ERMELO-BY-THE-SEA

IN REHANA'S WORDS

Monday April 29, 2013

We had three non-negotiables about a campsite at Ponta do’Ouro in Mozambique: there should be electricity, grass and we should be able to walk everywhere.
We have all of this at the municipal campsite, making our lives so easy it’s practically slothful. Our battery is charged, our fridge is icy and our car is parked for a week. The roadside stalls, ATMs, shops and a variety of restaurants are all a short walk away.
Our downstairs room stores some of our boxes so we don’t have to rummage in the car every time we need something or crouch in the tent to get dressed. We are a few easy steps to a beautiful beach.

All set up for a week's stay

The drive here was unexpectedly horrendous and mercifully short. Our rooftent cover came off twice while driving the hour and a half from Mabibi to the border. A minute after we left the border post we found ourselves in castor-sugar soft sand. After a few hundred metres into Mozambique and the sand softened to sieved flour. Julia made a three-point turn and we tried again, finding the sand track to Ponta. 
There was not one signpost in sight all the way into town. All our Garmin offered was warnings about shifting sand, a screenful of faint unnamed tracks and a white arrow pointing the way.

A proud moment on our way into town: we rescued fellow travellers for the first time. As we came over a small sand dune Julia skillfully skirted a bakkie planted in the middle of the sandy track. Their rear wheels were buried in the sand. 
I quickly found our brand-new, bright orange towrope, stowed in a very organised way with other rescue equipment, we secured it and within two ticks Julia and the Big Red Car pulled the bakkie out of the sand.

The main drag into Ponta. The sand's quite firm as you enter town.

We had rescued Allie the Irish lawyer, Matteo the Italian cost-control trainee and Manuel, a Portuguese man who spoke very little English and couldn’t tell us what he did. 
They were taking a break from work, which was building a dam in Ladysmith to produce hydroelectric power. Matteo says he is the only one of his high school class who found a job after school, the rest are all unemployed. He says youth unemployment is worse in Italy than South Africa. I'm going to miss Silvio Berlusconi, he makes Zuma look good.

We told them to follow us and drive in our tyre tracks all the way to town. Our car’s number plate starts with the letters CRG, which Julia says means “courage”. I second that.

Ponta, unfortunately, is exactly what I expected. Most of our fellow tourists are from Krugersdorp, Pretoria east and the North West and they all sport enormous boeps. Even their children. They seem particularly fond of quad bikes and jetskis. Which I absolutely abhor!

Our campsite's in the clump of trees to Julia's left

IN JULIA'S WORDS

29 April

We’d been eyeing neighbours over the sand road here at Tandje campsite in Ponta d’Ouro somewhat skeef, on account of their unmistakeable Boernessness and our unmistakeable prejudices.

They were a party of, say, 10 - ranging from a chubby littlie to a chubby oom, oh so organised in their tents, pagodas and camping chairs. They were laughing and dopping and having a fine time.

Our BRC we’d parked neatly between two trees across the sandy strip of road from them, with enough space for our New Groundsheet and our New Camp Table and Two Chairs. 

Air’s warm; bats squeak; ocean rolls.

Then a bit past nightfall, on the second night of our stay, Rehana and I encountered our first campsite snake.  We’d been sitting in the kind air writing this and doing that, and I was just stubbing my fagend into the sand on the edge of our groundsheet before throwing it into our plasticbagbin that hangs on a fencepost when a twig near my fingers moved in a very untwiglike way. Snake, you might think. I did. And it was, mebbe a ruler long, thin as a twig, pale underbelly and a bland-brown top with just a drizzle of grey. 

“eeeekkk”, breathed I. “A snake”, as it snaked through the sand and a bit up the treetrunk right where we’re parked, camping.

Rehana whipped out her headtorch just like that from her handydaybag, and trained its dimbeam on the reptiletwig, now coiling about, now still and flickingsnakeytongue. 

It settled on a patch of bark near the bottom of the tree and I trained the headtorchbeam on it while Rehana dashed to her computer – thankfully right there on our table AND with internet – to try and find out more about this snake and whether it’s poisonous. She searched “venomous snakes Mozambique” and the link she clicked on told about the recent discovery of the “twig snake” (Thelotornis Usambaricus). “With this discovery, the number of snake species known to exist in Mozambique has risen to 96”, said the internet.

“Let’s ask die oom,” said Rehana, pointing to the Boer campsite we’d been skeefing.

“Yes,” said I, gingerly nearing the snake on the tree so that the dimbeam of the headtorch could kinda see it.

Rehana went off to the Boer encampment and came back chortling with ‘n kerel and die oom, who joined me to stare at the snake on the tree (with their fantastically brightheadtorches). The young man knew his snakes and declared it friendly, and die oom gallantly fetched his braaitongs, lifted the snake from the treetrunk, and flung it somewhere else.

Just then, a woman from the Boer settlement arrived. Let’s call her tannie. She was on the wrinklyside of life and a lot that side of tipsy. Tannie had clearly just passed for white 40-odd years ago, her hair kroes as Rehana’s.

She had a good look at me, head to toe, after I greeted her in my politest Afrikaans, “Aangenaame kennis mevrou.” [A pleasure to make your acquaintance, madam]

Then tannie had another good once-over at me, and asked: “What is jy, eintlik?” [What are you, actually?]

As momentous as the question was, it took just a slight moment’s thought before I said:  “’n Rooinek”[A redneck], pulling the neck of my jersey down for full effect.

“Aaah, ja, ja, ek sien [Aaah, yes, yes, I see]”, tannie said.

Satisfied, she turned her attention to Rehana, and the conversation switched to suiwer Afrikaans. “I saw you this morning, when you walked to the tap. You gave me a look. I could see in your look that you were thinking ‘what kind of people is this’,” she threw the gauntlet down.

“I look like that every morning when I wake up,” explained Rehana. “Tomorrow it will be the same. You musn’t look at me in the mornings.”

I jumped in, “It’s true, she looks at me like that every morning.”

Tannie wasn’t finished yet. “I saw that look and I said to myself, ‘Ignore her, she’s just a faaaaaking bitch’.”

Said Rehana: “So don’t look at me tomorrow. When you see me in the morning, just look away. We’ll greet later, in the afternoon.”

The woman cackled and switched to English. “You girls should come have a dop with us. But not now, we already gesuip and we going to bed.  Tomorrow. That was my braaitongs that they used, to get rid of your snake. But you must call us if you have a problem, we will come help, even if one of you look like a bitch in the morning.”

“Thank you for the braaitongs,” Rehana shouted in her suiwerster Afrikaans to her departing back.

“See you tomorrow night,” I yelled, in English.

Our outstanding worry, of course, is that this apparently no-worrisome snake is worrisome actually and always comes in spakes (snakes in packs = spakes) of 500. And that they live in trees and surprise their prey by dropping from the branches on to their heads …

 

Spot any spakes in the branches above Rehana's head?