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After taking a look at the nice beach outside Maputo we returned to the "safety" of Swaziland. The next day we took the bus to Johannesburg and stayed the night at the Drifters Inn. On our final day in South Africa we went on a guided tour of Johannesburg before flying home to Norway in the evening.

South African Adventure 1999, Part 11: From Swaziland back to Johannesburg and home to Oslo

Jan Arild Teland
2006-05-08 20:37:40

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Day 29 - July 25

We woke up at 0800, prepared our own breakfast in the kitchen and started packing our stuff into the car. However, we didn't get underway before 1000 because there were several people at the center which Gunnar had to talk to before we could leave, and when Gunnar first starts talking he never stops, so this took quite a while.

While we were waiting at the car for Gunnar, Ove came over to talk to us. We also played a little bit with the German Shepherd called Dino, who was also living here. Due to some scars he had bandaid on both of his ears and looked quite funny!

When Gunnar finally returned, we basically followed the same route as yesterday into Maputo. It was Sunday morning and the city seemed a lot quieter than yesterday as there were not so many people out in the streets yet.

The temperature was very pleasant, but the weather was not as good as we had been used to (except in Cape Town). The sky was almost totally clouded and there were even drops of rain coming at regular intervals.

After driving through the city center we came to a very nice long beach just on the outskirts of Maputo. The road went along the beach, had several hotels on the left side and was lined with palm trees. It all looked very beautiful, even on a rainy day.

We passed a large building on the left hand side which looked like it was a hotel under construction. Gunnar told us that this particular building had been standing like that for 25 years, all since the Portugese left Maputo. Before leaving, the portugese had made sure that building work was difficult to continue by pouring concrete down in the drain system, together with other forms of sabotage. Thus, it had just been standing unfinished since then, and was now in danger of falling over. In fact, there seemed to be quite a few unfinished houses around here.

There weren't really many people at the beach this early, ...