2005 South Africa – Sodwana
We left Mashatu at 7 am and by 8.30 we were in our car, heading for Swaziland. We had to reach the border by 4 pm which was a bit of a push with so many tractors and other slow-moving vehicles on the road. It looked like we would just about make it when Laura realised she had forgotten the registration documents for the car so they wouldn’t let us through the border. We were so close we decided to continue and hope they let us through but suddenly the road turned to gravel which was not marked on the map and with our speed drastically reduced we abandoned Swaziland and started heading in the direction of our next stop Sodwana. It was too far to drive that day so we were keeping an eye out for a place to stay for the night when we came across a town called Badplaas and saw a poster advertising a resort of some kind. It wasn’t until our arrival at the hotel that we discovered it offered a selection of therapeutic thermal baths. It was just what we needed after a day in the car so we quickly changed and went to see what was on offer. There were four swimming pools ranging from cool to scorching hot with massage jets shooting out of the walls. The idea was to go from cool to hot which we did until we got to the last pool which was a ridiculous 49 degrees. David managed it but it was much too hot for the rest of us. The hotel was rather run down and someone had the bright idea of having carpets in a resort that was centred around water so they had become quite smelly. The rooms were very basic but clean and not smelly.
Next morning we had breakfast and were back on the road at 7.30 am. There was rain and mist for most of the drive and as it would have been much worse in higher areas it was just as well we didn’t make it to Swaziland as the hotel we had booked was high in the hills. We stopped for lunch looking rather silly in our summer clothes and flip-flops while it continued to drizzle and was quite cold. It was sunny and dry when we arrived in Sodwana but the forecast for the next three days was overcast and rainy.
We checked into our log cabin at Sodwana Bay Nation Park which was very basic but we liked it and it ticked the most important box, a nice little balcony to have our sundowners each night. 
I couldn’t remember ever having a sundowner in the past but it was becoming a habit which I suspected would be hard to break. We took a walk through the forest to the beautiful, white sandy beach which was deserted and the sea surprisingly warm.
Dinner that night was terrible and took forever to be served. David and Laura were very irritated by it all but it was a pleasant, open-air environment which for me was just as important as the food or service. When David complained, the manager said words to the effect of “I know. Terrible isn’t it but what can we do?” It wasn’t a sarcastic common but a genuine attempt to absolve himself from responsibility. It reminded me of Basil Fawlty blaming Manuel for everything that went wrong in his hotel. “I am sorry but he is Spanish.”
We were out early the next morning to go to the beach where Laura (who was a keen diver) had booked a dive. It was drizzling and cold so all we could do was sit in the car but an hour later when Laura returned from her dive the sun came out. She went for a second dive later so while Federika was swimming, David and I went fishing with some equipment his friend had lent us. We had to climb over some rocks to get to where we could cast which wasn’t easy and David slipped and cut his foot on some dead coral. It was uncomfortable and we weren’t catching anything so abandoned the idea and went back to the beach to fight with the big rolling waves which was great fun.
That night we had our weirdest ever dinner experience. We were invited to dinner by Janice, an old business acquaintance of David’s and her boyfriend Lindsey. We arrived with two bottles of wine which they opened and asked us if we wanted a drink. As I was hot and thirsty I asked if I could have a beer which is what Lindsey was drinking. He said no, I could only have wine. When the wine was finished we were not offered anything else so had to drink water while Lindsey continued to drink beer. It wasn’t until we arrived that Janice started cooking and when she opened a bag of pap (similar to polenta) she found that mice had eaten half of it so she had to throw it away. We were then instructed to peel some potatoes so she could make a potato bake to put in the oven. While all this was happening Lindsey kept turning the music up to a deafening level while Janice kept turning it down to what was only uncomfortable. During dinner, their dog went to Laura to be stroked and she was happy to oblige but when Lindsey saw it he started hitting the dog with his shoe for going too close to the table. The final straw came when Lindsey started on a racist slant saying even the blacks agreed things were better when the whites were in power. The conversation got heated when David called him a fascist while Janice tried in vain to defuse the situation. By then we had had enough so left without the customary “You must come over to us sometime.” They were two of the most unpleasant people I had ever met.
Next morning I went down to the beach early to do some fishing and actually managed to catch something. It was a good size fish but even if we had a kitchen it wouldn’t have been enough to feed the four of us so I gave it to our maid. I thought she would be overjoyed but she accepted it as if she had an abundant supply which probably was the case with locals knowing how to fish far better than me.
One of the popular local attractions was to swim with dolphins which Federika particularly wanted to do so we booked an excursion. A group of us wearing life jackets sat on the edge of a large rubber boat holding onto little pieces of rope. I got harder and harder to stay seated as the sea got rougher. Waves came splashing over the boat soaking us all and what started as a pleasant little afternoon jaunt turned out more like a Navy Seal endurance test. In theory, we were supposed to go out to where the dolphins were and swim with them but it was an absurd idea because even if we found them, the sea was far too rough to swim in. The people who ran the excursion would have known that and should have cancelled but I suppose money was more important to them than customer satisfaction. We never saw any dolphins and after half an hour, not a person on that boat gave a toss. All we wanted to do was get back to dry land.
David and Laura always liked to leave early on their travels so we were on the road by 5 am. We hated getting up early but were happy to go along with it although it was weird having breakfast three hours after waking up. On the way back to the house we stopped at Rosebank Market in Johannesburg and splashed out on two Panama hats. Apart from being very comfortable, the seller demonstrated how they could be folded flat and packed with the rest of the luggage without getting misshapen.
It was a wonderful part of our holiday although Laura was in shock when she saw how much of our alcohol budget was left. Federika and I don’t drink much and in the 24 years we had been together had only managed to finish a whole bottle of wine on one occasion. It turned out that the four of us spent less on alcohol in six days than she had on a three-day trip with her father.
2005 South Africa
