AFRICA and MADAGASCAR 2001
AFRICA 2001
This Trip took 10 weeks, it corresponded to a term’s long-service leave that I had from Canberra Grammar School.
It also involved the timing of the Flying 15 World championships to be held in Durban, Republic of South Africa. Peter and John Caig from England sailed in these championships. This was the first championship that had ever been held in RSA, the first that did not require a qualifying quota and the first that had a special Classic championship. That at least was the intention but in the event there were not enough boats for a Classic championship. However, we were not to know that before we arrived in Durban and that was in the middle of March.
Peter and I took the boat ‘State of the Ark’ to Melbourne to pack it in the Container, a non-trivial task in the height of a hot Melbourne summer day. The container left Melbourne, travelled via Singapore and eventually arrived safely in Durban. We enjoyed those few days staying for a night in Paynesville en route and having lunch with Bill Shand (we bought a second-hand trolley from him). In Melbourne we stayed with John Mason and family including Chris.
We returned to Canberra via the Hume Highway on a very hot day, visited Glen Rowan for morning tea – not the greatest idea but Peter Carey had just published a new book on Ned Kelly and David and Tracey had been to the London launch!
We set off for Africa in mid February (17/2/01). We had a broken journey, via Melbourne (where we met up with John Disney) and Perth. We flew most of the time with South African Airways. We arrived in Johannesburg late in the afternoon and were met by Eric Pilcher, from England, and Freddie from the Airport Game Lodge where we were staying the night. It was close to the airport and gave us an excellent break for the night and we were returned to the airport after a good breakfast for the flight to Zambia.
Peter & John had visited Zambia in 1998 and we were keen to meet up with some of the same people and places. Our first destination was Lechwe Lodge; this was an interesting place where Peter Leonard had been a teacher in 1998. It was a fish and pig farm. Both of these provided excellent protein for the people of Lusaka, only a couple of hour’s drive up the road. The Lodge took a few visitors, probably only a dozen at the most. On our visit there were 5 people, four of us and Helen Lee, a Business Studies educator from Hull University in the UK.
We were met at Lusaka airport by Boniface (who remembered Peter & John from last time). He transported us to Lechwe. On arrival the women staff carried our over-weight luggage on their heads to our rondels. We met Adamson who was the naturalist guide at Lechwe. That evening he took us on a walk to the river flats. This was followed by a sundowner by the braai around a fire (on a tropical summer evening).
In the next three days we were fed and looked after extremely well by a very attentive staff. Interestingly some of the cooking was on a solar cooker. The meals were excellent and the laundry was completed without you noticing it had gone. We invited the only other visitor to share our table rather than sit by herself. Helen proved to be an interesting person, a lecturer in Business Studies who had come to Zambia to deliver an outreach program on managing small business. It was rapidly evident that Eric, with several years experience in two West African countries involved in business ventures, had a much greater grasp of the principles necessary to be successful in Africa. She returned to Lusaka as we left and we hope that she satisfactorily delivered the course.
Adamson proved a very good guide with an excellent knowledge of the fauna of the area. He was 24 and had attended boarding schools for 5 years on scholarships. He could not afford to go to University (it turned out that Lusaka University had been closed for a year anyway) so had completed a Guiding course.
During our time at Lechwe we saw a range of birds and Peter obtained some good recordings. We saw several colonies of Weaver birds. It rained quite a lot but we able to walk around the property. It was very wet on the river flats. It was good to walk and stalk up to some good mammals such as Zebra, Wildebeast, Hartebeast, Eland and Impala and flocks of Lechwe after which the property was named. The lodge had a pool that I used on a couple of afternoons.
We had a tour of the fish/pig farm. A man guarded the fish pools with a whip, which he cracked at regular intervals to keep the birds of prey away. The pig farm seemed to be very efficient; there were 3000+ animals that were obviously healthy. The staff that worked there was well looked after too, a medical officer visited every week and there were notices all over the place suggesting hygienic regimes to be followed.
On Wednesday 21 February we had an early lunch and were taken to the nearest point on the highway to meet up with Ian Bruce-Miller. Ian had been in Lusaka on business and was returning to Nansai. We travelled for about 5 hours on an almost straight road. It was in good condition as it was being renovated by European Community aid money. The property where we stayed for a week was large. The original house called Muckleneuk was the home of Paddy Bruce-Miller, who had died in 1998, Ian lived in his own house on the property, called Nansai, about 4 kilometres away (his wife had died two years previously). Their elder daughter, Emma lived in Grandfather’s house (Emma was a fifth generation Zambian). The house was run like a farm-stay. Emma also ran bush-camps for children during other times of the year. We were very comfortable in a rondel, Eric had the other and John stayed in a room with bathroom with bath in the bedroom wing of the house.
As we had driven to Choma it was very noticeable that lots of people were walking, Africans walk many miles every day. It was also noticeable that they were well dressed, usually in formal suits complete with jackets. These clothes come via a scheme in the UK and the US where charity clothes are collected, cleaned and sent to Zambia and sold to the locals at low reasonable prices. An interesting process that on the face of it is a great idea. However, it prevents job opportunities for the locals to make cheap clothes and therefore denies them employment.
We also passed local schools supported by the government that should have opened at the beginning of February but were not due to open until early March as there was limited money to pay the teachers.
Part of the Nansai house was a school where 20 weekly boarders of 5-12 years of age slept and ate. There was a newly built schoolhouse nearby. And a little further on was the house that Ian had built for Peter Leonard (teacher) and Kate Knox (teacher’s assistant and horse expert). It was a fairy-tale house with a mezzanine floor with two bedrooms. (It was reminiscence of Valley farm at Flatford, but new not built in the 13th century!). All the buildings on the property were built with red bricks produced on the property from the local clay. This was a continuous process. The houses for the workers were also made at least partly of brick. Any brick that did not fire correctly was used as the rubble for the repair of the roads system on the property. Roadways always need repairing in the high-rainfall tropics.
We always ate in the dining room at Muckleneuk with Emma and sometimes with Ian. Peter and Kate were often visitors in the evening. The food was very good and frequently included produce from the farm. Particularly Maize, the version with the cream coloured heads that is the staple food of this part of Africa. Everywhere on the arable part of the property had Maize growing. Most of it would be harvested for the use of the workers and their families; about 350 of them lived on the farm. The meat we ate was also often game shot on the farm.
We were free to walk around the farm as we wished. The distances were large and on occasions we were driven part of the way and we walked home. On the first morning Ian took us to a near-by lake. (In Australia it would be called a dam but as these water storages are often named after people lake was a preferred word to dam!) We walked home and were accompanied by the dogs. Each of Nansai and Muckleneuk had five dogs. The farm had a policy of only keeping females dogs. The dogs who lived at Muckleneuk and who came on the morning walks were two Labradors, one of whom was black, a boxer and two Jack Russells one of whom was Shelley who was the mother of Dip-stick. These dogs knew their way around a great deal better than we did. Muckleneuk had a large veranda where most activities happened and where there were chairs for people and dog beds. However, the dogs were not very discriminating about which was which. Also at the house there were beautiful gardens that provided excellent sites for many varieties of birds. There was a very impressive Syringa tree.
At Nansai there was the farm school. It had originally been started by Emma’s mother when Emma reached school age, more than twenty years previously. The school was now a commercial operation and they employed two teachers. One of whom was Peter Leonard (a distant cousin of John Disney, an English Music graduate who has an amazing ear for all sounds, particularly bird sound and a good way with the children). The children were all white except two Indian-Africans and one black girl. They were the children of the local farmers and business people. One was the youngest daughter of Ian Bruce-Miller; two were their cousins from a farm near the Kariba Dam. The children wore a simple uniform of white and red. On the first day we were there we visited for lunch and I stayed for the afternoon. It was an afternoon when the children rotated through a range of activities including RE, taught by the father of two of the boys and who had a parish the other side of Choma. The children had to move on at secondary school age. Most would go to boarding schools in other countries. There was concern where the younger Bruce-Miller daughter would go as the others had gone to Zimbabwe and this now seemed a less attractive prospect.
On the Friday school finished for half-term and a week break, this meant Peter Leonard was able to take us bird watching. Under his guidance we saw large numbers of birds, some of which he was able to call up, by voice or by tape. One place we visited was a nest of a Crowned Eagle complete with large chick. In the mornings we were picked up early and took packed breakfasts. Over the weekend Richard, Emma’s boy friend came to stay with his 3-year old son, Luke. They lived on a property about 10 kms away next to John Colebrook-Robjent and who was also a tobacco farmer.
One morning we visited a couple of retired diplomats who had built a house on the farm – several miles from Muckleneuk, they had also built several rondels and they were hoping to set up a B&B business. They were just completed and had yet to receive any visitors. It was a very impressive house, they gave us morning coffee and we enjoyed looking around the grounds with a lake at the front of the place.
On the Monday we visited John Colebrook-Robjent for the afternoon. A driver took us there. A tobacco farm with a driveway lined by a stand of Eucalyptus trees. The house was a sparse bachelor establishment. One of the staff produced a good afternoon tea. John has a very extensive collection of eggs and skins. When we returned to Muckleneuk John also came back to dinner. En route to the tobacco farm we had to call in to collect a dead bird, a Giant Eagle owl that a neighbour had collected in Choma. We took 200 kwacha to be given to the African who had caught the bird and who would use the carcass for food unless paid.
We left Muckleneuk on the Tuesday with Peter and Kate in the school bus. First stop was Choma, the nearby town. While they did their business we went to the local museum (bought a Zambian basket). Pete and Kate were going to spend a few days in Lusaka. We saw a large Chameleon crossing the road and made a stop on the Kafue Road Bridge. They dropped us off at Lilayi Lodge; we stopped on the road to eat the picnic that had been packed for us. There were delicious pies made of guinea fowl. We stayed at the Lodge for three days. It was a game farm on a remnant of land surrounded by Maize fields and very close to the city. There were few other visitors except on one night when it was completely full. The Chiefs from the Eastern provinces had come to the capital to talk to the President to decide whether they would vote for him at the next elections later in the year. That night we had to have early dinner so that the Chiefs could have a banquet. We had similar food, which was very good. It was wet much of the time but we still walked around, went on a game-drive when we got bogged. On one occasion we walked along a pathway with tall grass plants with flowering heads on either side. Every flower head had a mass of ticks just ready to jump off onto passing traffic. One evening we met Jamie and Julie in the bar. They were from Melbourne but working for the World Bank in Washington DC. They were taking a few days off while on business. The management were very helpful people who supplied a room one morning with screen for us to view a video that Eric had brought from England about Carl Jones and Mauritius.
The Lodge’s shuttle bus took us to the airport on 2nd March for the trip to South Africa. We all travelled to Johannesburg where Eric departed for the UK and we flew on to Cape Town.
We flew into Cape Town to be met by John Caig, Liz Mansell, Jo (John’s daughter), David and Tracey and John Disney’s two cousins. David had hired a silver VW bug, lovely looking car but not very suitable for four people. The cousins took John with them and we made our way to Simon’s Town where John and Liz live for six months of the year in a townhouse high in the town.
The next day we took off for the Cape of Good Hope Nature Park. (John, Liz and Jo went out for Jo’s last day and took her to the plane at the end of the day). We drove and walked all around the park. We all arrived back in the evening and had dinner at Bertha’s on the front in Simon’s Town. It appeared a safe place and we walked down to the restaurant via pathways and steps, it is a steep town overlooking the bay. The RSA navy have a base there.
The next morning was the day of the delayed telecast of the Melbourne Formula 1 Grand Prix. John has a habit of recording the race and then having a champagne breakfast while watching, it was a beautiful sunny day so we sat on their balcony and watched the race. Tracey and I only stayed for half of it then we walked down to the shops to do a bit of shopping. In the end a neighbour ruined the race by telling John the result!
Later that day the four of us visited the Botanic Garden at Kirstenbosch, a suburb of Cape Town. It was a really beautifully laid out garden which was immaculately maintained. The Garden had lots of Guinea Fowl in groups all over the place. It was a well-patronised garden with lots of visitors on a lovely Sunday. We left at the end of the day when people were gathering for an outdoor concert. As we returned to Simon’s Town we made a detour to visit the Penguins at Bolder beach. For the rest of the time we visited them every day. It seemed a great place and a major attraction (we were subsequently told that the residents of this smart suburb were not so impressed). That evening we had a braai on the balcony for dinner (supper).
The next day we split up, John, Liz and Peter went to visit Norths, sail makers, who made a complete set of sails for our boat. David, Tracey and I arranged the next few days, went to the Waterfront in downtown Cape Town in the vain hope of finding a hat for David. We then all met up for lunch at the Royal Cape Yacht Club. In mid-afternoon we drove via the airport to change the car for a little Mercedes car (slightly more suitable for 4 people but one which was dubbed a ‘silly’ car by Bridget) and set off for Worchester. We stayed there two nights at a B&B called Wykeham Lodge run by Judy Clarence and Bridget. This was a very comfortable place, a converted house in a pleasant garden. Worchester is a thriving town in the heart of Afrikaans country. It was a wine growing area. That evening we ate in the town, on the way back we called in at a Pharmacy, which was open late. At the back it was a hunting shop that sold camping gear as well. André was in charge of the shop and he told us about a new game farm about an hour north of Worchester. We organised to visit and have dinner the next evening at this farm. It proved to be a very interesting experience, obviously only just set up, destined to be bankrupt in 6 months we felt! Roy and Sol owned it and both seemed rather naïve, they had lots of plans, one was to have Giraffe – but there were no trees, and lions – but there were no fences! So neither seemed very practical. A young man, Rian took us on a game drive – again a very naïve person. Roy was in charge of the food, which was very good but which came accompanied by a non-stop version of his life-history! Roy had spent the past 15 years catering for film crews, often in Namibia.
Wykeham Lodge was very comfortable. Judy’s father was an ex-Flying 15 sailor, indeed had won the first SA Nationals. Bridget was a jeweller, she was planning to cycle in the Argosy (Cape Town newspaper) race on the next Sunday, a race of 109kms with 35,000 entrants. It raced around the Cape; Simon’s Town was more or less closed for the day.
While at Worchester we also visited a Living Open Air Museum (Kleinplasie) in the town as well as the Little Karoo Botanic Gardens. This was an offshoot of the main Kirstenbosch Gardens in Cape Town. It turned out to be a good place to walk and see the Little Karoo desert plants. One of the most notable was Brunsvigia orientalis with vivid red flowers. We also discovered Rooibos tea at Worchester. It is called Red tea and grows on short red bushy plants.
We drove back to Cape Town in time to take John and Liz to dinner at the Fish restaurant in Simon’s Town.
On the way back we had a booking at Boschendal for a pique-nique in the gardens. A very superior picnic with the menu that told you the order in which to eat the food. We also made a stop at Franschhoek in the morning. Just before arriving home we made a detour to Delheim, a winery, a favourite of John and Liz, to buy them some wine.
The next morning after an early visit to the Penguins we then set off for the next three days. First stop was Klein Cedarberg, it was in a nature reserve. It was run by Werner & Vicki Wallschleger. The buildings were of stone and thatch. The main living areas were a renovation of an old 18th century pioneer house. The couple ran it entirely by themselves. The staff who were San Bushmen had deserted recently. Werner was Swiss and an artist, Vicki was a mixture of white Russian, French and English, who had lived as a child in RSA. We were very comfortable. Meals were very regulated and one was summoned to the dining room by a bell. One of their previous business endeavours had been an ostrich farm. There were birds left from those days all around the buildings. One of them took a shine to Peter on a walk the next morning and trailed his every move.
Next day we moved on to Clan William, a town known for its hand-made leather shoes (David bought some shoes) and Rooibus tea production. We stayed in a B&B called Saint Du Barry’s Country Lodge; it was run by Dawn and Bev Walters. Later that afternoon we travelled to the coast to see a Gannet colony at Lamberts Bay. We had dinner on the beach, a Muisbosskerm. It was many courses of fish and other seafood, a buffet actually cooked and served on the beach.
Next day we drove to Langebands. We had a lucky break meeting a café owner who was a member of the Tourist Board and he had the directions to the Park. Enjoyed a very good afternoon in the Park, walking through the fin bos and driving. David and Tracey had a swim. We had dinner before making our way, by now very late, to the Jacobsbaai Guest House, an award winner B&B run by Peter & Ina Landman. It was not easy, at the end of a track almost on the beach, to find but it was worth it.
We walked around the area next morning before driving back to Cape Town; first stop the airport to drop David and Tracey for their flight back to London. We changed the car for a Corolla for the next two weeks. This had been the Argosy race day and everywhere there was evidence of competitors but by the time we returned to Simon’s Town the roads were open again.
That evening we attended the concert in the grounds of Admiralty House, given by the RSA Navy Band. It was a very pleasant evening sitting on the lawn, sipping wine and listening to the music. Some neighbours of John and Liz from #14 Livings Waters were also there.
The next day John, Liz, Peter and I went sightseeing, first stop was Groot Constantia, an old Cape house, now set up as a museum. Lunch was at an excellent café renown for Calamari, this was at Haut Bay. From here we walked around as far as the road allowed to view Chapman’s Peak. The cliff taking the road had collapsed into the sea a year before. We then drove into Cape Town to take the cable car up to the top of Table Mountain. Only Liz and I took the cable car, unfortunately it was very windy and cold but we saw the sights but not the Dassies who live under the rocks of the mountain. (Luckily we had seen them on the hills surrounding the Little Karoo Botanic Gardens in Worchester).
Next day Peter & I went off for a trip to Robben Island. We left from the waterfront, it is an all-inclusive tour with boat, and two guides as part of it. On arrival on the island we were taken in a bus with a guide to see the whole of the island (unfortunately this was where the camera died). At the end of the tour you are delivered to the prison where Nelson Mandela lived for many years. A different guide, an ex-prisoner told us his story. It was a very moving tale. The more so because one of our party, an Afrikaans woman confronted the guide and said she did not believe him. She demanded to know why the warders who had run the prison were not there to tell their side of the story! The guide became very upset and we were invited to walk through the gate to freedom, as he and Mandela had eventually been able to do. Peter caught up with the guide later while waiting for the ferry, apologised to him as others had done. He said that at least once a week a similar occurrence happens. It gave you an insight into the enormity of the task ahead of the South Africans to become one country. From overseas, one is not aware of all of the conflicts, for example between the two groups of white people, the British origin people and the Afrikaans. What is evident is that it is a very complex and difficult matter but the Afrikaans people are certainly not helping the situation.
We took John and Liz to dinner at a French restaurant in the High Street in Simon’s Town. Next day we left to start the trip along the Garden Route to Port Elizabeth. Early the next morning Liz and I drive over the hill to Red Hill to a pottery to pick up an order and to meet the owners. First stop was Heldeberg Village to meet up with John Disney who had been staying with his cousins, Fay and Stella Mountford. The village is a secure establishment with a Club where John had been staying while visiting the cousins every day. We all had lunch at the Club. Later in the afternoon we returned to their house to be greeted by Duschka, the dog. We spent a pleasant time with them. We actually stayed at a near-by B&B run by ‘Dennis the menace’, known to Fay and Stella as a garden advisor. He was very keen and knowledgeable about waterfowl and the garden had many of them. We were very comfortable in a large room with luxurious bathroom.
Next morning we set off past rolling wheat growing and fruit growing country. Our first stay was at Swellendam where we stayed at Kadie’s Cottage in the middle of town. We had the house to ourselves as the owner lived opposite. In the afternoon we visited the Bontebok reserve and saw some good animals. The material for breakfast was left in the kitchen so we could make it for ourselves at our convenience. The next day we visited the Drosty Museum and took a good walk in a forestry area above the town.
The next day was very wet, we drove eastwards to Knysna. En route we stopped at Mossel Bay where we visited the maritime museum where the replica of the Caravel Bartolomeu Dias, a Portuguese boat, is housed, an excellent museum, luckily inside, as it was so wet! Just outside the museum is the Post Office tree, Sideroxylon inerme.
At Knysna we spent three days at ‘Overview’ a modern, purpose-built guesthouse run by a young couple, Ludwyck and his wife, they were very helpful. By chance the man who discovered the Coelocanth, JLB Smith, lived near Knysna heads. His son, of the same name had also lived there and became a household name as the TV Science teacher in a schools’ program. We took a boat to the Fetherbed Reserve on the East headland and walked around the property. The walk took you right down to the heads with very rough water. Apparently no broker will insure a ship for passage through Knysna heads. Later that day we drove to a West headland where there was a small Seahorse museum and we drove back past some very good lagoons full of birds.
The next day we took an all-day forest drive past some enormous trees, forestry being the major employer of people in the area. The circuit took us through the local township. Ludwyck said we should do this. It was the sort of area that in Cape Town we had been advised against. We also visited the factory and show room of Feathers Gallery where the model birds are produced. There were a very large number. We already had two; one that we bought in Victoria Falls in 1994 and one Peter had bought in Johannesburg in 1998. At the show room we met a couple from England who had especially visited because they wanted an additional owl that they could not afford to buy in the UK. We bought a guinea fowl, the bird that is so common in sub-Saharan Africa, and a Mandarin duck. Another visit took in Holy Trinity Church in Belvidue Village, six miles to the west of the town. In Knysna we changed the car from a white to a blue Corolla, only because we had a slightly flat tire!
Ludwyck booked ahead for us, by chance at an excellent farm called Leeuwenbosch Country house. This was several miles from Port Elizabeth so they offered full board. We stayed in the old homestead as the present owner lived in a newer house. It was a traditional house with each bedroom opening out onto the broad verandah. Next to the newer house was a Pub. We enjoyed a drink there before having dinner in the Dining room of Bill & Rose Fowlds. They arranged for us to visit Shamwari Game Reserve, the next day, only a few kms away and actually managed by their son-in-law. This meant an early start to what proved to be a good day where we saw many animals including Lions, Rhinos and Hippos. We also saw a Zulu dancing display. That evening instead of dinner at home we were taken on a tour of the property. This had included a more remote fishing lodge, Eliweni Lodge, where one could stay and be looked after by David, an African who had lived all his life on the property and had been born on the same day as Bill. There was also a chapel on the property. We ended up at their barbeque site where there are some inbuilt fittings including a flush toilet (which had been set up for their daughter’s wedding). Bill cooked the meat and John made a damper and the whole evening was declared a success! As we walked around the property we saw giraffe and quite a few birds and game animals.
Bill was a devoted Cricket supporter. He obviously had a particular interest in the local club and competition. Based in Port Elizabeth this local annual Cricket competition is the oldest competition in the Southern hemisphere. He had regularly taken young teams to England.
We had wanted to come to this area to go to Addo, a well-known Elephant Park. The next day we set off for the park and then to Port Elizabeth to fly to Durban the next day. After Shamwari, Addo was a bit of a disappointment. However, after some difficulty we did see close up a herd of seven Elephants.
We had a booking at a new B&B in Port Elizabeth. It was near a shopping centre totally surrounded by high fences with security and guards. It was suggested that we eat at one of the many restaurants in this enclosure. This was a marked change to the easy attitude we had enjoyed all along the Garden route where we had felt comfortable to walk around the small towns at night at will. That night we had dinner at a Chinese restaurant, run by a Chinese man, who was several generations South African and who was passionate about Cricket. He came to speak to us as we were ‘his first Australians’, he was very knowledgeable about Cricket and the food was good as well.
From Port Elizabeth we flew to Durban. We were there for three weeks. We stayed at the Sica Guesthouse; this was a very lucky choice, made by Liz, as it was run by a family in an extended home site. It was completely walled with razor wire on the top with secure gates. All of these precautions seemed necessary in Durban. It is the capital of Kwa Zulu Natal province, a large city with a teeming population, 40% of which are unemployed. We hired a car for the three weeks but were cautious where we drove and where we parked. It reached a point that when we ate out most evenings we took a cab rather than drove ourselves after dark. The Horn family that owned Sica were very helpful, the couple had originally run it as a Tennis School when their children were keen tennis players, one daughter was still playing on the international tennis circuit. The son runs the guesthouse now. Dad was a retired builder, he used these skills and contacts to continually improve and add to the guesthouse, some of this started in the last week we were there. It was a good family environment with allcomers greeted by the dogs.
On the day we arrived we picked up our car, returned to the airport to pick up John and Liz and later that night returned with a ‘Happy van’ to pick up the Rainey brothers. We found the Royal Natal Yacht Club, the boat had arrived safely and the container was already in the yard together with containers from West Australia, UK, Ireland, NZ and Hong Kong. It took 24 hours to get the boat on the water. It took even longer to have it measured, (add 0.2kg to the anchor chain and saw off 2 mm from the spinnaker pole etc). The new sails had arrived from the Norths loft in Cape Town. Liz and I ran lots of errands and found three chandlers nearby, most of them down lanes that were not very salubrious. On the Saturday there was a Welcome night when the Premier of the Province and his entourage came to welcome the visitors. All of the activities happened in a giant marque on the lawn of the RNYC. Apparently the Premier was so impressed he invited himself back for the final Presentation Dinner. On the second occasion he came alone without the entourage and was probably the only black man in the gathering. It was interesting to wonder at what he made of this very elitist white mans’ sport.
One of the competitors in the Classic fleet was a friend of John Caig’s, Dennis Lapham from Zimbabwe who crewed for one of the local sailors and was staying with Peter Morganrood. They had met each other in many sailing venues around the world. One evening we had an excellent dinner with Peter and Valda Morganrood who lived at Westville. Valda’s mother was staying there, she comes from Henley, UK. Other guests were Peter’s crew, Hemraj, his wife and their friend, Sunny.
In the evenings we sampled many of the restaurants in Durban, including the Durban Club, a very ‘old establishment’ club on the front and an Italian revolving restaurant called La Dulci Vita.
Sunday was the first race, it was very long, and this set the pattern for the two series. Actually to reach the racecourse via the harbour entrance always took a long time. Strictly speaking one was not allowed to move in or out of the harbour mouth without the permission of the Harbour Master. In the first race the spinnaker pole beak broke, luckily Alan Bax from the UK had a lot of spares so we bought two pole ends. In race two of the South African series they secured their best result of 29th out of 50+ competitors. On that day (Monday), there was a Seafood night at the Royal Hotel in the middle of the city. En route we had a particularly good cab driver that pointed out the main features of the centre of town.
Next day was a two-race day, Liz and I and Joanne (mother of Sue Parkin) and Jack (2 year old son of Sue and Barry Parkin) went on a half-day tour. We saw the Botanic Garden, the Indian spice market, the Point, the coastal beaches (where the big tourist hotels were and where many competitors stayed) and the centre of the city. This gave us an overview and we returned to all of those places later.
During the National series, it seemed every day there were jobs for Liz and I to do to keep the boat on the water. This culminated in the last race when the side deck broke. Luckily there was a nearby shed which housed a business that was able to secure a very good fibre-glasser who managed to fix it before the start of the World series. On the Thursday evening there was a Town hall reception for the competitors for the World championships. Liz and I were discussing what we had spent the last week doing whilst the men were out sailing. We had been very cautious as everybody insisted we should be. However, having found our way around we felt we could be more adventurous in the next week whilst still being sensible. All this was put into abeyance with the news the next morning that one of the UK team, Simon Kneller, had been stabbed in the early hours of Friday morning. So we resolved to continue to be very cautious. In fact he had been taken to a private hospital, St Augustine’s, where the surgeons had world-class experience of stab wounds and where they dealt with these problems several times a night.
Both championships were wet series and the boats were well set up along a jetty. In tropical warm water the growth of algae and barnacles was very rapid. Some people got in the water each day to scrub the bottom of the hulls. However, Liz had a better idea and that was to employ Elias to scrub the hull every day. He proved very reliable and built up quite a business. Each boat was 4 rand.
There were three lay-days between the series. On one of the days we drove to the Valley of the Thousand Hills inland from Durban. On another we had a drive to the harbour mouth where it was interesting to see the pilots for the big boats being lifted by helicopter from one ship to another. That day we also walked along the beach.
Most evenings of the Worlds there was a function. A Shebeena one night saw the tent at the Club converted to a Zulu pub. On another evening the Irish put on an Irish night, which was meant to encourage people to think of going to the next Worlds to be held in Ireland. The menu consisted of Guiness and Irish stew, the latter did not prove too popular! Too like ‘boarding school food’ said Penny Blumann.
During the second week there was an Optimist championship from Point YC. A young friend of Liz and John from Elgin, near Cape Town was competing. The family are apple farmers. We spent a bit of time with Di (mother) and took her shopping on one occasion at the Pavilion Centre.
On the last day of the championships we met up with a tourist guide (an English woman from way back) who had an apprentice, a young South African man who had just qualified. They took a small group of us on a ‘behind the scenes’ tour, the sort of places we would not have been comfortable to go by ourselves. It was a pity we had not found him earlier. After talking to Tambo we felt that if there were enough young people with his talent, his enthusiasm and his vision then perhaps the enormous task in front of the new South Africa was not so impossible.
At the Presentation evening there was a display of the trophies that each country had given for the Classic World Championships. Australia gave a trophy that was a mounted wooden half hull of a Flying Fifteen, it is named the WL Shand trophy.
After two weeks on the water we had to pack the boat back into the container to be picked up for transport to Australia. It was extremely hot doing this and we were all happy to take life easily for a day before we left South Africa. During that day we visited Nic Hobson, Linda Denman’s Godmother, a very impressive, very small lady of 92 who lived in a secure block of units immediately opposite the Musgrave shopping centre. We had a pleasant hour having morning tea with her. We also drove and walked along the beach at Umhlanga. This was where the Swazilanders, Percy Elston & wife, had a unit.
Next morning we left early for Mauritius. We stayed only three nights in a resort type hotel. It was called La Pirogue, a very flash place with lots of international visitors. Every evening there was a theme for dinner and a massive buffet spread. One whole day we spent with Carl Jones at the Endemic Wildlife sanctuary, the centre at Black River Gorge was sponsored by the Gerald Durrell foundation from Jersey. We met the staff including the Aviary Manager, Frederique de Ravel Koenig. We were taken to a site where a released Mauritius Kestrel was whistled up from a distant tree and it took a dead sparrow from my hand on the wing. The centre has been very successful in retrieving the Kestrel and the Pink Pigeon from the brink of extinction. We were also taken to their field station, where we walked around the wet forest. A Canadian, Diane Casamien, was working on the Echo Parrot, Psittacla mayeri. We also met Kenny, from Glasgow who was a volunteer.
Another day we drove to Port Luis, the capital, had lunch by the waterfront, where we did some shopping, one item was a wooden Dodo from a stall where the owner had a daughter who was in the National Swim squad, coached by Tom Stachewitz, from West Australia. Next stop was Madagascar.
We spend two weeks on Madagascar; we had made all the bookings through a firm, ‘Unusual Destinations’ in Johannesburg (we found them on the Internet after our usual travel agent found difficulties making the contacts). All of the arrangements were good, it is not a country used to our sort of tourism. But with a bit of hard work we enjoyed two weeks of amazing experiences. Certainly we saw lots of Lemurs that was one of our main reasons for visiting the island.
Popo, our driver for almost all of the next two weeks, met us at the airport. Also a young woman who spoke English and who made sure that we were happy with the arrangements. This welcome was good as the airport was full of people who wanted to change money, sell you things, carry your bags, etc. This was rather confrontational. We knew it was going to be difficult to obtain the local currency. This was solved by our interpreter who took us to an ATM (Very rare things in Madagascar) at the Hilton at Antananarivo. (It was Good Friday and there were no banks open). Eventually we set off for our first destination, this took about five hours, it was not a particularly good road, but significantly better than most of the others that we saw later. Our car was a Mazda 4 wheel drive, it was not new but proved reliable, and it had right hand drive, which was unusual.
The first stop was a hotel near Perinet National Park (Andasibe Mantadia NP). We actually stayed at Vakôna Forest Lodge, about 20 minutes from the Park entrance. The lodge was composed of many different buildings and was surrounded by Gum trees. Our guide in this park was Marie, who spent all mornings with us and found two species of Lemurs including a family of three Woolly lemurs. After lunch and an afternoon siesta we returned to the park at dark. With the aid of the spot light we saw a ‘mouse lemur’, lots of roosting birds and chameleons. Next morning was Easter Sunday and at our door was an Easter egg, a nice touch. That morning we spent in an adjacent park with Marie, pretty tough going in damp weather, unfortunately we did not see any Lemurs. In the afternoon we went to the Lemur Island near the hotel, very small distance in a flat-bottomed canoe. Saw three species of Lemurs very well, partially captive. One of the visitors had a dog that caused much alarm to the animals. We were then dropped off at a ‘reserve’, again owned by the hotel. Due to some misunderstanding we had to walk back to the hotel in the dark over a steep track. We saw a Foza in a large cage.
As it was Easter Sunday the restaurant was very busy, we had a to wait a while for lunch. Mark, the manager’s husband, came to speak to us as he thought, incorrectly, that we were unhappy. Later in the day we had dinner with him and his family. Mark, an Englishman, worked in the family business which was a graphite mine nearby. His wife was Pascal, the manager of the hotel that the family owned. Her Grandfather had started the graphite business and they were now trying to diversify. The family was French. Mark introduced us to Gris wine, which we drank for the rest of our time in Madagascar.
Next day, Easter Monday we drove all day. Initially we had to drive back to Tana and then headed south to Antsirabe. As we drove through Tana it was incredibly crowded on the roads, due to the holiday. We went via Popo’s house to pick up extra fuel tanks and some of his gear. We had the bright idea that we might like to visit the Zoo. This was a terrible mistake on Easter Monday but Popo was not game to tell us so we drove to the entrance and we were completely surrounded by people on foot and in cars. We decided that we could not afford the rest of the day to do this.
Eventually on a wet evening we arrived at the Arotel hotel in the Square of Grand Avenue of Antsirabe, a very run down, tatty, once 4-star hotel. The carpet was dirty and the service poor. It was noisy, outside the window there was a Fair set up for the holiday and the festivities were still in full force at 4am next morning.
Early the next morning we were all set to leave but had to wait for the Bank to open and then wait to get around the red tape to get some money. Part of the waiting was a one-hour delay which allowed us to drive around the town. About an hour down the road we stopped at ‘Jeans’ where she sold parquetry boxes, the only really touristy thing we ever saw. It was a long drive to Ranamafana; the last stretch of road was very slow and in very poor shape. We got bogged at one point but people arrived from nowhere to help us back on the road. The hotel was new, called Centrest, it was run by a collection of very young people but they did it well. We had a guide for the two days. Each day we visited the Park early in the morning, returned for lunch and then visited the Park again in the late afternoon. During the first morning we met Debbie and two of her students from UC Davis. The University had some long-term study sites in the Park. We saw lots of Lemurs but not many birds. On the first day we had an extra trip in the early afternoon along the road but not in the Park, where we saw two more species of Lemurs. During the evening walk it poured with rain. We walked to the Belle Vue feeding station within the Park where we fed a Civet cat and saw a real mouse lemur, he ate a banana taped to a thin rope strung between two bushes.
On the second day we walked over some tough territory within the Park, again saw some good Lemurs and lots of leaches! In the afternoon we walked into the village, visited an Environmental Education Centre where school children visited, spoke to the young teacher. Also visited the Museum and watched girls playing basketball in the middle of the square in the road in the middle of the village, luckily there was not much traffic as the game had to stop to let the trunks by.
Next day was a very long drive; this was part of the drive to Tuléar. The first three hours of the day were back to the highway that goes southwards, along a very wet and muddy road. We stopped for lunch at a pleasant place in Ambalavao, the town well known for making paper. The first night we stayed at an hotel at Isalo, just a stop on the road. There was a tame Ring-tailed Lemur who lived in the dining room. As we drove south we saw a change in the scenery and in the people, the further south we were on the island the smaller and more African-like the people. The last several hours were across wide, open plains to Tuléar. The guidebook said this was a first class road when the book had been published 4 years before. It certainly was not that now. We also passed through the sapphire mining areas, which are not on any map, where there were obviously much more money and a reasonably affluent town called Ikakly, Popo did not suggest we stopped there. In Tuléar we checked our air tickets to Berenty for a couple of days time and had lunch.
The road to Ifaty Beach was 22 kms and took 1.5 hours, much of it was just a track on sand. At Ifaty we stayed at the Vovotel hotel in a hut on the beach, swam in the ocean and lazed around in the sun. We spent one afternoon on a sailing boat. An outrigger with two crew, it was called a Piroque with a Lateen sail with a fascinating rig but quite efficient. Back from the beach there was a village that seemed to live by fishing and making canoes, each part of which is made with wood from a different tree. Surrounding the village were areas of prickly forests, there were also Baobab trees. We walked through these forests with a guide, after some misunderstanding and confusion. A fellow guest accompanied us from the hotel, which was helpful as he was French and was able to act as an interpreter for the guide’s Malagasy language.
Popo picked us up, returned us to the airport and left us to drive back to Tana by himself. We flew on to Fort Dauphin. There the passengers were met by the ‘machine’ that was the Berenty organization. The passengers were met by a fleet of cars and smartly dressed staff. En route to the Berenty Lodge estate we stopped at a stall selling a wide array of fruits, a typical family graveyard (The head of the family always had the biggest Pinnacle in the front) and then a site where there were lots of pitcher plants (Appenthea madagascarenses) growing. We stayed in some excellent accommodation; all of the facilities were of a high standard and were rather old fashioned. All around the buildings were Ring-tailed Lemurs, they were always waiting and would have been happy to move into the rooms. As well as being taken to the sites to see the Dancing Sifakas and other Lemurs, some of them in the Spiny forests, including Verreaux’ Sifaka, there was a Museum telling the story of the H&H Berenty estate which had been set up by a Frenchman in the late thirties and had been developed on a great site by the bend in the river where there were Tamarin trees. The trees are still there and are used as a roosting site for large numbers of Flying Fox bats, Pteropus rufus. It is a large sisal estate. We had a tour of the factory one afternoon that proved interesting.
After having driven two thirds of the length of the island of Madagascar we flew back to Tana from Fort Dauphin. On the road you have the overwhelming impression of a terracotta country, the soil is that colour and therefore any bricks are the same colour. All of the development is ‘ribbon development’ along the road. Charcoal burners and the bundles of charcoal surround many of the extremely simple basic dwellings. The further south you travel the poorer the dwellings are and the simpler the houses. The people walk all over the road, Popo had his hand on the horn all of the time we were near settlements. Zebu type cattle are everywhere and are a nuisance and danger much of the time as they wander all over the road.
We had been a little apprehensive about ‘Air Madagascar’ but this was unnecessary as they were all Boeing 303s, there were no seat allocations (and no overhead luggage compartments), interestingly, the passengers seemed to prefer to sit at the back of the plane so we had a very comfortable trip in the front. Popo was there to meet us at Tana airport; we stayed one night at the Tana Plaza hotel, situated in a broad boulevard, which must have been a splendid place in the French colonial days. A very early start and two planes got us back to Johannesburg, to stay at the Holiday Inn at Sandton. Unfortunately John was not feeling so good that day. We were also very security conscious so we simply took a taxi to the Botanic Garden and spent the day there before flying back to Australia.
Daphne Fullagar
This Trip took 10 weeks, it corresponded to a term’s long-service leave that I had from Canberra Grammar School.
It also involved the timing of the Flying 15 World championships to be held in Durban, Republic of South Africa. Peter and John Caig from England sailed in these championships. This was the first championship that had ever been held in RSA, the first that did not require a qualifying quota and the first that had a special Classic championship. That at least was the intention but in the event there were not enough boats for a Classic championship. However, we were not to know that before we arrived in Durban and that was in the middle of March.
Peter and I took the boat ‘State of the Ark’ to Melbourne to pack it in the Container, a non-trivial task in the height of a hot Melbourne summer day. The container left Melbourne, travelled via Singapore and eventually arrived safely in Durban. We enjoyed those few days staying for a night in Paynesville en route and having lunch with Bill Shand (we bought a second-hand trolley from him). In Melbourne we stayed with John Mason and family including Chris.
We returned to Canberra via the Hume Highway on a very hot day, visited Glen Rowan for morning tea – not the greatest idea but Peter Carey had just published a new book on Ned Kelly and David and Tracey had been to the London launch!
We set off for Africa in mid February (17/2/01). We had a broken journey, via Melbourne (where we met up with John Disney) and Perth. We flew most of the time with South African Airways. We arrived in Johannesburg late in the afternoon and were met by Eric Pilcher, from England, and Freddie from the Airport Game Lodge where we were staying the night. It was close to the airport and gave us an excellent break for the night and we were returned to the airport after a good breakfast for the flight to Zambia.
Peter & John had visited Zambia in 1998 and we were keen to meet up with some of the same people and places. Our first destination was Lechwe Lodge; this was an interesting place where Peter Leonard had been a teacher in 1998. It was a fish and pig farm. Both of these provided excellent protein for the people of Lusaka, only a couple of hour’s drive up the road. The Lodge took a few visitors, probably only a dozen at the most. On our visit there were 5 people, four of us and Helen Lee, a Business Studies educator from Hull University in the UK.
We were met at Lusaka airport by Boniface (who remembered Peter & John from last time). He transported us to Lechwe. On arrival the women staff carried our over-weight luggage on their heads to our rondels. We met Adamson who was the naturalist guide at Lechwe. That evening he took us on a walk to the river flats. This was followed by a sundowner by the braai around a fire (on a tropical summer evening).
In the next three days we were fed and looked after extremely well by a very attentive staff. Interestingly some of the cooking was on a solar cooker. The meals were excellent and the laundry was completed without you noticing it had gone. We invited the only other visitor to share our table rather than sit by herself. Helen proved to be an interesting person, a lecturer in Business Studies who had come to Zambia to deliver an outreach program on managing small business. It was rapidly evident that Eric, with several years experience in two West African countries involved in business ventures, had a much greater grasp of the principles necessary to be successful in Africa. She returned to Lusaka as we left and we hope that she satisfactorily delivered the course.
Adamson proved a very good guide with an excellent knowledge of the fauna of the area. He was 24 and had attended boarding schools for 5 years on scholarships. He could not afford to go to University (it turned out that Lusaka University had been closed for a year anyway) so had completed a Guiding course.
During our time at Lechwe we saw a range of birds and Peter obtained some good recordings. We saw several colonies of Weaver birds. It rained quite a lot but we able to walk around the property. It was very wet on the river flats. It was good to walk and stalk up to some good mammals such as Zebra, Wildebeast, Hartebeast, Eland and Impala and flocks of Lechwe after which the property was named. The lodge had a pool that I used on a couple of afternoons.
We had a tour of the fish/pig farm. A man guarded the fish pools with a whip, which he cracked at regular intervals to keep the birds of prey away. The pig farm seemed to be very efficient; there were 3000+ animals that were obviously healthy. The staff that worked there was well looked after too, a medical officer visited every week and there were notices all over the place suggesting hygienic regimes to be followed.
On Wednesday 21 February we had an early lunch and were taken to the nearest point on the highway to meet up with Ian Bruce-Miller. Ian had been in Lusaka on business and was returning to Nansai. We travelled for about 5 hours on an almost straight road. It was in good condition as it was being renovated by European Community aid money. The property where we stayed for a week was large. The original house called Muckleneuk was the home of Paddy Bruce-Miller, who had died in 1998, Ian lived in his own house on the property, called Nansai, about 4 kilometres away (his wife had died two years previously). Their elder daughter, Emma lived in Grandfather’s house (Emma was a fifth generation Zambian). The house was run like a farm-stay. Emma also ran bush-camps for children during other times of the year. We were very comfortable in a rondel, Eric had the other and John stayed in a room with bathroom with bath in the bedroom wing of the house.
As we had driven to Choma it was very noticeable that lots of people were walking, Africans walk many miles every day. It was also noticeable that they were well dressed, usually in formal suits complete with jackets. These clothes come via a scheme in the UK and the US where charity clothes are collected, cleaned and sent to Zambia and sold to the locals at low reasonable prices. An interesting process that on the face of it is a great idea. However, it prevents job opportunities for the locals to make cheap clothes and therefore denies them employment.
We also passed local schools supported by the government that should have opened at the beginning of February but were not due to open until early March as there was limited money to pay the teachers.
Part of the Nansai house was a school where 20 weekly boarders of 5-12 years of age slept and ate. There was a newly built schoolhouse nearby. And a little further on was the house that Ian had built for Peter Leonard (teacher) and Kate Knox (teacher’s assistant and horse expert). It was a fairy-tale house with a mezzanine floor with two bedrooms. (It was reminiscence of Valley farm at Flatford, but new not built in the 13th century!). All the buildings on the property were built with red bricks produced on the property from the local clay. This was a continuous process. The houses for the workers were also made at least partly of brick. Any brick that did not fire correctly was used as the rubble for the repair of the roads system on the property. Roadways always need repairing in the high-rainfall tropics.
We always ate in the dining room at Muckleneuk with Emma and sometimes with Ian. Peter and Kate were often visitors in the evening. The food was very good and frequently included produce from the farm. Particularly Maize, the version with the cream coloured heads that is the staple food of this part of Africa. Everywhere on the arable part of the property had Maize growing. Most of it would be harvested for the use of the workers and their families; about 350 of them lived on the farm. The meat we ate was also often game shot on the farm.
We were free to walk around the farm as we wished. The distances were large and on occasions we were driven part of the way and we walked home. On the first morning Ian took us to a near-by lake. (In Australia it would be called a dam but as these water storages are often named after people lake was a preferred word to dam!) We walked home and were accompanied by the dogs. Each of Nansai and Muckleneuk had five dogs. The farm had a policy of only keeping females dogs. The dogs who lived at Muckleneuk and who came on the morning walks were two Labradors, one of whom was black, a boxer and two Jack Russells one of whom was Shelley who was the mother of Dip-stick. These dogs knew their way around a great deal better than we did. Muckleneuk had a large veranda where most activities happened and where there were chairs for people and dog beds. However, the dogs were not very discriminating about which was which. Also at the house there were beautiful gardens that provided excellent sites for many varieties of birds. There was a very impressive Syringa tree.
At Nansai there was the farm school. It had originally been started by Emma’s mother when Emma reached school age, more than twenty years previously. The school was now a commercial operation and they employed two teachers. One of whom was Peter Leonard (a distant cousin of John Disney, an English Music graduate who has an amazing ear for all sounds, particularly bird sound and a good way with the children). The children were all white except two Indian-Africans and one black girl. They were the children of the local farmers and business people. One was the youngest daughter of Ian Bruce-Miller; two were their cousins from a farm near the Kariba Dam. The children wore a simple uniform of white and red. On the first day we were there we visited for lunch and I stayed for the afternoon. It was an afternoon when the children rotated through a range of activities including RE, taught by the father of two of the boys and who had a parish the other side of Choma. The children had to move on at secondary school age. Most would go to boarding schools in other countries. There was concern where the younger Bruce-Miller daughter would go as the others had gone to Zimbabwe and this now seemed a less attractive prospect.
On the Friday school finished for half-term and a week break, this meant Peter Leonard was able to take us bird watching. Under his guidance we saw large numbers of birds, some of which he was able to call up, by voice or by tape. One place we visited was a nest of a Crowned Eagle complete with large chick. In the mornings we were picked up early and took packed breakfasts. Over the weekend Richard, Emma’s boy friend came to stay with his 3-year old son, Luke. They lived on a property about 10 kms away next to John Colebrook-Robjent and who was also a tobacco farmer.
One morning we visited a couple of retired diplomats who had built a house on the farm – several miles from Muckleneuk, they had also built several rondels and they were hoping to set up a B&B business. They were just completed and had yet to receive any visitors. It was a very impressive house, they gave us morning coffee and we enjoyed looking around the grounds with a lake at the front of the place.
On the Monday we visited John Colebrook-Robjent for the afternoon. A driver took us there. A tobacco farm with a driveway lined by a stand of Eucalyptus trees. The house was a sparse bachelor establishment. One of the staff produced a good afternoon tea. John has a very extensive collection of eggs and skins. When we returned to Muckleneuk John also came back to dinner. En route to the tobacco farm we had to call in to collect a dead bird, a Giant Eagle owl that a neighbour had collected in Choma. We took 200 kwacha to be given to the African who had caught the bird and who would use the carcass for food unless paid.
We left Muckleneuk on the Tuesday with Peter and Kate in the school bus. First stop was Choma, the nearby town. While they did their business we went to the local museum (bought a Zambian basket). Pete and Kate were going to spend a few days in Lusaka. We saw a large Chameleon crossing the road and made a stop on the Kafue Road Bridge. They dropped us off at Lilayi Lodge; we stopped on the road to eat the picnic that had been packed for us. There were delicious pies made of guinea fowl. We stayed at the Lodge for three days. It was a game farm on a remnant of land surrounded by Maize fields and very close to the city. There were few other visitors except on one night when it was completely full. The Chiefs from the Eastern provinces had come to the capital to talk to the President to decide whether they would vote for him at the next elections later in the year. That night we had to have early dinner so that the Chiefs could have a banquet. We had similar food, which was very good. It was wet much of the time but we still walked around, went on a game-drive when we got bogged. On one occasion we walked along a pathway with tall grass plants with flowering heads on either side. Every flower head had a mass of ticks just ready to jump off onto passing traffic. One evening we met Jamie and Julie in the bar. They were from Melbourne but working for the World Bank in Washington DC. They were taking a few days off while on business. The management were very helpful people who supplied a room one morning with screen for us to view a video that Eric had brought from England about Carl Jones and Mauritius.
The Lodge’s shuttle bus took us to the airport on 2nd March for the trip to South Africa. We all travelled to Johannesburg where Eric departed for the UK and we flew on to Cape Town.
We flew into Cape Town to be met by John Caig, Liz Mansell, Jo (John’s daughter), David and Tracey and John Disney’s two cousins. David had hired a silver VW bug, lovely looking car but not very suitable for four people. The cousins took John with them and we made our way to Simon’s Town where John and Liz live for six months of the year in a townhouse high in the town.
The next day we took off for the Cape of Good Hope Nature Park. (John, Liz and Jo went out for Jo’s last day and took her to the plane at the end of the day). We drove and walked all around the park. We all arrived back in the evening and had dinner at Bertha’s on the front in Simon’s Town. It appeared a safe place and we walked down to the restaurant via pathways and steps, it is a steep town overlooking the bay. The RSA navy have a base there.
The next morning was the day of the delayed telecast of the Melbourne Formula 1 Grand Prix. John has a habit of recording the race and then having a champagne breakfast while watching, it was a beautiful sunny day so we sat on their balcony and watched the race. Tracey and I only stayed for half of it then we walked down to the shops to do a bit of shopping. In the end a neighbour ruined the race by telling John the result!
Later that day the four of us visited the Botanic Garden at Kirstenbosch, a suburb of Cape Town. It was a really beautifully laid out garden which was immaculately maintained. The Garden had lots of Guinea Fowl in groups all over the place. It was a well-patronised garden with lots of visitors on a lovely Sunday. We left at the end of the day when people were gathering for an outdoor concert. As we returned to Simon’s Town we made a detour to visit the Penguins at Bolder beach. For the rest of the time we visited them every day. It seemed a great place and a major attraction (we were subsequently told that the residents of this smart suburb were not so impressed). That evening we had a braai on the balcony for dinner (supper).
The next day we split up, John, Liz and Peter went to visit Norths, sail makers, who made a complete set of sails for our boat. David, Tracey and I arranged the next few days, went to the Waterfront in downtown Cape Town in the vain hope of finding a hat for David. We then all met up for lunch at the Royal Cape Yacht Club. In mid-afternoon we drove via the airport to change the car for a little Mercedes car (slightly more suitable for 4 people but one which was dubbed a ‘silly’ car by Bridget) and set off for Worchester. We stayed there two nights at a B&B called Wykeham Lodge run by Judy Clarence and Bridget. This was a very comfortable place, a converted house in a pleasant garden. Worchester is a thriving town in the heart of Afrikaans country. It was a wine growing area. That evening we ate in the town, on the way back we called in at a Pharmacy, which was open late. At the back it was a hunting shop that sold camping gear as well. André was in charge of the shop and he told us about a new game farm about an hour north of Worchester. We organised to visit and have dinner the next evening at this farm. It proved to be a very interesting experience, obviously only just set up, destined to be bankrupt in 6 months we felt! Roy and Sol owned it and both seemed rather naïve, they had lots of plans, one was to have Giraffe – but there were no trees, and lions – but there were no fences! So neither seemed very practical. A young man, Rian took us on a game drive – again a very naïve person. Roy was in charge of the food, which was very good but which came accompanied by a non-stop version of his life-history! Roy had spent the past 15 years catering for film crews, often in Namibia.
Wykeham Lodge was very comfortable. Judy’s father was an ex-Flying 15 sailor, indeed had won the first SA Nationals. Bridget was a jeweller, she was planning to cycle in the Argosy (Cape Town newspaper) race on the next Sunday, a race of 109kms with 35,000 entrants. It raced around the Cape; Simon’s Town was more or less closed for the day.
While at Worchester we also visited a Living Open Air Museum (Kleinplasie) in the town as well as the Little Karoo Botanic Gardens. This was an offshoot of the main Kirstenbosch Gardens in Cape Town. It turned out to be a good place to walk and see the Little Karoo desert plants. One of the most notable was Brunsvigia orientalis with vivid red flowers. We also discovered Rooibos tea at Worchester. It is called Red tea and grows on short red bushy plants.
We drove back to Cape Town in time to take John and Liz to dinner at the Fish restaurant in Simon’s Town.
On the way back we had a booking at Boschendal for a pique-nique in the gardens. A very superior picnic with the menu that told you the order in which to eat the food. We also made a stop at Franschhoek in the morning. Just before arriving home we made a detour to Delheim, a winery, a favourite of John and Liz, to buy them some wine.
The next morning after an early visit to the Penguins we then set off for the next three days. First stop was Klein Cedarberg, it was in a nature reserve. It was run by Werner & Vicki Wallschleger. The buildings were of stone and thatch. The main living areas were a renovation of an old 18th century pioneer house. The couple ran it entirely by themselves. The staff who were San Bushmen had deserted recently. Werner was Swiss and an artist, Vicki was a mixture of white Russian, French and English, who had lived as a child in RSA. We were very comfortable. Meals were very regulated and one was summoned to the dining room by a bell. One of their previous business endeavours had been an ostrich farm. There were birds left from those days all around the buildings. One of them took a shine to Peter on a walk the next morning and trailed his every move.
Next day we moved on to Clan William, a town known for its hand-made leather shoes (David bought some shoes) and Rooibus tea production. We stayed in a B&B called Saint Du Barry’s Country Lodge; it was run by Dawn and Bev Walters. Later that afternoon we travelled to the coast to see a Gannet colony at Lamberts Bay. We had dinner on the beach, a Muisbosskerm. It was many courses of fish and other seafood, a buffet actually cooked and served on the beach.
Next day we drove to Langebands. We had a lucky break meeting a café owner who was a member of the Tourist Board and he had the directions to the Park. Enjoyed a very good afternoon in the Park, walking through the fin bos and driving. David and Tracey had a swim. We had dinner before making our way, by now very late, to the Jacobsbaai Guest House, an award winner B&B run by Peter & Ina Landman. It was not easy, at the end of a track almost on the beach, to find but it was worth it.
We walked around the area next morning before driving back to Cape Town; first stop the airport to drop David and Tracey for their flight back to London. We changed the car for a Corolla for the next two weeks. This had been the Argosy race day and everywhere there was evidence of competitors but by the time we returned to Simon’s Town the roads were open again.
That evening we attended the concert in the grounds of Admiralty House, given by the RSA Navy Band. It was a very pleasant evening sitting on the lawn, sipping wine and listening to the music. Some neighbours of John and Liz from #14 Livings Waters were also there.
The next day John, Liz, Peter and I went sightseeing, first stop was Groot Constantia, an old Cape house, now set up as a museum. Lunch was at an excellent café renown for Calamari, this was at Haut Bay. From here we walked around as far as the road allowed to view Chapman’s Peak. The cliff taking the road had collapsed into the sea a year before. We then drove into Cape Town to take the cable car up to the top of Table Mountain. Only Liz and I took the cable car, unfortunately it was very windy and cold but we saw the sights but not the Dassies who live under the rocks of the mountain. (Luckily we had seen them on the hills surrounding the Little Karoo Botanic Gardens in Worchester).
Next day Peter & I went off for a trip to Robben Island. We left from the waterfront, it is an all-inclusive tour with boat, and two guides as part of it. On arrival on the island we were taken in a bus with a guide to see the whole of the island (unfortunately this was where the camera died). At the end of the tour you are delivered to the prison where Nelson Mandela lived for many years. A different guide, an ex-prisoner told us his story. It was a very moving tale. The more so because one of our party, an Afrikaans woman confronted the guide and said she did not believe him. She demanded to know why the warders who had run the prison were not there to tell their side of the story! The guide became very upset and we were invited to walk through the gate to freedom, as he and Mandela had eventually been able to do. Peter caught up with the guide later while waiting for the ferry, apologised to him as others had done. He said that at least once a week a similar occurrence happens. It gave you an insight into the enormity of the task ahead of the South Africans to become one country. From overseas, one is not aware of all of the conflicts, for example between the two groups of white people, the British origin people and the Afrikaans. What is evident is that it is a very complex and difficult matter but the Afrikaans people are certainly not helping the situation.
We took John and Liz to dinner at a French restaurant in the High Street in Simon’s Town. Next day we left to start the trip along the Garden Route to Port Elizabeth. Early the next morning Liz and I drive over the hill to Red Hill to a pottery to pick up an order and to meet the owners. First stop was Heldeberg Village to meet up with John Disney who had been staying with his cousins, Fay and Stella Mountford. The village is a secure establishment with a Club where John had been staying while visiting the cousins every day. We all had lunch at the Club. Later in the afternoon we returned to their house to be greeted by Duschka, the dog. We spent a pleasant time with them. We actually stayed at a near-by B&B run by ‘Dennis the menace’, known to Fay and Stella as a garden advisor. He was very keen and knowledgeable about waterfowl and the garden had many of them. We were very comfortable in a large room with luxurious bathroom.
Next morning we set off past rolling wheat growing and fruit growing country. Our first stay was at Swellendam where we stayed at Kadie’s Cottage in the middle of town. We had the house to ourselves as the owner lived opposite. In the afternoon we visited the Bontebok reserve and saw some good animals. The material for breakfast was left in the kitchen so we could make it for ourselves at our convenience. The next day we visited the Drosty Museum and took a good walk in a forestry area above the town.
The next day was very wet, we drove eastwards to Knysna. En route we stopped at Mossel Bay where we visited the maritime museum where the replica of the Caravel Bartolomeu Dias, a Portuguese boat, is housed, an excellent museum, luckily inside, as it was so wet! Just outside the museum is the Post Office tree, Sideroxylon inerme.
At Knysna we spent three days at ‘Overview’ a modern, purpose-built guesthouse run by a young couple, Ludwyck and his wife, they were very helpful. By chance the man who discovered the Coelocanth, JLB Smith, lived near Knysna heads. His son, of the same name had also lived there and became a household name as the TV Science teacher in a schools’ program. We took a boat to the Fetherbed Reserve on the East headland and walked around the property. The walk took you right down to the heads with very rough water. Apparently no broker will insure a ship for passage through Knysna heads. Later that day we drove to a West headland where there was a small Seahorse museum and we drove back past some very good lagoons full of birds.
The next day we took an all-day forest drive past some enormous trees, forestry being the major employer of people in the area. The circuit took us through the local township. Ludwyck said we should do this. It was the sort of area that in Cape Town we had been advised against. We also visited the factory and show room of Feathers Gallery where the model birds are produced. There were a very large number. We already had two; one that we bought in Victoria Falls in 1994 and one Peter had bought in Johannesburg in 1998. At the show room we met a couple from England who had especially visited because they wanted an additional owl that they could not afford to buy in the UK. We bought a guinea fowl, the bird that is so common in sub-Saharan Africa, and a Mandarin duck. Another visit took in Holy Trinity Church in Belvidue Village, six miles to the west of the town. In Knysna we changed the car from a white to a blue Corolla, only because we had a slightly flat tire!
Ludwyck booked ahead for us, by chance at an excellent farm called Leeuwenbosch Country house. This was several miles from Port Elizabeth so they offered full board. We stayed in the old homestead as the present owner lived in a newer house. It was a traditional house with each bedroom opening out onto the broad verandah. Next to the newer house was a Pub. We enjoyed a drink there before having dinner in the Dining room of Bill & Rose Fowlds. They arranged for us to visit Shamwari Game Reserve, the next day, only a few kms away and actually managed by their son-in-law. This meant an early start to what proved to be a good day where we saw many animals including Lions, Rhinos and Hippos. We also saw a Zulu dancing display. That evening instead of dinner at home we were taken on a tour of the property. This had included a more remote fishing lodge, Eliweni Lodge, where one could stay and be looked after by David, an African who had lived all his life on the property and had been born on the same day as Bill. There was also a chapel on the property. We ended up at their barbeque site where there are some inbuilt fittings including a flush toilet (which had been set up for their daughter’s wedding). Bill cooked the meat and John made a damper and the whole evening was declared a success! As we walked around the property we saw giraffe and quite a few birds and game animals.
Bill was a devoted Cricket supporter. He obviously had a particular interest in the local club and competition. Based in Port Elizabeth this local annual Cricket competition is the oldest competition in the Southern hemisphere. He had regularly taken young teams to England.
We had wanted to come to this area to go to Addo, a well-known Elephant Park. The next day we set off for the park and then to Port Elizabeth to fly to Durban the next day. After Shamwari, Addo was a bit of a disappointment. However, after some difficulty we did see close up a herd of seven Elephants.
We had a booking at a new B&B in Port Elizabeth. It was near a shopping centre totally surrounded by high fences with security and guards. It was suggested that we eat at one of the many restaurants in this enclosure. This was a marked change to the easy attitude we had enjoyed all along the Garden route where we had felt comfortable to walk around the small towns at night at will. That night we had dinner at a Chinese restaurant, run by a Chinese man, who was several generations South African and who was passionate about Cricket. He came to speak to us as we were ‘his first Australians’, he was very knowledgeable about Cricket and the food was good as well.
From Port Elizabeth we flew to Durban. We were there for three weeks. We stayed at the Sica Guesthouse; this was a very lucky choice, made by Liz, as it was run by a family in an extended home site. It was completely walled with razor wire on the top with secure gates. All of these precautions seemed necessary in Durban. It is the capital of Kwa Zulu Natal province, a large city with a teeming population, 40% of which are unemployed. We hired a car for the three weeks but were cautious where we drove and where we parked. It reached a point that when we ate out most evenings we took a cab rather than drove ourselves after dark. The Horn family that owned Sica were very helpful, the couple had originally run it as a Tennis School when their children were keen tennis players, one daughter was still playing on the international tennis circuit. The son runs the guesthouse now. Dad was a retired builder, he used these skills and contacts to continually improve and add to the guesthouse, some of this started in the last week we were there. It was a good family environment with allcomers greeted by the dogs.
On the day we arrived we picked up our car, returned to the airport to pick up John and Liz and later that night returned with a ‘Happy van’ to pick up the Rainey brothers. We found the Royal Natal Yacht Club, the boat had arrived safely and the container was already in the yard together with containers from West Australia, UK, Ireland, NZ and Hong Kong. It took 24 hours to get the boat on the water. It took even longer to have it measured, (add 0.2kg to the anchor chain and saw off 2 mm from the spinnaker pole etc). The new sails had arrived from the Norths loft in Cape Town. Liz and I ran lots of errands and found three chandlers nearby, most of them down lanes that were not very salubrious. On the Saturday there was a Welcome night when the Premier of the Province and his entourage came to welcome the visitors. All of the activities happened in a giant marque on the lawn of the RNYC. Apparently the Premier was so impressed he invited himself back for the final Presentation Dinner. On the second occasion he came alone without the entourage and was probably the only black man in the gathering. It was interesting to wonder at what he made of this very elitist white mans’ sport.
One of the competitors in the Classic fleet was a friend of John Caig’s, Dennis Lapham from Zimbabwe who crewed for one of the local sailors and was staying with Peter Morganrood. They had met each other in many sailing venues around the world. One evening we had an excellent dinner with Peter and Valda Morganrood who lived at Westville. Valda’s mother was staying there, she comes from Henley, UK. Other guests were Peter’s crew, Hemraj, his wife and their friend, Sunny.
In the evenings we sampled many of the restaurants in Durban, including the Durban Club, a very ‘old establishment’ club on the front and an Italian revolving restaurant called La Dulci Vita.
Sunday was the first race, it was very long, and this set the pattern for the two series. Actually to reach the racecourse via the harbour entrance always took a long time. Strictly speaking one was not allowed to move in or out of the harbour mouth without the permission of the Harbour Master. In the first race the spinnaker pole beak broke, luckily Alan Bax from the UK had a lot of spares so we bought two pole ends. In race two of the South African series they secured their best result of 29th out of 50+ competitors. On that day (Monday), there was a Seafood night at the Royal Hotel in the middle of the city. En route we had a particularly good cab driver that pointed out the main features of the centre of town.
Next day was a two-race day, Liz and I and Joanne (mother of Sue Parkin) and Jack (2 year old son of Sue and Barry Parkin) went on a half-day tour. We saw the Botanic Garden, the Indian spice market, the Point, the coastal beaches (where the big tourist hotels were and where many competitors stayed) and the centre of the city. This gave us an overview and we returned to all of those places later.
During the National series, it seemed every day there were jobs for Liz and I to do to keep the boat on the water. This culminated in the last race when the side deck broke. Luckily there was a nearby shed which housed a business that was able to secure a very good fibre-glasser who managed to fix it before the start of the World series. On the Thursday evening there was a Town hall reception for the competitors for the World championships. Liz and I were discussing what we had spent the last week doing whilst the men were out sailing. We had been very cautious as everybody insisted we should be. However, having found our way around we felt we could be more adventurous in the next week whilst still being sensible. All this was put into abeyance with the news the next morning that one of the UK team, Simon Kneller, had been stabbed in the early hours of Friday morning. So we resolved to continue to be very cautious. In fact he had been taken to a private hospital, St Augustine’s, where the surgeons had world-class experience of stab wounds and where they dealt with these problems several times a night.
Both championships were wet series and the boats were well set up along a jetty. In tropical warm water the growth of algae and barnacles was very rapid. Some people got in the water each day to scrub the bottom of the hulls. However, Liz had a better idea and that was to employ Elias to scrub the hull every day. He proved very reliable and built up quite a business. Each boat was 4 rand.
There were three lay-days between the series. On one of the days we drove to the Valley of the Thousand Hills inland from Durban. On another we had a drive to the harbour mouth where it was interesting to see the pilots for the big boats being lifted by helicopter from one ship to another. That day we also walked along the beach.
Most evenings of the Worlds there was a function. A Shebeena one night saw the tent at the Club converted to a Zulu pub. On another evening the Irish put on an Irish night, which was meant to encourage people to think of going to the next Worlds to be held in Ireland. The menu consisted of Guiness and Irish stew, the latter did not prove too popular! Too like ‘boarding school food’ said Penny Blumann.
During the second week there was an Optimist championship from Point YC. A young friend of Liz and John from Elgin, near Cape Town was competing. The family are apple farmers. We spent a bit of time with Di (mother) and took her shopping on one occasion at the Pavilion Centre.
On the last day of the championships we met up with a tourist guide (an English woman from way back) who had an apprentice, a young South African man who had just qualified. They took a small group of us on a ‘behind the scenes’ tour, the sort of places we would not have been comfortable to go by ourselves. It was a pity we had not found him earlier. After talking to Tambo we felt that if there were enough young people with his talent, his enthusiasm and his vision then perhaps the enormous task in front of the new South Africa was not so impossible.
At the Presentation evening there was a display of the trophies that each country had given for the Classic World Championships. Australia gave a trophy that was a mounted wooden half hull of a Flying Fifteen, it is named the WL Shand trophy.
After two weeks on the water we had to pack the boat back into the container to be picked up for transport to Australia. It was extremely hot doing this and we were all happy to take life easily for a day before we left South Africa. During that day we visited Nic Hobson, Linda Denman’s Godmother, a very impressive, very small lady of 92 who lived in a secure block of units immediately opposite the Musgrave shopping centre. We had a pleasant hour having morning tea with her. We also drove and walked along the beach at Umhlanga. This was where the Swazilanders, Percy Elston & wife, had a unit.
Next morning we left early for Mauritius. We stayed only three nights in a resort type hotel. It was called La Pirogue, a very flash place with lots of international visitors. Every evening there was a theme for dinner and a massive buffet spread. One whole day we spent with Carl Jones at the Endemic Wildlife sanctuary, the centre at Black River Gorge was sponsored by the Gerald Durrell foundation from Jersey. We met the staff including the Aviary Manager, Frederique de Ravel Koenig. We were taken to a site where a released Mauritius Kestrel was whistled up from a distant tree and it took a dead sparrow from my hand on the wing. The centre has been very successful in retrieving the Kestrel and the Pink Pigeon from the brink of extinction. We were also taken to their field station, where we walked around the wet forest. A Canadian, Diane Casamien, was working on the Echo Parrot, Psittacla mayeri. We also met Kenny, from Glasgow who was a volunteer.
Another day we drove to Port Luis, the capital, had lunch by the waterfront, where we did some shopping, one item was a wooden Dodo from a stall where the owner had a daughter who was in the National Swim squad, coached by Tom Stachewitz, from West Australia. Next stop was Madagascar.
We spend two weeks on Madagascar; we had made all the bookings through a firm, ‘Unusual Destinations’ in Johannesburg (we found them on the Internet after our usual travel agent found difficulties making the contacts). All of the arrangements were good, it is not a country used to our sort of tourism. But with a bit of hard work we enjoyed two weeks of amazing experiences. Certainly we saw lots of Lemurs that was one of our main reasons for visiting the island.
Popo, our driver for almost all of the next two weeks, met us at the airport. Also a young woman who spoke English and who made sure that we were happy with the arrangements. This welcome was good as the airport was full of people who wanted to change money, sell you things, carry your bags, etc. This was rather confrontational. We knew it was going to be difficult to obtain the local currency. This was solved by our interpreter who took us to an ATM (Very rare things in Madagascar) at the Hilton at Antananarivo. (It was Good Friday and there were no banks open). Eventually we set off for our first destination, this took about five hours, it was not a particularly good road, but significantly better than most of the others that we saw later. Our car was a Mazda 4 wheel drive, it was not new but proved reliable, and it had right hand drive, which was unusual.
The first stop was a hotel near Perinet National Park (Andasibe Mantadia NP). We actually stayed at Vakôna Forest Lodge, about 20 minutes from the Park entrance. The lodge was composed of many different buildings and was surrounded by Gum trees. Our guide in this park was Marie, who spent all mornings with us and found two species of Lemurs including a family of three Woolly lemurs. After lunch and an afternoon siesta we returned to the park at dark. With the aid of the spot light we saw a ‘mouse lemur’, lots of roosting birds and chameleons. Next morning was Easter Sunday and at our door was an Easter egg, a nice touch. That morning we spent in an adjacent park with Marie, pretty tough going in damp weather, unfortunately we did not see any Lemurs. In the afternoon we went to the Lemur Island near the hotel, very small distance in a flat-bottomed canoe. Saw three species of Lemurs very well, partially captive. One of the visitors had a dog that caused much alarm to the animals. We were then dropped off at a ‘reserve’, again owned by the hotel. Due to some misunderstanding we had to walk back to the hotel in the dark over a steep track. We saw a Foza in a large cage.
As it was Easter Sunday the restaurant was very busy, we had a to wait a while for lunch. Mark, the manager’s husband, came to speak to us as he thought, incorrectly, that we were unhappy. Later in the day we had dinner with him and his family. Mark, an Englishman, worked in the family business which was a graphite mine nearby. His wife was Pascal, the manager of the hotel that the family owned. Her Grandfather had started the graphite business and they were now trying to diversify. The family was French. Mark introduced us to Gris wine, which we drank for the rest of our time in Madagascar.
Next day, Easter Monday we drove all day. Initially we had to drive back to Tana and then headed south to Antsirabe. As we drove through Tana it was incredibly crowded on the roads, due to the holiday. We went via Popo’s house to pick up extra fuel tanks and some of his gear. We had the bright idea that we might like to visit the Zoo. This was a terrible mistake on Easter Monday but Popo was not game to tell us so we drove to the entrance and we were completely surrounded by people on foot and in cars. We decided that we could not afford the rest of the day to do this.
Eventually on a wet evening we arrived at the Arotel hotel in the Square of Grand Avenue of Antsirabe, a very run down, tatty, once 4-star hotel. The carpet was dirty and the service poor. It was noisy, outside the window there was a Fair set up for the holiday and the festivities were still in full force at 4am next morning.
Early the next morning we were all set to leave but had to wait for the Bank to open and then wait to get around the red tape to get some money. Part of the waiting was a one-hour delay which allowed us to drive around the town. About an hour down the road we stopped at ‘Jeans’ where she sold parquetry boxes, the only really touristy thing we ever saw. It was a long drive to Ranamafana; the last stretch of road was very slow and in very poor shape. We got bogged at one point but people arrived from nowhere to help us back on the road. The hotel was new, called Centrest, it was run by a collection of very young people but they did it well. We had a guide for the two days. Each day we visited the Park early in the morning, returned for lunch and then visited the Park again in the late afternoon. During the first morning we met Debbie and two of her students from UC Davis. The University had some long-term study sites in the Park. We saw lots of Lemurs but not many birds. On the first day we had an extra trip in the early afternoon along the road but not in the Park, where we saw two more species of Lemurs. During the evening walk it poured with rain. We walked to the Belle Vue feeding station within the Park where we fed a Civet cat and saw a real mouse lemur, he ate a banana taped to a thin rope strung between two bushes.
On the second day we walked over some tough territory within the Park, again saw some good Lemurs and lots of leaches! In the afternoon we walked into the village, visited an Environmental Education Centre where school children visited, spoke to the young teacher. Also visited the Museum and watched girls playing basketball in the middle of the square in the road in the middle of the village, luckily there was not much traffic as the game had to stop to let the trunks by.
Next day was a very long drive; this was part of the drive to Tuléar. The first three hours of the day were back to the highway that goes southwards, along a very wet and muddy road. We stopped for lunch at a pleasant place in Ambalavao, the town well known for making paper. The first night we stayed at an hotel at Isalo, just a stop on the road. There was a tame Ring-tailed Lemur who lived in the dining room. As we drove south we saw a change in the scenery and in the people, the further south we were on the island the smaller and more African-like the people. The last several hours were across wide, open plains to Tuléar. The guidebook said this was a first class road when the book had been published 4 years before. It certainly was not that now. We also passed through the sapphire mining areas, which are not on any map, where there were obviously much more money and a reasonably affluent town called Ikakly, Popo did not suggest we stopped there. In Tuléar we checked our air tickets to Berenty for a couple of days time and had lunch.
The road to Ifaty Beach was 22 kms and took 1.5 hours, much of it was just a track on sand. At Ifaty we stayed at the Vovotel hotel in a hut on the beach, swam in the ocean and lazed around in the sun. We spent one afternoon on a sailing boat. An outrigger with two crew, it was called a Piroque with a Lateen sail with a fascinating rig but quite efficient. Back from the beach there was a village that seemed to live by fishing and making canoes, each part of which is made with wood from a different tree. Surrounding the village were areas of prickly forests, there were also Baobab trees. We walked through these forests with a guide, after some misunderstanding and confusion. A fellow guest accompanied us from the hotel, which was helpful as he was French and was able to act as an interpreter for the guide’s Malagasy language.
Popo picked us up, returned us to the airport and left us to drive back to Tana by himself. We flew on to Fort Dauphin. There the passengers were met by the ‘machine’ that was the Berenty organization. The passengers were met by a fleet of cars and smartly dressed staff. En route to the Berenty Lodge estate we stopped at a stall selling a wide array of fruits, a typical family graveyard (The head of the family always had the biggest Pinnacle in the front) and then a site where there were lots of pitcher plants (Appenthea madagascarenses) growing. We stayed in some excellent accommodation; all of the facilities were of a high standard and were rather old fashioned. All around the buildings were Ring-tailed Lemurs, they were always waiting and would have been happy to move into the rooms. As well as being taken to the sites to see the Dancing Sifakas and other Lemurs, some of them in the Spiny forests, including Verreaux’ Sifaka, there was a Museum telling the story of the H&H Berenty estate which had been set up by a Frenchman in the late thirties and had been developed on a great site by the bend in the river where there were Tamarin trees. The trees are still there and are used as a roosting site for large numbers of Flying Fox bats, Pteropus rufus. It is a large sisal estate. We had a tour of the factory one afternoon that proved interesting.
After having driven two thirds of the length of the island of Madagascar we flew back to Tana from Fort Dauphin. On the road you have the overwhelming impression of a terracotta country, the soil is that colour and therefore any bricks are the same colour. All of the development is ‘ribbon development’ along the road. Charcoal burners and the bundles of charcoal surround many of the extremely simple basic dwellings. The further south you travel the poorer the dwellings are and the simpler the houses. The people walk all over the road, Popo had his hand on the horn all of the time we were near settlements. Zebu type cattle are everywhere and are a nuisance and danger much of the time as they wander all over the road.
We had been a little apprehensive about ‘Air Madagascar’ but this was unnecessary as they were all Boeing 303s, there were no seat allocations (and no overhead luggage compartments), interestingly, the passengers seemed to prefer to sit at the back of the plane so we had a very comfortable trip in the front. Popo was there to meet us at Tana airport; we stayed one night at the Tana Plaza hotel, situated in a broad boulevard, which must have been a splendid place in the French colonial days. A very early start and two planes got us back to Johannesburg, to stay at the Holiday Inn at Sandton. Unfortunately John was not feeling so good that day. We were also very security conscious so we simply took a taxi to the Botanic Garden and spent the day there before flying back to Australia.
Daphne Fullagar
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