No Stopping for Lions (25 page)

We're back in Cape Town, this time staying in the suburb of Hout Bay on the Atlantic seabord while we wait to hear from Donald with confirmation that all is in place for his purchase of the Troopy. The little flat we've taken is away from the bustle of Hout Bay's busy streets but close enough to pop down to the activity on the seafront. One of Cape Town's major fishing fleets is based at the harbour here, and the red and blue boats of the Cape Coloureds, who have dominated the industry in the past, dot the water in this sweeping broad bay of great natural beauty.

On the way to most places we drive past Imizamo Yethu, a controversial informal settlement that has grown rapidly over the past few years to cover 18 hectares slap in the middle of luxury retirement homes and million-dollar mansions. As many as 20 000 people are said to be living here in makeshift shanties with little or no infrastructure such as plumbing or roads. A more striking example of the haves and have-nots living in precarious harmony would be hard to find.

In emails from home we're often asked about the safety issue in South Africa, whether we've ever felt threatened or been in danger. I would have to say never, disregarding the credit card theft in those first days in Cape Town — and Neil has always put that down to a lapse in concentration on his part: he'd disregarded the first rule of drawing money from an ATM anywhere. The need for security is hard to ignore, with armed security guards, high fences and razor wire protecting everything from shops and car parks to public buildings and private homes, but you soon learn to look beyond that. On the surface, day-to-day life in South Africa is so like Sydney that it's easy to miss the undercurrents. Passing through the country as visitors, we've been impressed by the infrastructure. The roads are excellent and we've found the post reliable. But when we read the papers and speak to people on the street we can't ignore the fact that things are falling apart. The country has the second-highest murder rate in the world; hospitals are closing because they're a danger to the public when they treat patients; and billions of rand are lost or stolen from government at all levels due to incompetence and corruption. Every day we read about another huge loss of public funds — recently one local government body made 1000 employees redundant, but their remuneration bill went up by over a billion rand because the council officials rewarded themselves for achieving such wonderful savings. The ANC government is trying to take control of the judiciary, and the country experiences blackouts because the staterun electricity network receives very little maintenance and has no forward planning. With so many other pressing issues facing the government, security seems to have been left in the hands of the individual.

We're happy to be here in Cape Town, in what is arguably one of the most beautiful cities in the world, but it's a far cry from watching the sun go down over an endless yellow plain and waking to the warm embrace of the bush. We're both feeling slightly odd; we're in a neverland of neither coming nor going. Neil begins to talk of farewell lunches with relatives and friends and he starts thinking about the practicalities of going home. The floor of the flat is strewn with dog-eared airline print-outs and paperwork we've not looked at for almost a year. We have to remind each other that, although we've come full circle, the journey hasn't come to an end.

To convince ourselves of this we plan a little trip, visiting the sights that we were too preoccupied to see when we were here the first time. The thought of this perks us up considerably and we set off for a few days down the Cape Peninsula to the Cape of Good Hope in a good mood but grey, drizzly weather.

The first stop is Simon's Town. Although a naval base, it's nevertheless a very pretty town in an old Victorian English seaside sort of way. The architecture is all sandstone, weatherboard and wrought-iron verandahs, and the original naval buildings look more manor house than institutional. Nearby is an African, or jackass, penguin colony on the shoreline at Boulders Beach, and the breeding season is in full swing. The surrounding
fynbos
is a hive of activity, with mating, nesting and home-building going on, and the sand is covered with happy families socialising and sunbaking with heads back, flippers open to the rays. Every now and then there's a commotion in the undergrowth. The bushes quiver and shake and jackass brays start up, rise to a crescendo then die down as peace is restored. There are around 3000 little waiters here now, a far cry from the original two mating pairs of the early 1980s.

Next we visit the Cape of Good Hope in Table Mountain National Park. We're told not to expect to see much wildlife, as the little there is is spread out and tends to prefer the areas away from access roads. But we're not worried because even the road into the park is spectacular, with sweeping views of False Bay and unexpected inlets and coves. It's also a perfect day for this park — sunny but cool, with very little wind and great visibility. Although the coastal
fynbos
has been flattened and battered by gales over centuries and there are few trees, the park is starkly dramatic, and in flower.

Days before, a tourist was lost when he went swimming at Diaz Beach, between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point. Today we walk the path above the beach and look down over the wild seas where a visible rip, the culprit, moves like a sinister shoal across the bay towards the rocks. Even from way up here it looks hostile and forbidding, and you feel for the family who watched helplessly as a happy lark turned to tragedy in a minute.

On the way back to Cape Town we stop off at Kalk Bay, a little village tucked between the railway line and the shoreline. Standing patiently in the car park is a lady holding up appliquéd wall hangings for sale. As we admire the designs and workmanship of her craft we learn a bit about her. Winnie is her name, and she is totally without pretence, rooted to the pavement like a big warm shady oak, one that you'd like to shelter under. She's proud of her work and spends a little time explaining the scenes depicted and the materials she uses. She is from Zimbabwe but, unlike the recent refugees, she has been moving around all of southern Africa for many years, selling her work. Her husband is dead and her three children are scattered here and there. Winnie speaks softly and with great warmth and you come away feeling richer just from spending five minutes with her. She is everything I want to remember about Africa and one of many I'll never forget.

Waiting for us in Cape Town is the email we've sweated on: Donald has confirmed that the official paperwork is in his hands: he's drawn up a contract of sale and has arranged for money to be transferred to our account. The Troopy is soon to drive new roads, traverse new highways and bear proudly the number plates of Namibia. We start on a frenetic sorting and packing program and parcel up things to send back home, and this brings on twinges of nostalgia when we uncover safari khakis, dried baobab petals, a carving from Vic Falls which we discover has stained my underwear with boot polish. But we're in high spirits. Not only has the worry over the Troopy's fate lifted but we're also about to start on one last journey: we will deliver the Troopy in person to Windhoek as part of the sale agreement, and we will drive there via places that have lodged in a special part of our hearts.

The route north we've chosen this time is up through the Karoo, a semi-desert that stretches across the middle of South Africa. We set out from Cape Town and have been on the road for only fifteen minutes when we pass a body in the middle of an exit ramp. It's near the airport where the huge squatter camp envelops the freeway, and the poor soul must have tried to cross from one side to the other in the early morning traffic. It's awful and sad but eerily peaceful — the police have cleared a big area around the body and there is no one near it; he's just lying there while commuters go on their way on either side and his down-at-heel shoes lie empty on the road 10 metres behind. He could be sleeping were it not for his limbs akimbo and the stillness that has permeated the scene.

We can't resist a stopover in Stellenbosch to re-acquaint ourselves with some half-decent wine. The heart of South Africa's wine industry, Stellenbosch is also a university town and it's a place of tradition, culture and great scenic beauty as well. Camberley Cottage is our home and Blackie, a rolling black Labrador with loose eyes and long wet jowls, is our host. The cottage sits by a vineyard and we look out over rows of maroon and mustard leafage along the dramatic Franschhoek Valley, its slopes and floor a chequerboard of orchards and vineyards. The owners of Camberley, Blackie's masters, are away and he's attached himself to us for company and handouts. The first night he retires to our bedroom along with us and I fall asleep with my hand held soft and warm in his mouth. He spends the night alternating between Neil's side of the bed and mine but by morning he's gone.

Next day at lunchtime we eat in a restaurant in town which has a novel way of billing customers — you help yourself from a buffet, the plate is put on a scales and you're charged according to weight. Good fun and fast service, and everyone walks away content as they believe they've eaten exactly what they paid for.

We visit Lanzerac, an old French Huguenot wine estate. With a whitewashed, elegant Cape Dutch manor house surrounded by ruler-straight vines, it's the holy grail of a gracious Cape wine estate. Our goal today is to taste five wines, after which we'll each be given a Lanzerac-etched wineglass free of charge. No matter that we'll soon have no use for them. On arrival we're told that we must have read about this offer in an old wine magazine as it no longer applies, but we enjoy the tasting nevertheless, particularly when a group of young glamourpusses arrive. After confidently asking to taste a sweet wine, they are prepared to settle for a semi-sweet when their first choice is not forthcoming. No semi-sweet? ‘Well, where do we have to go for a good sweet wine?' When told Robertson, a town many kilometres away, almost in the desert, they decide to make the best of it and sample what Lanzerac has on offer. Reading off the list one says she'll try chardonnay, another, ‘cabenette'. A third, still holding on to a dream, asks if magnum is sweet. We could easily stay a week here, but after four days we are forced to leave Blackie by the need to push on to Namibia.

The road across the Karoo is long and the distance between towns far, but I'm just happy to be heading north again. I can see that Neil has mixed feelings: sad that we'll soon be parting with the Troopy, happy that he's sold it for a good price, but anxious that the final handover proceeds without a hitch. We overnight in Beaufort West in a guesthouse surprising for its class and style in the heart of the desert, then the next day we reach Upington and annoy ourselves by driving around the streets, lost, in a town we thought we'd remember. But Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park is now just a day away and even a mediocre B&B can't dampen our rising excitement.

Driving into Kgalagadi once again, our anticipation is high. Now we know what to expect and we think we know where to head for the best wildlife viewings, but once on the access roads we're struck by how it's changed in ten months. No wildlife congregating where they were before and no recognisable landmarks. What's up? Of course, it's now autumn, another season, and summer has been harsh and long. Where before tall yellow grasses covered the dunes and dry riverbeds, now there is brittle brown stubble scattered across a loose sandy expanse. Before, big herds of antelope stretched along the rivers, but now we find them crowding around permanent waterholes or walking towards them in long dusty lines.

This park is remarkable. On our first day we come across two big black-maned lions by a waterhole. We're sure these are the brothers from our previous visit until a ranger points out that these are new to the park, spotted a few weeks ago trailing in from Botswana. They are so fat and full they don't move all day except to follow the shade. We go back to the waterhole three times and they are always there, once lying in the shadow of an onlooker's sedan; another time, on their backs asleep under a camelthorn tree, manes unruly and matted with twigs and large padded paws pointing to the sky. Then one afternoon we're on a sidetrack that looks as if no vehicle has passed along it for some time when, right beside the road, there stands a magnificent leopard who gazes at the Troopy with lazy Adonis eyes. He runs off, not because he's frightened but because he has a female waiting in the bushes. We just catch a glimpse of her svelte young body before they get down to some serious mating in the long grass.

Staying once again in Kalahari Tented Camp we're visited by a snake, a jackal, a genet and two yellow mongooses by the time we've downed sundowners. Anything more and we'd have to charge admittance. The snake, long but thin, appears on the ground under the Troopy and the camp attendant thinks that it would have ridden into camp with us on the Troopy. Neil, remembering the experience in Ruaha National Park, tries to convince me that it's a mole snake, living harmlessly underground, but I've no doubt that we carried this one in on the Troopy as well. Our two experiences mirror a story told to us 30 years ago by friends who had lent us their army-green Peugeot stationwagon. They were working in Jo'burg and Neil and I had been travelling on the cheap through southern Africa. Our friends very generously lent us the Peugeot to complete our journey to Cape Town, but it came with this warning: never leave the parked vehicle with the windows open. Some months before, they had been doing a tour of Rhodesia and when they got to the Great Zimbabwe ruins they were hot and tired and annoyed with each other. Robbie refused to get out of the car and sat in the passenger's seat sulking, window down because of the heat. After a couple of minutes Lyle coaxed her out and she slid across the bench seat to exit on the driver's side. Then she remembered the opened passenger's window and leaned back to wind it up just in time to see a deadly black mamba sliding down from the roof of the car, in through the open window and down onto the floor under her seat. If she'd not glanced back at that particular moment she would have wound the window up then afterwards got back into the car, oblivious to the danger coiled under her seat.

Although it's been less than a year since we were last at this camp, the wear and tear is showing. While still spotlessly clean and well serviced, things like broken tent zippers and unmended Velcro window seals have changed the camp from stylishly rustic to ‘bush condition'. This is borne out when we chat to the camp attendant and he tells us that headquarters never seem to get around to sending replacement zips and new Velcro; he hints at under-funding and corruption in low places and refers to similar neglect in the wildlife management area as well.

Then it's on to Namibia, through the same border post as before but this time we're held up not by having our firewood confiscated on the South African side, but by Neil getting involved in a long conversation with the Namibian officials on soccer, South African roads and how the Troopy's fared on its long trek. These men are in the back of beyond and would have only a handful of customers each day, but their uniforms are pressed and crisply white and their shoes polished. The Customs team check the Troopy's fridge and drawers for contraband with great thoroughness all the while arguing whether the World Cup in Cape Town in 2010 will be successful (
No, there is too much crime in that place
) and which African country will be able to beat Namibia (
Sadly, I think, Sir, all of them
).

The red dunes are beckoning, so after a forgettable night in a plain, gritty highway town we're back in Sesriem. Not the campsite this time but a kilometre or two away in the middle of a tussocky, rocky dry plain. Desert Camp. The reception desk is manned by a thin, slightly scary, young lady who announces that she does not have our booking and knows nothing about us — and who was it anyway that Neil thinks he spoke to when making the reservation? I can see his hackles rising as he over-politely explains the phone conversation and tries to say without saying it directly that the person he spoke to was black. ‘It was me!' she cackles just in time. This is Gizella, making a joke. ‘Oh, I'm a bad girl. Hello and welcome.'

While checking us in Gizella tells us that she's on a self-improvement kick. Before, she smoked and drank and was cheeky to everyone. She was always fighting and getting into trouble. ‘See this?' she asks, pointing to a round mouth-sized skin graft on her forehead. After a heavy bout of drinking she started fighting with another girl who jumped on her and bit a piece out of her. ‘Oh, I was bad news then.' When asked how long she's been off the alcohol she proudly tells us one month, so Neil and I tacitly agree to give Gizella a wide birth for the duration of our stay. But we find ourselves gravitating to her and her exuberant personality and by the time we leave the camp we've learnt more of her wayward past. No husband, two children, one living with her mother and one with her uncle. She's working towards becoming a better person, leaving the desert and getting her children back. Two years is too long in a desert she declares, partly in English and partly in Italian, her favourite language. If we buy her a ticket to Italy she can marry a wealthy Italian, sit by the sea and drink and smoke. Her children seem to have been forgotten in this optimistic but flawed plan.

Last year we thought the Sesriem public camping ground was in a great location but this is even better. Gizella has given us the end tent and we sit on the verandah and look out across endless desert. I could stay here forever. The colours change with every whim of the sun and a landscape that is red and glowing one minute becomes soft lilac the next time I look. The worst time is in the heat of the day when everything is stark and flat, shimmering in and out of focus, washed out by too much light. The mornings and evenings are magical. Then, the light sits on the landscape and sparkles like a pastel jewel, and the stillness goes on as far as the eye can see. This is heaven. We go to bed with the soft sounds of the night in our ears and in the morning we're woken by the busyness of birds and low African words as staff start their day.

On our last night in camp we're having a drink at the bar under the stars when a horned adder comes sidling in out of the gloom. The black staff are very frightened — they want to kill the ‘horny adder' — so Neil finds a cardboard box and with the help of the bravest barman he captures and relocates the intruder. We return to our tent and there on the steps is a scorpion, shiny and arched in our torchlight, and we congratulate ourselves that we didn't change out of our walking shoes before going to the bar. As we've learnt to expect of Africa, its beauty can often hide its wild heart.