Let the journey just happen

MORE than two decades ago, I lay in a small tent in a campsite on the Mozambican coast for two days straight. Well, me and my first (and only) wife. It rained endlessly, but it wasn't too unpleasant because the tent was waterproof and we were on a sort of delayed honeymoon on an overloaded single-cylinder BMW motorbike (we had unexpectedly married six months before).

We finally had to get out of the tent because no one can live on ProNutro alone. After all, we were in a place with an abundance of fish, lobster, shrimp, chicken and chilli, and the Mediterranean cooking methods that the Portuguese left behind.

But we were 15km from the nearest proper town, Xai-Xai, and eight years after a devastating civil war your chances of a plate of shrimp or a peri-peri chicken were pretty slim. Or so we thought. The only thing that looked like a restaurant was a beautiful modernist hotel building on the beachfront next to the campsite, but it was an empty shell riddled with bullet holes.

Optimistically, however, we set off in the drizzle to a rickety bar almost against the dune. The only other people in the large campsite were two burly farmers and their wives, each with a couple of burly farm children, in two double-cab bakkies with fat tyres. From their ski boat and bundles of fishing rods, I deduced that they harvested their meals directly from nature.

The bar was a stilt structure with a roof of palm branches and a few plastic chairs and tables. There was 2M, Manica and Laurentina beer, Coke, Fanta and Sprite, and a bottle of brandy and other cheap spirits. At the counter, three local boys sat open-mouthed, staring at a gyrating, scantily clad Madonna in an MTV music video on the surprisingly large television, attached to a satellite dish on a pole.

The bartender, in a worn colonial-maroon waiter's uniform, dismissed the three boys with a wave of the arm and placed half-litre bottles of 2M in front of us. When we asked about the possibility of a meal in the area, without missing a beat he stuck a tattered printed menu with four items in front of us and explained something to us in enthusiastic half-English.

The first item is “Frango Piri-Piri". We look around in surprise, because there is no kitchen in sight, but the barman beckons a man raking leaves, who disappears into the tropical forest next to the ablution block.

We continue to work on our beers, unsure whether we have ordered anything. About three-quarters of an hour later, halfway through the third 2M and much friendlier and hungrier, rake-man appeared from the forest carrying an oval plate with a bulky flat chicken on it, fried crispy and draoed with a lovely chilli relish. The plate had side compartments, each loaded with a mountain of handcut potato chips.

Why is this still the best peri-peri chicken we've eaten? Was it the hunger? The surprising situation? The invisible chef's skill?

Random travel wakes up your brain

If neurologists studied the influence of different types of travel, I'm sure they would find that people who venture forth without a schedule have brains that are more open to impressions and make deeper and more vivid memories. That some unconscious form of the fight or flight instinct is at work at a low level, enough to make the brain and senses more alert but not powerful enough to make you nervous and uncomfortable.

When I recall vivid memories from three decades of travel, all are from random trips. I tend to agree with John Steinbeck when he said: “People don't take trips, trips take people." This should really be the point of any trip — that you get to that point where the experience happens to you effortlessly.

However, before we throw the baby out with the bathwater, there is an important place for planning when you travel. A certain kind of journey cannot happen without a framework. You and your family can't jump in a bakkie on the spur of the moment and drive to Zambia's incredible South Luangwa National Park. Or set off to see the snow leopard in the mountains of Mongolia in the same way that you and your friends drove straight to Durban that one Friday night when the Radium Beer Hall closed at 2am.

On the other hand, I have seen so many times how people make a tour fraught with tension by sticking to a relentless schedule because accommodation and excursions have been booked. It's a small tragedy when you end up in a place that speaks to you, but you can't stay a day longer.

Years ago, after the November final exam, John, Jeanne, Veer and I blindly jumped into John's father's 1980s Peugeot 505 GTi, a lovely ship of a car. We left Stellenbosch through the Little Karoo, with a wide turn through the Eastern Cape, then drove north through the eastern Free State. At one point we swung west, across the Free State, to Kimberley, where Veer's parents' house was.

One of the destinations we spontaneously dropped into was the Mountain Zebra National Park. The campsite was adequate but nothing special. But up the mountain, higher than the chalets and the restaurant, was a swimming pool between the rocks on a plateau. It is arguably the swimming pool in South Africa with the most beautiful view, over the lovely gorges and mountains of the park. In the afternoons, cumulonimbus clouds piled up against the pale blue sky. It was like being in a wonderful dream. We were initially going to stay one night but ended up being there for three.

On the same trip, we were caught in a dramatic thunderstorm on top of an eastern Free State sandstone koppie, with lightning striking rocks around us. We also ended up between the whistling bullets of a shootout between the police and a gang of robbers at a casino in Thaba 'Nchu. One can hardly see these as wholesome tourist experiences, but we still talk and laugh about them today.

We take along the whole house

It's not just rigid schedules that can rob you of all the possibilities of a trip. People can also isolate themselves from their environment through an excess of equipment. I worked for 10 years in travel journalism, especially with people who drive outside South Africa, deeper into Africa with fully equipped vehicles.

The first big lesson I learned from the guys who do it well is that you can get by with a lot less stuff than you think. If you're not going to use an item at least three times, leave it at home. You don't need two tables, but one. You don't need six lanterns, but one, and if everyone has a flashlight, all's well.

I have often seen how people tend to take far too many things with them to countries like Botswana, Angola, Zambia and Mozambique. They tend to try to be independent and self-sufficient in a foreign country. They take a trailer with a place to sleep, fully loaded with Pick n Pay food, enough meat and drink for three weeks, and sometimes they catch fish which they bring back.

I'm not lying when I say that several times, I've seen two people take three camping fridges across the border — two in the bakkie and one in the trailer. The first contains only meat, the second is for butter, cheese and other fresh products, the third is packed with beer and ice. It's as if you can't buy a cold beer across the border and every town doesn't have a market full of fresh produce and friendly people.

I believe that if you travel to the other southern African countries only to see the wonderful natural phenomena, such as the Mana Pools National Park in the north of Zimbabwe, then you are actually missing half of what makes Africa great. The people.

Most South African tourists who drive into Mozambique try to stay as far as possible from Maputo because they see it as dangerous and dilapidated. Well, it's true that waste disposal services in Maputo are in dire need of restructuring, but it remains a fascinating Afro-Mediterranean city, quite unlike anything you'll find in South Africa.

Any Maputo resident who knows South Africa will confirm that it is much safer than Johannesburg. You can explore it on foot, and even without guidebooks it can be a special experience. For example, I came across a merry-go-round in the lower town, the Feira Popular in Avenida 25 de Setembro, certainly from the 1940s, surrounded by delicious little restaurants in shacks. It's not far from the Mercado Central (the central market) full of fish and vegetables and handicrafts, where you can walk around just to feed your senses. Large parts of Maputo are an open-air market anyway. At night, a candle burns in hundreds of small stalls on the street offering beer, wine and food.

You can walk from the market to the Museu de Historia Natural (natural history museum) in a wonderful gothic building. It was built in 1913 and has undergone little renewal since then. It is literally a museum of what was a museum in the 1940s. For example, it has a whole series of elephant foetuses in formalin, covering the 22 months from conception to birth. And you can see a very old specimen of a coelacanth. And a whole bunch of stuffed animals, including a pangolin, in a macabre nature scene exhibition.

When I'm in Maputo, I like to eat in a Portuguese restaurant, Associação Portuguesa in Avenida Friedrich Engels, close to the city centre and the famous Clube Naval de Maputo. You won't find it on a list of the city's 10 best restaurants because it's not really aimed at tourists. It's just a shed and a kitchen wedged between two larger buildings, where local old men with hair neatly combed to the side and flat-ironed pleated trousers sit and play cards, and also where trendy young locals  come to drink a beer.

You can have traditional Portuguese meals with a Mozambican flavour, such as bacalhau (salted cod) or leitão (suckling pig) at surprisingly affordable prices.

Talk to people

One would think that the internet has made it easier to just set off. You can locate and book a campsite or Airbnb throughout the day as you drive. However, before the advent of the internet, I was surprised at how often one could find an exceptional place to stay in a town without any planning.

You simply watch for signs on the road, or you drive into town, find the bar of the one-star hotel, drink a beer and ask the bartender where you can camp or get a room. You would always manage, and your chances were good that interesting people would invite you for a braai or dinner.

For me, one of South Africa's greatest assets was the municipal campsites that were found in every town, some quite idyllic. Many of those that have not already disappeared are now perishing.

At some campsites, the responsible official forgot to adjust the fees for years. In 1999, when I had to cover the centenary of the first skirmish of the Anglo-Boer War for the SABC at Kraaipan, south of Mafeking, I chose to pitch my tent in the municipal caravan park rather than stay in some shabby hotel. The financial manager of the SABC had me come to his office to congratulate me on the claim I submitted for accommodation: a full R15.

These types of resorts made it much easier to just to throw a tent in the boot and set off. Fortunately, their demise has coincided with a huge boom in smaller campsites, as hundreds of farmers have learnt how they can make a little extra money from travellers and tourists.

One of my favorite guides to obscure campsites is DriveOut magazine's 4x4 route guide. This is really a journal about the large number of offroad farm trails, but the good news is that most of them also have a bush camp with facilities and the owners are only too happy if you pop in.

Just hit the road

If you're sick and tired of seeing friends and acquaintances who did worse than you in school and have been through rehab twice, share photos on Instagram of Phuket, Portugal, Prague and Paris while you on went camping in Parys in the Free State for your last three-day break, remind yourself of what Steinbeck said, because he was on to something. “Trips take people.”

If you've had a rough 2023 and still don't have a travel plan for the festive season, pack five pairs of underpants and three T-shirts, get in the car and drive into the countryside. You will not regret it.

♦ VWB ♦

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