Sorry, no time for updates… we are enjoying life on the beach! =)
We are currently in Jeff’s resort at Coconut beach near Inhambane and its absolute paradise here. Guests call this place “hotel California” because nobody ever seems to want to leave. Most people just stay another day…. and another… and another… and another…
Sandra has started with a PADI diving course and Haitske is busy exploring the coral reefs. Life is good!
Due to the home affairs and SA visitor permit issues we just spend a whole week in Nelspruit. This is approximately 5 nights more than planned.
Sadly for us most of our days in Nelspruit were on the exact days that this area received their first spring rain. This might be good for the farmers and people with gardens, but camping in pouring rain is just plain poor.
We started out at the Nature’s Gate campsite approximately 5 km outside of Nelspruit on the N40. This is quite a nice campsite set up on a big lawn. The camping spots are not real clearly marked but due to the weather there weren’t many campers around so we could just pick any spot we liked. There are several electricity points and what we liked best was the (very slow) wireless internet connection near the office.
There is a restaurant open on site but its only open for breakfast and lunch. The restaurant closes at 15:30 which is a bit early in our opinion.
Camping costs 200 ZAR per night which is a bit much for what’s on offer as only one of the two ablution blocks had warm water and the site is directly next to the busy N40 which gives it quite a bit of a traffic noisy background.
On Monday the rain just kept on coming down in streams. It felt like standing underneath one of those rainforest showerheads. After spending a whole frustrating day at home affairs we decided to spoil ourselves and looked for a solid roof over our heads. Nature’s Gate recommended the Kwanyoni lodge a bit further out on the N40. They offered us a double room for 350 ZAR and we took it. The room was basic but clean and with a nice hot shower.
Tuesday the weather was good enough for camping so we made our way back to Nature’s Gate.
But Wednesday morning we woke up to another day of rain, rain, rain and even more rain. We packed up our wet rooftop tent and decided to go look for another roof to hide under.
This time we checked out the local tourism office and browsed through the flyers searching for some budget self catering accommodation around Nelspruit. We found the Lion’s head lodge and caravan park just outside of White River.
Here we were offered an amazing 120 m2 house with two bedrooms, a huge lounge with open fireplace and a fully equipped kitchen for 340 (170 pp) ZAR per night! We happily drove the 30 km out of Nelspruit and ended up feeling like the lady of the mansion.
We spend the evening all warm and cozy with self made chicken soup in front of a blazing fire. all Our house on the top of a hill with a view in the direction of the Kruger park.
Lion’s Head definitely has a lot of potential, but you shouldn’t be too picky if you want to stay here. The place aims for the backpackers budget range and does look a bit run down on first impression but the various houses are definitely interesting for travelers on a tight budget.
We really liked the house we stayed in and eventually stayed for 3 nights even though the sun came out again on Thursday and we could easily have gone camping again. The house itself is nice and clean (it is serviced daily by a lovely cleaning lady) but it could do with some basic maintenance like a lick of paint and some new curtains.
The caravan park is not really interesting for caravans or roof-top tents as it has slight scrap yard tendencies with rolls of metal lying around and no grass. If you only have a small tent you could pitch up on the terraces with a view over the valley which is a lot nicer.
Additionally Lion’s Head has a nice garden and a beautiful infinity pool. Gale, the owner, and Louis, the marketing manager, are real nice people and offered a cozy fire in the lapa in the evenings. There are also numerous cuddly cats and dogs around which is definitely something we liked. A lot!
As we now also have a big tent to drag around Africa we needed to reorganize our storage solution.
From the beginning on we wanted to attach the table underneath the roof rack. Basically a copy of the original Frontrunner table we have seen on other cars.
We have checked in various builders warehouse’s and other DIY stores but never managed to find the right size of profile. So in the end we went to a professional welder and had something custom made.
Now we are the proud owners of 6 bold brackets that can be mounted on the roof rack in various ways. Yippie!
During our stay in Etosha we had the pleasure of being neighbors to a lovely couple from Durban. They had this amazing easy tent which pitched extremely fast due to a special mechanism.
As we are now going into the rainy season (we just had a whole week of cold weather and pouring rain to endure) we decided that adding a luxury extension to our (outdoor-) living room is not such a bad idea. We will now leave for Mozambique, and not only is the malaria risk higher there (also a good reason to retreat inside), we will also visit less different locations and a base tent will make life easier as well.
This is the tent we have chosen: the Natural Instincts Turbo 240 FS lite:
It offers a height of 2m10 and has a floor plan of 2,4 m2. As the tent is almost completely preassembled it sure has a big bag, but as we put it up the roof rack this doesn’t matter so much to us.
We immediately set up the tent once to see if everything is included before we leave Nelspruit and the tent sure pitches fast. Putting it back into the bag is a different story though…. =)
We had to leave the lovely Kruger park due to the school holidays. Every possible accommodation was fully booked so we planned on going to Mozambique first. But before we left we decided to check at the office of home affairs in Nelspruit what the situation is with our South African visitor permit.
As you might remember we had an unscheduled stop-over at Jo’burg airport on July 31 when our flight to Walvisbay was delayed due to technical problems. The result of this is that we officially entered South Africa on July 31 and our 90 days started counting down from this day on. So even though we spend most of these days in Namibia, Zambia and Botswana we are only allowed to stay in South Africa until the end of October. This poses a big problem for us. Not only do we want to spend Christmas in Cape Town, it also is a bit of a detour getting from Mozambique to Namibia without driving through South Africa.
Therefore we though let’s ask the experts at home affairs what our possibilities are…. BIG MISTAKE!
After spending two days at the home affairs office we now have a collection of 10 different “advice’s”. They range from “you need to apply for a extended stay visa immediately and therefore we need (1) a medical examination, (2) a radiological exam of your lungs, (3) Police clearance certificates of all countries you’ve lived in, (4) A bank statement, (5) your return ticket and (6) an explanation of why you want to stay longer”, to “just go to Mozambique for a day or two, you’ll get a new 90 day permit when re-entering South Africa.” So far we have spoken in person and via telephone to more than 10 persons and haven’t found two persons who provided us with the same information.
So in the end we decided to take the advice we received from the immigration professionals (Ms Elfornett from Global Migration SA, Capetown). Get out of the country (preferably a neighboring country, not Swaziland or Lesotho) and stay out for at least 7 to 10 days after our visitor permit has expired. When we come back to the border the immigration official might give us another 90 days. Other alternatives (!) are 7 or 30 days. If we only get permission for 7 or 30 days we can still go to home affairs and apply for an extension.
Just to be sure we double checked this with Denise from home affairs in Nelspruit (an expert who was not in the office on Monday) and lucky for us she confirmed this.
That’s good enough for us, so now we have applied for and received a 30 day single entry permit for Mozambique and will stay there from 10.10. till 08.11.
Please cross your fingers for us that we meet the right immigration official on our way back and get our next 90 days!
Travelling Patsy 