HoliDAZE: My Holiday Trip to Mozambique, Johannesburg, and Namibia

One day at the office, I get a frantic phone call from Scott, my travel partner for my trip to Mozambique, telling me that we might have to change our itinerary.  His worries?  That there would be no accommodations left because everyone who is anyone goes to Mozambique for the holidays, and we were a week away from departure.  A few e-mails later, I get spots confirmed at backpackers lodges in all of the places we were planning to hit, and I get the satisfaction of telling Scott to snap out of it, or in my words exactly (and in all caps), “CALM THE FUCK DOWN.”

Calming the fuck down was exactly what had to happen for my holiday.  For the better part of December into early January, Grassroot Soccer, as well as most of South Africa, shuts down.  As you may remember from basic elementary science class, seasons are switched in the Southern Hemisphere, so while all of my friends and family in America were braving the “polar vortex,” Southern Africa was baking in the hot sun during the heart of the summer.  Having the holiday season during the summer adds to the lax atmosphere, and the entire region seems to slow down for a few weeks (except for the big tourist destinations that see a huge spike), but I guess that’s generally what happens during the summer/holidays anywhere you go in the world.

My first stop, after a few days of serious “me” time in Port Elizabeth was a weeklong jaunt to Mozambique with fellow intern buddy Scott.  Most of the time would be spent in Tofo, a quaint beach town at the end of a small peninsula that is a huge attraction this time of year, a roughly 9-hour bus ride up the coast from the capital of Maputo where we’d spend the rest of our week.

We arrived in Maputo and were immediately transported into what seemed like a very different world.  Much of South Africa can be considered a watered down, aspartame-laden version of Africa.  Africa Lite.  Diet Africa.  Africa for Dummies.  Whatever you want to call it.  Ever since my first trip to South Africa, I had heard this, and I can say that it is quite true (refer to The Spheres of South Africa post from last month).  Maputo feels more like what you would think Africa would be.  More like the photos and the stories you’ve heard in your many years of probably misguided and/or incomplete information about the continent.

Maputo is very stereotypical of a large city in the developing world.  With the remnants of a rough fight for independence from Portugal that only ended in 1975, to poor infrastructure in the aftermath that led to a large struggle with communism and the Soviet Union that eventually broke out into a bloody Civil War lasting until 1992, you can trace a lot of the country’s contemporary history on Maputo’s streets.  Posters for FRELIMO, the Marxist-Leninist party that has been in power since independence, are pasted along almost every flat surface.  The country’s flag, emblazoned with a hoe and an AK-47 and other Marxist symbology, flies proudly everywhere you go.  Our backpackers was on Avenida Mao Tse Tung (or Mao Zedong Street, for us Americans), right near where it intersects with Avenida Vladimir Lenine.  It seemed like much of the city was in disrepair, or was never quite finished in the first place.  Yet nobody seemed to notice.

After a night at an oceanside bar where we had an unexpected run-in with an American guy we met at the gate for our flight and his gay friends (yes, gay friends…  the most gay men I’ve been around while in Africa, to be exact), we had to hit the sack to get on an early morning chapa (or bus) to Tofo.

The chapa was an adventure, a cultural lesson in and of itself.  People and bags packed tightly into small quarters, accented Portuguese and other local languages being spoken all around, phones ringing left and right, peddlers selling their varied wares at the windows every time the bus would stop.  After a few hours sitting on the bus, we finally arrived to Tofo midday and got to our backpackers about a kilometer away from the main town area, meaning that it was on a secluded part of the beach, tucked away from everything else.  The cincher: Scott and I got to stay in a thatched-roof hut.  Pretty cool, if you ask me.

In the few days we had there, we got a lot of beach time, sailed on a small catamaran at sunset, rode standing on the bed of a pick-up, and in my case, instead of snorkeling with a whale shark, I vomited on one.  I’m sure not as many people can say they’ve done that.  I assumed that living on a ship for four months would have calmed my seasickness, but a tiny boat flying through waves James Bond-style is quite a different ride.  Also, in the mix of everything, we ended up running into Melissa Meinhart, a fellow GRS intern stationed in Zambia.  All in all, Tofo was one of the prettiest places I’ve been, and I had a lot of time to unwind and reflect.  Scott was an amazing travel partner, so it was awesome to have him along.

We eventually made it back to Maputo on Christmas Eve because Scott unfortunately had to leave on Christmas Day.  It was quite a peculiar Christmas: the place was deserted, and the mood was eerily somber.  Still, the rest of my time in Maputo gave me ample time to think, explore, and eat a lot of Indian food (it was the only thing open).  After a few more days in Maputo, I made the trek back to South Africa, this time to Johannesburg to meet a few of the interns there: Betsy and Sarah who would be returning from hiking Mount Kilimanjaro and Britt who was returning from Botswana.

Johannesburg was a ghost town, but it was still fun to be around other interns and to be back in South Africa.  Even the week across the border made me realize that South Africa was beginning to feel more like home.  After a lot of catching up, nice dinners, and having interesting conversation with a supposed prostitute, I was off to the next leg of the race.

The next adventure was Namibia with Betsy, Britt, and Mimi, or as it will forever be known, #mibz2014 (look it up on Instagram).  I had already spent the previous few days in Joburg with Bets and Britt, and it was nice to spend some time with Mimi because I had seen her for only 10 minutes tops since leaving America.  The crew was awesome: significantly more adventurous than I probably ever will be.  So many inside jokes were created, most in the form of hashtags, and that’s how you know it was a good trip.

Namibia, along with the rest of Southern Africa, has a fascinating colonial history that is still evident in the present, through its people, architecture, culture, and social structure.  Formerly known as South-West Africa, the country was dominated by German colonists until World War I, and other British spheres of influence existed throughout the territory until it eventually became a part of South Africa.  Since being administered by South Africa for most of the 20^th Century, the laws of apartheid also applied in Namibia, perpetuating the power of the White majority over the native Blacks.  The country fought for full independence from South Africa, eventually getting it in 1990, and because of its fairly recent separation, it still socially resembles South Africa very much.  Not only is the Namibian Dollar pegged equally to the South African Rand and can be used interchangeably in the country, the population of roughly 2 million people has one of the highest discrepancies between the rich and the poor in one of the least densely populated areas in the world, much like its southern neighbor.

Windhoek, like Johannesburg, was unfortunately quite dismal for the holiday time, and we had planned to be there for the first half of the trip.  Still, we tried to create fun for ourselves, and even though nothing was happening and I had roughly R750 (about $75) stolen from my bag by the cleaning ladies at the backpackers, we all stayed very positive.  We spent New Years Eve (#newmibzeve) in style (by “in style,” I mean I was passed out in bed by 10pm) and woke up to find that the only things open on New Year’s Day in Windhoek was the KFC and, thankfully, a supermarket.

Eventually, we left to the coast where the real magic begins.  A few hours west of Windhoek is the town of Swakopmund.  The small resort-town and adventure mecca found where the ocean meets the desert is a huge travel destination for Namibians and foreigners alike.  Situated at the mouth of the Swakop River, which is the literal translation of the town’s name from the German, the colonial presence is ever so strong.  German beer houses and restaurants are spattered about, and it almost feels like the Germany section of Epcot. 

The few days we had there were full of a whirlwind of activities.  Almost immediately after arriving, we all rode camels through the dunes.  What was supposed to be an hour-long trip ended up being over 90 minutes because we had tired and unruly camels, though I guess I’d be tired and unruly if I were walking around the desert with people on my back, too.  To make up time, our guide kept making the camels trot through the sand dunes which, for someone who hasn’t ridden a horse, let alone a camel, hurt like hell.  Thankfully, I didn’t fall off, though there were many close calls. 

The next day, the girls went skydiving as I provided moral support and took photos.  The girls loved it, so I might be compelled to do it one day, even if only for the hilarious video.  On our final full day, we drove ATVs through the dunes and went snowboarding.  ATVing was so incredibly fun, even though halfway through the ride, I caught a bump in a dune, fell off my ATV, and then it rolled over me.  Somehow, I managed to get up immediately and unscathed, though a shoe had flown off in the process.  I just had to dust off the sand and keep going.  It was definitely very exhilarating and beautiful out in the dunes.

While out sandboarding, I had decided to film a music video for “Kaptein,” a trashy Afrikaans pop song by Kurt Darren with which Britt is obsessed and subsequently got the rest of us on board.  In the middle of takes of us belting the song, these two South African men came up the dune to see what we were doing.  They had heard us singing the song and alerted us that the singer, Kurt Darren, was having a concert that night at a venue around the corner from our backpackers.  It was fate.  We had to go.

For our last night, we went to the concert called “Hier kom die manne,” which translates to “Here Come the Men,” that was headlined by none other than Kurt Darren.  The entire concert was in Afrikaans and featured presumably Afrikaaner pop sensations.  Eventually, Kurt Darren got on stage, and we danced the night away with zero idea of what was going on, but we were with good company, mostly middle-aged women and their pre-teen daughters.  The last morning consisted of the drive back to Windhoek and a string of transnational flights back to Port Elizabeth.

Roughly three weeks after leaving, I was returning home to PE with a passport nearly full, a bunch of different currencies stuffed in my pocket, and a lot of amazing memories.  As I approached the landing, I looked at the Google Earth view that I had from the plane window, and five months previously, when I laid eyes upon Port Elizabeth for the first time, I was clueless.  Now, I was looking at home.  I’m roughly halfway through my year here in South Africa, and I cannot wait to see what’s in store for this next step in my experience.

For your pleasure, here's the music video for "Kaptein" that I made from my footage at the dunes featuring an appearance by Kurt Darren himself.