rain not knowing where we were, reggae music playing somewhere nearby. Woke up next to a small explosives factory and made breakfast under a bridge in the rain. Got a lift to Piggs Peak along the most beautiful road I’ve ever travelled – small kraals stood sentry over lush, green hills dotted with cattle while thick jungles and rivers steamed in the valley below. Young girls dressed in banana leaves danced on the side of the road while people on bicycles, donkey carts or foot ambled by. We spent a few days in Swaziland – the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. We visited many waterfalls, had many run ins with cattle at the camp spots and sat out one hectic lightening storm on our sleeping bags, careful not to touch the ground, our knees tucked under our chins. A lightening storm in a house is lekker, in an open field next to a river in a small tent is pretty scary especially when you cannot hear yourself think. Some years ago Dustin, Mike and I were nearly hit by a lightening bolt (4 metres away) while hitching at night near Plett. A lightening bolt is one solid beam of raw power with a snap that is the loudest thing you will ever hear.
Down a heavy gravel mountain pass where they still shoot lion and elephant from time to time and into Barberton on Christmas Eve where we bought a bottle of whiskey and a chicken. Parked off all day Christmas day playing cards while drinking and listening to the African music playing from all the taxis at the next-door braai area. Later I fell out of a tree, giving Dustin something to laugh about. Then to Nelspruit where we stayed at Safubi caravan park for free after making friends with George, the owner, and hearing evil tales of malaria. An extremely dangerous form of malaria called Cerebral Malaria now exists that attacks the brain. If you survive you usually lose your memory. His wife was in a coma in ICU for a good few days and now cannot function properly. Scary stuff. We met some cool people, Jeff and Nicolene and are house sitting at their parents farm just outside Whiteriver while they are house sitting a film producer's mansion up the road. We have been staying here and at Safubi for the last couple of days, waiting for my dentist appointment at the government hospital and for the Mozambiquen embassy to open.
Big New Year's bash at the stables with the sun coming up too soon. Dustin spent the whole of New Year's day in the men’s toilet at Safubi alternating between lying on the bench and sticking his head in the toilet. The humidity here is bad and if you have a hangover here you have a HANGOVER. Sleep is impossible in a tent as it turns into an oven; outside the flies and ants never leave you alone. A long shitty day. To go to the shop I jumped in the pool fully clothed before attempting the 2km walk up hill and bringing back a coke which settled Dustin’s stomached. As usual met many crazies on the road on this leg of the journey: Charmine Phillips’s (of Bonnie and Clyde) brother Mark and Willy the mad boxer who did 12 years in prison after tying someone to the train track, drinking a bottle of brandy and waiting for the train, as well as many others too mad to mention. I write this from the stoep of the farm while thunder and lightening flash across the sky, the dog pukes on the floor and the hippo in the river at the bottom of the garden does whatever hippos do.
Leave for Mozambique soon: Landmines, malaria, floods, potential hostile natives, AK47’s, wild beasts and foot rot. Keep you posted.
Positive Tim
PS. Feel free to suggest any interesting places you would like us to go and we will try to get there if we can, bearing in mind we only look at the site once a month and unless you send us some guns and a tank, war zones are a no go. Also I have lost all my phone numbers so if you want please put them in an email. To my sister, Niks, hope you and the little ones are all right; send something please. And lastly I’ll leave you all with this: He who makes no decision, decides in favour of the outcome.
