An Emergency Vacation

This weekend, Laura and I made a break for it -- a run for the border. We hadn't planned on going to South Africa this weekend, and in fact only booked our hotel the night before leaving. Twenty-four hours before standing at the border, we weren't even allowed to leave Mozambique because our resident visas hadn't been approved yet.

The emergency was that our (borrowed) car was having trouble. The only garage our colleagues trust is in Nelspruit, South Africa. It's not a completely comfortable feeling knowing that we had to drive 220 kilometres in a car whose state of repair was questionable, but even in need of repair, the 2000 Toyota Sprinter that we've borrowed is in the upper quartile of cars on the road. (The bottom quartile consists of cars that have either long since been abandoned at the side of the road, or should have been.)

On Wednesday morning, I went to the immigration office to see if our resident visas were approved. They were and -- a near-miracle, I'm told -- a week earlier than promised. We left on Thursday morning for Nelspruit.

South Africa was at once familiar and not familiar -- comfortable and not. People spoke English, yet didn't understand our accent automatically. We still felt like foreigners, not completely able to let our guards down.

Ferdi the mechanic looked at our car Friday morning. It turned out that the awful screeching noise was caused by some metal something-or-other that was bent and rubbing against another something-or-other. Ferdi handled the repair himself, and charged us 90 rand (about $12) for his trouble. A small part of me would have felt a little more assured that our car was road-worthy again had he charged 900 rand instead.

With a clean bill of health on the car, Laura and I headed north into the mountains of Sabie. Laura wanted to stop to get a photo of the sign saying that we could really drive 120 km/h on the narrow, winding two-lane mountain roads. She didn't fully understand just how crazy that speed "limit" was until she was standing at the side of the road snapping a photo -- the transport truck that whizzed by shook the car and startled the photographer.

Once in Sabie, we spent some time admiring Sabie Falls (taking lots of photos -- some of which are included here) and looking in some gift shops before returning to Nelspruit for dinner.

We headed back towards Mozambique on Saturday morning, intent on spending some time in Kruger Park before coming home. Laura was disappointed that we didn't stop, but is already planning a time when we can make our stay worthwhile. After all, we've been in Africa for six weeks and have yet to see African wildlife.