A few days after our arrival in Durban, BFF Sally and her husband Jon Chapman picked us up in their 4×4 double-cab Ford Ranger for a blissful, week-long Easter getaway.
Ponto Malongane is the next headland after the more famous Ponto do Ouro in Mozambique – and 430km from our home in Umhlanga Rocks, Durban.
To Roy’s fervent relief, Sally’s mooted departure time of 5am was negotiated first to 6am and then to 7am. We finally pulled away from the Oyster Schelles at 7.20am.
Factoring in comfort stops, it’s a good five hours to the border – and even longer when you halt as we did for a breakfast fry-up at Ballito, a pineapple-purchasing pit-stop at Zamampilo market, and a wee break at Ilala Weavers (below).
Jon is part-owner of the busy Total Kosi Bay service station complex at Manguzi, just before the border. The complex includes a Bonjour shop, a Steers takeaway, plus Jon’s fishing provision shop and another called Living with Nuts – this stocks a great range of nuts, sweets, high-end venison, biltong (dried meat) and more. While Jon sorted out a few things, the rest of us indulged in Steers’ Wacky Wednesday promotion: half-price burgers.
At the Border
South Africans don’t need a visa, but my British soutie husband does. He had hoped to use the visa already in his passport from our recent Viking Sun cruise, but no – the immigration officials would have none of that. So he had to fork out U$50 for the pleasure of entering Mozambique for the second time in less than ten days.
While the rest of us hung around waiting for the interminable stamp-fest to be over, a local TV film crew begged to interview Sally about her holiday in Mozambique. (She had made the mistake of saying something to them in Portuguese – she’s been learning useful phrases – and they incorrectly assumed she was fluent.)
I took the pictures below on the way back into KwaZulu-Natal from Mozambique, when the weather was worse and the queues were longer:
To the Cottage
It must be a good seven years or more since Sal and Jon last took us to their Mar Azul beach cottage. Since then – in fact, only within the past year – the Chinese have replaced the strictly-4×4-only sandy track from the Mozambique side of the border with a beautiful tarred road that means you can get to Ponto do Ouro in a standard vehicle. But you still need a 4×4 to get to Ponto Malongane and the coastal stretch beyond it.
The spacious, well-equipped cottage sleeps a total of 14, with plenty of beds for the kids; but it was a lot more comfortable with just three couples – us, Sally and Jon, and their friends Carol and Ant Brunskill.
R&R – Rest & Relaxation, or Rotgut & Regret?
Though the cottage has wifi, it was a bit problematic. I had to get online, and so we headed for the Crab Bar in Malongane “town” to take advantage of its free wifi.
At barely 11.30am, dreadful music (can you imagine the 1965 hit “Sunglasses” sung in Afrikaans?) was already being played at ear-splitting volume over the Crab Bar’s cheap and crackly speakers.
Not exactly conducive to my work, but possibly necessary for the punters who were already climbing into the hard stuff – Mozambique’s favourite drink: R&R, which stands for rum and raspberry. (Or rotgut and regret, if you like.)
Made from a locally distilled spirit mixed with raspberry Sparletta, a (to me) sickeningly synthetic red pop, R&R is an inexplicable hit with visiting South Africans, too. That in spite of reports of the numbers of teenagers who have upped and died from downing the stuff like lemonade.
And that evening when we slid along to the Sunset Shack for sundowners (slideshow below), it was revealed that Ant, too, is extremely partial to a couple of R&Rs.
Designated driver? Don’t be silly. In the absence of Uber, being able to find your 4×4 qualifies you to drive it back home: that’s the norm here. (Fortunately, you can’t drive very fast on the soft-sand track.)
The photo above is a case in point: the hair-raising sight of South Africans bucketing along a sandy track on the back of a pick-up is common; and whether it’s before or after imbibing a tower or two of R&R doesn’t seem to matter.
On the Beach
The days slipped easily by. First thing in the morning, Sally, Carol and I would go for a beach walk – turning left one day and right the next.
One day we covered the eight kilometres south to Ponto do Ouro, where John came to pick us up.
Accessible by tarred road, Ponto do Ouro is a lot bigger and busier than Ponto Malongane. Denise runs the heavenly Mango Café, a rooftop eatery above the Dolphin Centre. Not the best coffee when we visited, but a divine key lime pie!
At the Table
Once back at the cottage, someone would generally cook up a substantial breakfast, something like: scrambled eggs, bacon and croissants; or fried eggs, bacon, garlicky mushrooms and warthog sausages. (If you like a pork banger, you’d love a warthog banger! – or snag, for our Aussie friends.)
Lunch was generally fresh pau (Portuguese-style bread) from the local bakery, with cold meats, cheese and whatever leftovers lurked in the huge fridge.
How you then spent the afternoon depended on your proclivities, on the weather, and/or how much you’d drunk the night before.
For hours on end, Roy could be found strategically wedged into a sofa corner, Kindle propped up in such a way that you couldn’t tell whether he was reading or dozing. Ant and Jon went fishing a couple of times, coming back with several garrick. One rainy afternoon saw a couple of desultory games of rummy break out.
We took turns with dinner: Carol brought a delicious chicken pie with phyllo pastry from the Fat Frog Kitchen in Windermere Road, Durban; Sally the outstanding chef effortlessly whipped up a memorable Thai-style tuna green curry; I brought along a lamb shank casserole; and John barbecued chicken and potatoes.
Soon after 4pm, we’d mobilise for sundowners at one of Malongane’s barraca bars (barraca is Portuguese for mud hut) – and maybe stay for dinner. Rocky is the owner of the Sunset Shack, where, on the plus side, the prawn rissoles, peri-peri chicken and service are lovely. Their prawns – the other food that Mozambique is famous for – are a bit overpriced, though; and they run out of wine yet cheekily charge corkage when you bring your own! (I guess that’s the penalty for refusing to drink R&Rs.)
One day, we headed to the new Sky Bar at the Sky Island Resort, but the wind and its exposed position drove us back to the Sunset Shack almost before I’d managed to down my first Savannah cider.
Another day, Carol drove us 20 minutes north of Malongane to Ponta Mamoli, where the creative Jill and Mike Platt are working very hard on extending their Aloha self-catering accommodation complex – and also, as I understood it, fitting and furnishing several stunning new houses in the area.
Jill has just opened a lovely little shop, too. Sally managed to find some cute towel hooks and other bric-a-brac to buy, despite the bulk of its stock having been depleted during the busy Easter weekend.
No longer the Portuguese rebel nation of old. You must be dying to gain the relative peace and quiet of Le Sud du France?