Ponta do Ouro

We’d left Durban early on Saturday morning.  It’s only a 4-hour drive, but we took longer than that, as we were taking it easy, stopping along the way to look at the scenery.

Beach somewhere on the way to Mozambique

The beaches are all breathtakingly beautiful. In Holland the beach is the same everywhere…a long, stright line along the North Sea. And it’s dirty and crowded. And the water is very cold. Here the sea is amazingly warm! It seems everybody can surf here.

The moment you cross the border into Mozambique, everything is different. Starting with the roads:

Mozambique roads

The asphalt stops at the border. As do the place-names that are either Zulu or English: now it’s Portuguese. Mozambique used to be a Portuguese colony. Did I learn that in school? Honestly I can’t remember. It’s not easy to describe the feeling, but although the landscape doesn’t change, you can feel that you’re in a different country.

Ponta beach

The first night in Ponta was magical. My new friends come here to dive regularly. We are staying at a diving camp on the beach. They are all crazy, but in a good way On Saturday night it was party-time, and these South Africans party like it’s serious business. They use their diving equipment to drink beer with.

Snorkling beer

Seriously:

Getting a bit giggly

So yeah, is it the romantic setting, the huts on the beach, the atmosphere, the scuba beer, the hiccups or am I just a horny slut? I dunno, but I ended up going to bed (but not to sleep) with one of them.

us in bed

And I can’t deny it, I was photographed

Sunday morning everyone was up early to go diving. When I heard that there are sharks, I decided to just stay on the beach. These South Africans are crazy! I only sort of half believed them, but it’s really true, my new boyfriend took this photo while they were down there:

Yes, it's a REAL shark

If it was me in the photo I’d definitely have been swimming in the other direction. Fast.
I prefer to just take it easy and take long walks on these incredible beaches.

Ponta beach

My last morning here, we leave after breakfast. I’m sad to leave, but I have to get back to Jozi and do some work for a change

It's a 3G card

and it allows me to do what I’m doing: It’s early morning and I’m sitting on a hill in Mozambique watching the sun rise. And it’s beautiful! But I’m getting ahead of myself, back to the story:

After leaving the Drakensberg behind, I got to Durban in the late evening, booked into my hotel and had a look around. Durban is very different from Jozi. There’s less of a buzz…or rather, there’s a different, more relaxed type of buzz. It’s a picture-postcard beach/holiday city:

Durban beach

And what I’d totally never expected, is that there are so many Indians. No silly, not with mohawks. Indians from India. It seems they were brought here by the British to work on the sugar cane plantations.

Influences of India

But as I’ve come to expect in the short while I’ve been in South Africa, there’s also the other side of it:

Informal settlement

“Informal settlement” is the South African politically correct euphemism for a slum. And there are informal settlements everywhere, sometimes literally side by side with really wealthy neighbourhoods. A world in one country, but also a country of extreme contrasts.

But so I bumped into these guys on the beach, who invited me to go to Mozambique with them. Which hadn’t been the plan, but it’s only a 4-hour drive and it sounded like fun. And it’s been awesome! Gotta go eat breakfast, I’m starving….more later.