Macaneta

On my Sunday in Mozambique we went to a beach south of Maputo, a trip involving avoidance of potholes on the main road, a river crossing on an aging ferry, half an hour on a badly rutted dirt and mud track (4x4s coming into their own), and young boys hitching rides on the backs of the vehicles without permission (stopping and telling them that this is dangerous has no effect; they get off but then jump back on as soon as the doors close; but then we were moving pretty slowly anyway so perhaps it wasn't all that dangerous). Then we got to a beautiful white-sand semi-deserted beach with the breakers of the Indian Ocean rolling in and depositing large crabs on the beach - which then immediately dashed back in to the water. Apparently the likes of Sting go to high-class resorts on Mozambique's offshore islands - and as mentioned earlier the country has a thousand kilometres of white sand beach to choose from.

I paddled but didn't swim, mostly because the water was cold (it's autumn here, after all) - my friends who live in Mozambique were tougher and went swimming. Later it occurred to me to ask them about sharks. "No, no sharks here," they said. "Or only small ones, anyway, they wouldn't attack you." (pause) "On the other hand they have sharks in Durban and that's just a couple of hundred kilometres away." (pause) "Well we haven't heard of anyone being killed yet."

Above: the ferry; Macaneta's main road; the beach; fruit salesmen (inedible fruit, in reality; the sales pitch was that we should buy these objects "por effetta" - decoration only); persistent hitchhiker; road crab (not a sea crab); the river at sunset.

Maputo

Last weekend I went to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique - a one hour flight from Joburg - and a different world. It reminded me of.... Rio de Janeiro, where I lived as a teenager. This shouldn't have surprised me, as Rio and Maputo have a similar colonial background, share a language, have a similar racial and cultural mix (although Maputo is clearly more African in some ways) and are both on the sea. It was weird for me, though, because I haven't been back to Brazil since I left at the age of sixteen (a number of years ago...) and the recognitions hit me on a semi-forgotten emotional level.

It's an attractive city, with tree-lined streets, crumbling Portuguese colonial architecture, and a long straight beach either side of the estuary that runs into the city's port - the beach to the north runs for more than a thousand kilometres until it hits Tanzania. The feel of the city is relaxed - it's okay for tourists to wander around, even on their own while carrying a camera, during the day in the main streets at least, and the hassle level is low; muggings are not unknown but without the disproportionate levels of violence that sometimes occur in Joburg. So, a good place for me to use my legs for once and generally decompress.

It's not so rosy in Mozambique for the residents, however - it's still a post-conflict country with a struggling economy, and the infant mortality and life expectancy rates are among the lowest in the world; GDP per capita is a mere $465, compared to $5,700 for South Africans and a whopping $43,800 for Brits. Education is also a struggle - the school buildings are enormous but not big enough - there are three shifts a day to get the kids in. A million school-age kids still don't go to school at all, and half the teachers in Mozambique have no teaching qualification. This is 16 years after the end of a civil war which lasted fifteen years - a sad reminder that it takes many years, if not generations, for a country to recover from war.

Above: wedding party in a park; mouth of the estuary; a wicker furniture shop spreads out near the beach; batiks for sale.

Sperlonga (not in SA)

This blog has become something of an occasional endeavour - apologies to anyone who takes the trouble to check it regularly (hi Mum andDad!). The past couple of weeks I was in Italy - so couldn't post on SA (good excuse). Now I'm back to pre-election SA - there's a big rally in Johannesburg today but it's easier to see the highlights on TV than to actually attempt to get there through the vast crowds - I feel a bit guilty about not seeing Nelson Mandela live on the podium, but on the other hand he's too old and weak now to actually make a speech (a pre-recorded contribution was broadcast at the rally) - he just sits quietly in an armchair, smiling and waving his hand to the music occasionally. His presence alone however is a good boost for the ANC - Jacob Zuma, whose corruption charges were dropped by the prosecutor's office two weeks ago, looks very happy to have Madiba (as Nelson Mandela's called here) give him this very visible endorsement. In fact Zuma seems to be in victory mode already - there's no question that the ANC will win the elections, and as a newly elected President he'll presumably be in an even stronger political position than he already was. BBC World has been showing interviews with people who intend to vote for parties other than the ANC - they all know they can't win, but they all hope to reduce the ANC's "arrogance" and make the point that SA isn't a one-party state, even if it seems that way sometimes.

Other thoughts on returning to Joburg after Europe: well I have to get used to not walking anywhere again; that's a freedom that can be taken for granted in Italy, at least in the places I go to. The weather was good in Italy and it's also wonderful here, very similar in fact, the storms have stopped as we enter the dry "winter" season - so blue skies every day and temperatures of 23 degrees or so during the day. My sense of the seasons is completely confused - at this point I've had a full year of early/mid/and late summer; the cold weather, when it comes, will be a shock.

Above: Sperlonga beach

Other moments

Above: zebras usually run away, it isn't easy to get close to them. In this case - in the Lion and Rhino park near Joburg - this mother and child were standing next to the road and continued to stand there when I stopped next to them. Leaving the park I went round a corner and nearly drove into two rhinos crossing the road. The white stripes are bird poo - egrets like to stand on rhinos' backs, presumably because they can pick up loads of insects when their hosts root around in the ground. Game drives are at dawn and dusk - which means you see stupendous sunrises and sunsets, one of the great aesthetic pleasures of SA.

Hippo attack

At Monate lodge we also had an exciting encounter with a couple of hippos. The hippos live in a pond with a levee around it, so the (constantly death-defying) ranger got off the jeep and climbed the levee to see where they were. They were on the far side of the pond, so the ranger allowed us to climb up next to him. The hippos started swimming towards us, which I thought was friendly of them - we probably should have brought buns, or something. Half-way across the pond the big male stopped to yawn, massively.

"He's displaying," the ranger said. "Back on the jeep, everyone." I thought this was a suggestion rather than an order, so I lingered, hoping to get a better photo when the hippos came closer (it was sunset, the light was poor, and I was getting shakey photos). "We have to go," said the ranger. "If he comes out of the water he'll come up this bank very fast." I looked around and saw that my fellow guests had disappeared. Oddly enough I still felt reluctant to go - can such a big animal really heave itself out of the water and run up a slope at speed? Surely we'd have plenty of time to wander back to the jeep? The ranger was half-way back to the vehicle, abandoning me to my fate (this, presumably, is why you always have to sign a waiver of indemnity form in these places - if you get squashed by a hippo it's nobody's fault but your own). Wimps, I thought - but then I suddenly felt very lonely and vulnerable. I turned and ran.

Cheetah release

Last weekend I went to a game lodge north of Pretoria where I saw the usual range of animals (rhino, zebra, hippos, giraffes, warthogs, ten types of antelope, etc) - which begins to seem normal after a while. The most exciting moment was when the guests were invited to watch a cheetah release - these smaller lodges have to actively manage the balance of wildlife to make sure any particular species doesn't get out of hand - in this case they had too many wildebeest so needed a new predator- and they do a good deed by rehabilitating a large cat that's been injured, or raising a young one that's been abandoned by its mother (this is what they tell the guests, anyway; there's a suspiciously large number of these abandoned cats around; they probably kidnap them in Zimbabwe).

This cheetah had been living in a relatively small pen, being fed by the rangers - and it was now time to release her into the "wild" - where she would have to hunt for herself. She hadn't been fed for three days, so in theory should have been keen to get out into the reserve and bag an antelope steak or two. The only problem was that she didn't want to come through the gate, which was a sort of chain fence corridor - she was wary of human constructions, probably very wisely. The ranger's solution to this was to run in front of her dragging his coat along the ground, encouraging her to chase it, which she did several times, stopping at the gate. Each time the ranger approached her she'd snarl and spit and slap the ground and make feints at him - a terrifying sight even from the jeep ten metres away. In the end she came out of the pen - and then watched with interest as the ranger turned his back on her and fastened the gate. Us guests had our cameras ready, still expecting to see the cheetah having ranger burger for lunch - but in the end she wandered away (monitored closely by some nearby giraffes), sniffing the ground, locating, presumably, a supernumerary wildebeest.