Maputo - Picture by Gerti Brindlmayer
By the time the Intercape Bus left Maputo behind, I had finished most of my food ration. Knowing the border was only one hour away, I figured I could get new supplies there for this nine-hour trip to Johannesburg.
What comfort! I had the front seat, upstairs on a double-decker bus with toilets, staff serving drinks and collecting the litter, no blasting music and a reclining seat. It was heaven! Leaving Maputo, I noticed the first traffic jam in five weeks, commuters driving into the city. Very disturbing to watch was that only single occupancy was the rule: bad habits are spreading fast.
At the border, I lost sight of my bus and quickly tagged on to a passenger from my bus, since borders can always be confusing. We breezed through Mozambique’s immigration. Then came the big surprise: my “guide” claimed there was no South African immigration. Until I left South Africa again, I worried that this was not true and I would run into troubles. In these puzzling moments at the border, I did not take the time to exchange money from the ladies running around whispering “Rands, Rands”. When my fellow passengers realized that I had no cash they offered to buy me food. Would I ever see this in my home country?
Most noticeable at this border with South Africa are women carrying goods across in wheel carts heavily loaded. This brought back memories when I walked across the Cambodian border into Thailand in 2008. Again, my co-travelers came to my help. They explained that this is very a profitable business and that those women can ask three times the price for these goods in Mozambique. Women seem to be very enterprising here. Nobody could get past them selling South African phone cards. The thing to have! Already last year in Uganda, we noticed that Gilles and I were the only people without a mobile phone.
Once in South Africa, we passed large banana plantations, all fruits wrapped in plastic bags. Some parts of the journey were very scenic: a narrow valley with a stream running through, its steep slopes plastered with gigantic boulders balancing on top of each other, a déjà vu of Matobo National Park, Zimbabwe. Like a Swiss clock we pulled into Park Station in Johannesburg, at 04:30 pm, right on time, almost a bit surreal after travelling for 9 hours and crossing an international border.
Picture by Gerti Brindlmayer.
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