My Travel Adventures

We left our hotel in Johannesburg at half past six in the morning: Joel had foresightedly booked an Uber in advance, so we did not have to wait at all (indeed, the driver waited for us while we tried to figure out how to deposit our keys after using them to open and close the main gate). We arrived at Lanseria Airport a little after seven only to find out that the car rental agency was still closed. We had seen three different opening times for the agency online and on the board outside their counter, but fortunately, we did not have to wait all that long, as the place opened at half past seven. In the meantime, Tiana and Brent breakfasted on leftover ribs while I searched – and failed to find – a SIM card. I eventually gave up and paid for Safaricom’s exorbitant roaming.

Ezra and I picked up the rest of the gang a little after eight o’clock, having been held up by the purchase of groceries and snacks for the road. Our first stop were the Sterkfontein Caves. Sterkfontein was where as many as five hundred Australopithecus and other hominid fossils were discovered, making it an incredibly valuable location for the study of human ancestors and their relatives. The individuals found by archaeologists mostly fell into the caves through sinkholes and died in the darkness, their personal tragedies fuelling scientific discoveries millions of years later.

I arrived in Johannesburg at half past two in the morning on a flight that was supposed to arrive at midnight. I was fortunate that my friend Ezra, who had agreed to pick me up, is the embodiment of South African generosity. He politely said that he had been unable to sleep, but I later found out that he had slept before I came and woke up specifically to come fetch me. He drove me to his house in the dead of the night, sliding his car back and forth at the stoplights to discourage robbers from coming to smash our windows. I asked Ezra whether anything like that had ever happened to him before, but he said it did not. He did, however, have his car stolen last year.

On my second day in Maputo, a lot of the sites I had planned to visit were closed. I knew this of the National Gallery beforehand, but I was caught by surprise when I arrived at the doors of the Museu da Moeda and they were not open. Contrary to the information on Google, the museum would not open until two o’clock, which was far too late for me given my afternoon flight. It was in front of this museum that an old lady approached me and demanded I erase my pictures of her from my camera. At first, I did not understand what she was saying, but when I did, my surprise gave way to a kind of disbelieving admiration for the misguided vanity that had led the lady to believe I was taking a picture of her and not of the historical building quite literally across the road from her. She did not believe I had not taken a single picture of her even when I showed her my camera roll, so I had to ask a nearby policeman to intervene. She demanded he give her his bottle of water.

I put a printout of my online visa in my passport before getting off the plane in Maputo; I had applied for it some two weeks ago and received it within a day. I was not sure then why the process went so smoothly, but I would soon find out why. Spotting my printout, the lady sorting people into queues asked me to stand by the side until she had sorted the rest of the passengers. When that was done, she pointed me to one of the glass cabins; I was not sure where to go, but glancing at my printout, I saw it was not a full visa but some kind of pre-approval receipt, so I went over to the pre-approved counter.

Organising a joint trip from Nairobi to Maasai Mara in August was a challenge. On the one hand, prices were high and tour operators were scarce due to the Great Migration coinciding with the summer holidays in Europe and America. On the other hand, many people living in Nairobi left the country for the summer holidays, which made it difficult to recruit friends for a joint journey and thus keep costs low. On the week of our departure, I finally managed to assemble a critical mass of five people to undertake the trip together.

I arrived at Manda Airport on Friday at ten in the morning. Ordinarily, I would have liked to arrive either earlier or later, but flights into Lamu are restricted to a narrow window between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon. Word on the street has it that planes do not fly into and out of the city at night to avoid drawing the fire of al-Shabaab terrorists. Every few years, air travel to Lamu is suspended due to attacks, some of which have targeted the airport in the past.

Originally, our plan for our last full day in Namibia had been to visit Twyfelfontein and at least one of the petrified forests farther north. We made such good time the day before, however, that we checked off everything on the list and found ourselves scrambling for ideas. We needed to reach Windhoek by evening to return the rental car and check into our hotel, so we could not travel too far, like Etosha or the Hoba Meteorite in the north or Brandberg in the southwest. There was also the added pressure of money. Our cash reserves depleted much faster than we had expected, and once we had paid for our hotel (we could not use our US Dollars or credit cards), we were left with little more than four hundred Namibian Dollars – barely enough to fill half a tank.

We began the day bright and early, departing Swakopmund well before eight o’clock. Before leaving the city, we made sure to fill up on gas, but we only checked the pressure in the tyres on a side road leading to one of the beaches, as we were afraid that re-inflating them would make too much noise. The wind was strong, and the waves beat down with a fury, pale blue against the pale grey morning sky and the pale yellow beach.