After taking a look at the nice beach outside Maputo we returned to the "safety" of Swaziland. The next day we took the bus to Johannesburg and stayed the night at the Drifters Inn. On our final day in South Africa we went on a guided tour of Johannesburg before flying home to Norway in the evening.

Day 29 - July 25

We woke up at 0800, prepared our own breakfast in the kitchen and started packing our stuff into the car. However, we didn't get underway before 1000 because there were several people at the center which Gunnar had to talk to before we could leave, and when Gunnar first starts talking he never stops, so this took quite a while.

While we were waiting at the car for Gunnar, Ove came over to talk to us. We also played a little bit with the German Shepherd called Dino, who was also living here. Due to some scars he had bandaid on both of his ears and looked quite funny!

When Gunnar finally returned, we basically followed the same route as yesterday into Maputo. It was Sunday morning and the city seemed a lot quieter than yesterday as there were not so many people out in the streets yet.

The temperature was very pleasant, but the weather was not as good as we had been used to (except in Cape Town). The sky was almost totally clouded and there were even drops of rain coming at regular intervals.

After driving through the city center we came to a very nice long beach just on the outskirts of Maputo. The road went along the beach, had several hotels on the left side and was lined with palm trees. It all looked very beautiful, even on a rainy day.

We passed a large building on the left hand side which looked like it was a hotel under construction. Gunnar told us that this particular building had been standing like that for 25 years, all since the Portugese left Maputo. Before leaving, the portugese had made sure that building work was difficult to continue by pouring concrete down in the drain system, together with other forms of sabotage. Thus, it had just been standing unfinished since then, and was now in danger of falling over. In fact, there seemed to be quite a few unfinished houses around here.

There weren't really many people at the beach this early, but when we stopped and got out of the car, two children came up to us begging for food. We gave them some of our leftovers, they seemed very happy with.

We could hardly see anyone bathing, but there were some sort of religious groups that seemed to be having some kind of seremonies at the beach. We couldn't quite figure out what the purpose of their behaviour was, but some people were playing drums while some other guys were being held under water by other members of the group. According to Borgny and Gunnar these seremonies could last all day, and got more and more "violent" with time. However, we didn't have time to wait around this long, as we had to get back to Swaziland.

After returning from the beach, Gunnar drove us around a little bit in the center of Maputo while pointing out interesting sights to us. There were a lot more people in the streets now and it seemed to be getting quite lively here today as well.

Next, we just drove the same route back to the borderpost at Namaacha where we had come in yesterday. Today the border was a lot quieter, probably because it was Sunday. After completing the formalities at the Mozambique side, we got into the car to drive across to the Swaziland side. However, suddenly a guy came up to our car, stopped us and demanded to see our documents. Gunnar was quite suspicious, but showed him the papers. The guy looked at the documents and then told us that we had to pay him a tax of 50 Rands. Now Gunnar was 100% sure that the guy was just a conman, so he grabbed the papers from him, ignored his wild protests and drove off.

After crossing the border, we made another compulsory stop at the petrol station of Gunnar's friend. It was quite amusing being back, because the guy once again had to shake everyone's hand before he could get on with filling up the car with petrol!

We now drove straight back to Manzini where we made a short toilet stop and bought some cake and snacks to eat in the car, before setting out for the sixth and final time on the road between Manzini and Nhlangano.

On this road there is one hill in particular which is very steep. Here the road has been built to make a lot of twists and turns, and wisely, the left and right lanes have been separated to make it impossible (or at least very difficult) for a car to lose control and end up in the wrong lane. Still, accidents do happen, and one had happened very recently.

On reaching the top of the hill, we saw a bunch of people standing in the side of the road. There was a police car parked there as well. We stopped to see what was happening and quickly realised that there had been a serious accident. Down the hillside we could see at least three car wrecks, but Gunnar thought that two of them were probably old, and only the top vehicle had gone off the cliff today.

We made it safely back to Gunnar's place, packed our stuff into Borgny's car, and said goodbye to Gunnar. He had been a wonderful help to us, and in Mozambique you really needed someone with experience. Without him, I'm sure we'd probably lost our passport at the border and never even gotten into the country. Besides, he had all sorts of interesting and funny stories that he was sharing with us all the time.

We were back at Borgny's around 1700 and spent the rest of the evening relaxing in various ways. After dinner, I had a closer look at the local newspaper, the Times of Swaziland. It was actually quite good, and seemed to cover a wide range of subjects, just like a normal Western newspaper. Apparently, football was very popular here in Swaziland, like in the rest of the world, because at least 5-6 pages were dedicated to football everyday. They even had news from the English Premier League.

Borgny told us that the press was not really free in Swaziland, and for instance they were not allowed to criticize the king and so on. However, on the whole the newspaper seemed much better than I had expected in advance.

We went to bed at our normal time of 2200. It's just amazing how early we had been going to bed during this holiday. On a normal workday, I usually go to bed at 0100, but here in Africa I was mostly dead tired by 2200. On the other hand, here we often got up at 0600, while in Norway, I'd get up around 0730. Strange holiday, going to bed and getting up earlier than in normal life...

Day 30 - July 26

This would be our last day in Swaziland. We got up around 0800 and went over to Borgny to eat our last breakfast here.

During breakfast we learned that there had been some trouble at the orphanage while we had been away. Apparently, a water pipe in the bathroom had been damaged, resulting in several rooms being covered in water. It looked like a real mess down there, and the situation seemed to require a plumber. This was a huge problem because there was no plumber in Nhlangano or anywhere else around here according to Borgny. Instead they would have to improvise a solution themselves.

Fortunately, Borgny has 45 years of experience in dealing with the unexpected here in Swaziland, and with some help from the children, the problem was fixed to complete satisfaction during the day.

There was one thing on today's agenda, which I was quite nervous about. We wanted to call Drifters and have them confirm that they would pick us up at the bus terminal in Johannesburg tonight. The reason I was so nervous about this was that Drifters had changed their minds about picking us up every time we had been in contact with them. If they continued in the same pattern, they would this time refuse to pick us up. Fortunately, I eventually got Crystal on the line, and she said that everything was OK. What could possibly go wrong now?

We now spent some time writing our final postcards, updating our diaries and packing all our stuff. Around 1200 we had our last dinner at Borgny's, where chicken was the meal of the day.

After dinner we walked a little bit around the area and took some more photos before finally getting ready to leave. Matagosa was driving again, and on they way we made a stop in Nhlangano to send our postcards and for Borgny to take care of some business.

At the Mahamba border post everything ran smoothly as usual, so it was not long before we were back in South Africa. We arrived in Piet Retief around 1545 in good time to catch the Greyhound bus. After buying some snacks and drinks at Spar, we walked down to where the bus would arrive.

On our arrival here six days ago, the bus had been here 20 minutes early, but we soon realized that this was not going to happen today. When the time was 1630 and there was still no sign of the bus, we were starting to get slightly worried. Fortunately, the bus arrived at 1640, but it had to fill up with petrol before moving on, so all they did was to drop off the other passengers for a break.

It was very sad to say goodbye to Borgny. She is an amazing woman, and we had a wonderful time visiting her. It had been great to listen to all her stories and learn about her experiences with living here. She really ought to write a book about her life.

At 1655 the bus came back and we were finally able to get out of Piet Retief, 25 minutes late. This delay was slightly worrying to us. What would Drifters do when we didn't arrive on time? Was it too dangerous to wait around for us? And what sort of place was this bus terminal? Could it be as bad as everyone was saying? Well, we would be getting the answers in a few hours...

The bus ride went quite swiftly, and the bus driver was obviously trying to regain some of the lost time. We drove mostly through large open fields, now and then stopping at a small town to let off passengers. Around 2010, the signs were saying Johannesburg 40km, so we were quite optimistic about arriving on schedule. Now there were lights and houses all around us, so we figured this had to be the suburbs of Johannesburg. This city seemed to be really huge!

After a while we could also see the city center in the distance, and with all the lights it looked quite beautiful at night time. We were only running around ten minutes late, so the bus driver had managed to make up for much of the lost time. Finally, we pulled off the motorway and into the streets of downtown Johannesburg. This area has such a horrible reputation, so we had been quite curious as to what it would look like. Now we could see for ourselves: It looked empty! I don't think we saw a single person out in the streets as we drove through there!

The bus station was a nice surprise. It was inside a building and with lots of security guards around. It didn't look unsafe at all! We got our stuff and went inside the terminal building itself. It was a huge room that was very clean and with no dangerous muggers around as far, as we could see. Unfortunately, we couldn't see any people from Drifters around either! We were only ten minutes late, so they couldn't possibly have abandoned us, could they?

Drifters were supposed to meet us at the Greyhound terminal, but nobody was there. Could there be another Greyhound terminal? We looked around the building, but couldn't find any other place. As we stood there waiting, a black guy came over to us. He asked whether he should help us carry our stuff. According to Kurt, rule number one at this station, was to never accept help from strangers, so obviously we declined his offer and started walking away. Then he suddenly said: "I'm a Drifters guy", and pulled out a Drifters Sign from under his jacket.

We were quite surprised by this. If he had wanted us to recognize him straight away, it would surely have been a good idea to carry the sign in a more visible position than under his jacket. (And how did he recognize us?) Never mind, at that moment we were just relieved that everything was okay.

We all walked over to the Drifters minibus which was also parked inside the terminal. Really, with all those security guards I just can't see how this place could be so dangerous as everyone were saying. I'm sure it even would have been relatively safe to catch a taxi. What I think would have probably been a bad idea, was to start wandering around the city center looking for a place to stay. If a mugger then suddenly appeared, there would definitely haven't been anyone around to help you. The streets were just totally empty!

It only took around 15 minutes to drive to the suburb Northcliff, where the Drifters Inn was located. Right outside there was a police control, but they let us through immediately when they saw that our car was from Drifters, Apparently, this was just a routine control, and it was thanks to these controls that this area was safe.

The rooms at the Drifters Johannesburg Inn were quite nice, and we also had private bathrooms. This was probably our second favourite Drifters Inn after the one up in the Drakensberg. Time was now around 2130, so we didn't really feel like checking out the area. We just stayed in our room and relaxed for a while, before eventually going to bed.

Day 31 - July 27

We woke up to our last day in South Africa at around 0800 after both having slept very well. After the morning routine, we went down and and had breakfast, which was the usual buffet. The other people staying at the Inn all seemed to just have finished the Drifters Namibia tour.

After breakfast we packed all our stuff (which wasn't that hard since we hadn't unpacked very much yesterday), and put our backpacks in one of the rooms for storage. We weren't quite sure how we would spend the day. Basically we had two options, either we would just relax in the area, or we would go on some sort of tour of Johannesburg.

However, first we decided to go down to the mall and buy Crystal the chocolate we had promised her. Even though, she had only been joking, we thought it would be a nice gesture to show how pleased we were with everything. We really must have caused Drifters a lot of extra work, with the airport and bus terminal pick-ups.

So we walked down to the mall, which was only 200 meters. However, to be honest, the mall was crap with hardly any shops of interest. There was one cinema in there, but it only showed "Plunkett and Maclaine", which we had already seen. Besides the mall, there didn't appear to be anything of interest in the area, so we decided to go on a tour of Johannesburg instead of hanging around here.

We bought two chocolates for Crystal, and told her to give one of them to Claire, who had also been extremely helpful. She also promised to share it with the guy who had picked us up yesterday. Then we registered us for a tour of Johannesburg, which cost 160R each.

We would be picked up from the Inn at 1300, so now we had a few hours to kill before the tour started. We first relaxed a little at the pool and then took a walk around the area. The area was actually a quite nice suburban area, reminding me somewhat of Los Angeles.

We had been expecting some kind of a fancy tourbus to pick us up, but instead we just got a normal car. With two other women also going on the tour, we were feeling quite squeezed in the back seat.

Our guide was a really strange guy called Simba. He was a Zulu and had grown up in Soweto. It was quite funny just listening to the way he talked. His voice was always loud and clear, but he had this way of "stretching" the vowels in some of the words, making things sound very dramatic:

"I will show you.....Johannesbuuuuurg!"

The tour started with us driving away from the suburban area towards downtown Johannesburg, with Simba telling us about the specific sights which we passed along the way.

Downtown, we made our first stop at the Museum Africa. We were all given 45 minutes to explore it on our own before we had to meet Simba outside. It was a huge museum, dealing mostly with the history of the Johannesburg area, from political history to geology. To really see this museum would require a lot more than 45 minutes, which was only just about enough to get a feeling of what the museum was all about.

Next we drove around a little bit in the center of Johannesburg. The difference from the empty streets of yesterday evening was enormous, as there now seemed to people everywhere, most of them selling something. Simba again pointed out the various sights to us as we drove along. Our next stop was at the socalled "Museum of Man and Science", which was located in a busy street, right in the heart of Johannesburg.

We were quite surprised when Simba didn't bother locking the car when we went inside. We thought that Johannesburg was unsafe, so leaving the car unlocked didn't seem like an obvious thing to do! Even in Norway, you never leave your car unlocked anywhere! Figuring he probably knew the city better than us, we followed him inside, but remaining slightly worried that the car would be gone when we returned.

The place didn't look much like museum to us, more like a very strange shop. They had all kinds of weird looking stuff, like dead animal skin, hair, fur and so on, both in the shelves and hanging from the ceiling. The place was quite simply packed with the kind of stuff that you would expect to find at some crazy voodoo witchdoctor's place! We were not too keen on the smell inside the museum either. Simba was very enthusiastic, though:

"You see that colourful medicine over theeere.... .....This is our viaaagra....It iiiss tradiiitional.....It iiss wooorking...It iiss wooorking....."

According to him, this "traditional" medicine was now being accepted more and more by real doctors all over the world. We have our doubts about this, though.....I know that personally I wouldn't let any of this "traditional" stuff anywhere near my body, unless all other hope was gone and I was going to die anyway :-)

To our great relief, the vehicle was still parked outside when we returned. After driving around some more in downtown Johannesburg, we finally stopped at the Carlton Centre. There was a huge luxury hotel here, called the Carlton Hotel, but it was now closed (or "no longer functioning", as Simba called it). It actually had to close because of the high crime rate! People were quite simply afraid of staying in downtown Johannesburg, so the the hotel weren't attracting many guests. Most tourists were now staying in the northern suburbs (like us), without venturing into the city center at all.

Fortunately, you could still come to the top floor of the Carlton Centre to have a great view of the city, which is what we did. The view from the 50th floor was really fantastic. I'm not sure how far we could actually see, but it was quite far, and once again we could see how huge Johannesburg actually was.

We spent around twenty minutes at the top of the Carlton Centre. We were inside a room but all of the walls were just windows, so nothing was obstructing the view. Really fun to see how small everything looked down at the pavement. It sort of looked so nice and peaceful that it was hard to believe that down there was one of the most criminal areas in the world. The view reminded me a lot of the view from the Empire State building in New York, though perhaps not quite that good.

Down at street level, we walked the short distance back to our car. I was holding a firm grip on my video camera while walking, although to be honest, it didn't look that dangerous here. In fact, it looked like just another big city with lots of different people going on with their business. We had expected the city to be much more in decay, so this was a pleasant surprise. Also, we had imagined there to be fewer people around, but instead lots of suspicious looking gangs hanging around in the streets. Although, there probably were some of these, they weren't very prominent. Next up was Hillsbrow:

"Hillbrow is one of the dangerous parts of Johannesbuuurg.... If you like nightlife, visit here at night.....But be careful, or you will end up in the wroooong streeet....ooohhhhh!!!......In Johannesbuurg, they mug everyone, blaaack and whiiite....they don't choooose...."

Hillbrow didn't on first impression look very different from the rest of the downtown area, except that it perhaps was a little more run down. The streets were full of people, and it didn't look very scary to walk around here either, at least not in the middle of the day. However, according to Simba there were several problems:

"In this area we have Nigerian mafia, and Chineeese.....This is where the Nigerian mafia exchange their goooods......druuuuugs.....They drive biiiig caaars......

He was referring to some big cars parked in the side of the road, all with their trunks open. But what about the police? Couldn't they do something about this?

If the policemen arrest the Nigerian mafia, the Nigerian mafia must pay the police 10000 raaands,........the case is gooooone......

Ok, apparently not, then! We got safely out of Hillbrow, left the city center and entered a nice suburban area. Our last stop on the tour would be the house of Nelson Mandela.

We didn't actually see that much of the house because there was a large wall surrounding his property, but it was obviously a large luxury home. There seemed be all kinds of security stuff inside and outside the wall, so I guess he must be pretty safe when he's in there. Finally, we drove to his second house, which if I understood correctly, was currently standing empty. It looked very big,too, but again it was behind high walls, so we didn't get a good look.

The tour was now over, so we drove through some suburban areas and back to the Drifters Inn. In total we must have been away a little less than three hours, but it had been interesting to get an impression of Johannesburg, although most of it was from inside the car.

There was a Drifters Shuttle to the airport at 1630. Due to heavy traffic it took more than an hour to get there, but we still had more than enough time to catch the plane, unless Lufthansa had decided to leave a couple of hours early today. Fortunately, they hadn't, and we were able to check in without any problems.

Since we were quite hungry, we bought some sandwiches and ate at the airport. We also spent some time browsing the souvenir shops, without buying anything. May Tina were carrying her two wooden giraffes in her backpack, but because of their length, they didn't fit inside, so that both their heads were visible. Lots of people seemed to find this very amusing, because all of the time we were hearing comments like "Oh, look at those cute giraffes...."

Our flight was not full this time. This could of course be due to lots of people getting fed up with Lufthansa's hostility and incompetence, and therefore choosing a different airline for their return flight, but I guess it could also be just a coincidence. However, we would both have changed to a different airline, if there hadn't been a fee for doing so.

Since the plane was not full, we had a lot more space this time, which was very convenient. It even left on schedule at 1950!! We were looking for the "airhostess from hell", but apparently it was a different crew today, as we didn't see her. Actually, we didn't have any problems with the crew during the flight, but we didn't ask for any assistance either, so it's impossible to tell whether they would have helped or not.

Day 32 - July 28

I couldn't fall asleep on this flight either, so I was very tired when we arrived in Frankfurt at 0600. Since we're trying to be objective, we'll say something nice about Lufthansa now. The landing in Frankfurt was the softest landing we'd ever experienced! I'm sure that after this the pilot can't have much hope for a career at Lufthansa. They've probably sacked him by now....

Now we had to four hours to kill at Frankfurt Airport. It was incredibly boring, because now we really were looking forward to coming home, but somhow we came through it. Not surprisingly, though, our Lufthansa flight back to Oslo was further delayed, making us having to wait an extra hour.

In all their wisdom, Lufthansa had, of course, overbooked the flight quite heavily. Not finding enough volunteers to catch a later plane, they had to deny a lot of people flying with us. This was not very popular among the crowd, but fortunately they didn't pick us.

We landed at Gardermoen around 1300. Safe old Norway, it was really great to be back! Our baggage took an age to arrive, so we were starting to worry that this was a final trick which Lufthansa had up their sleave, but fortunately both our backpacks arrived undamaged in the end.

On the bus into Oslo, there were two things which struck us: First, everything around us was so nice and green, and secondly, everybody seemed to be driving really slow! (Speed limit in Norway is 90 km/h on the motorway).

Arriving at my appartment at Ammerud, a north-eastern suburb of Oslo, we finally declared the tour officially over. It would now be nice to have some time to relax and "process" all our new impressions. We both agreed that it had been a truly wonderful holiday, worth every single rand. For us it had all been a real adventure - an African Adventure!