From Cairo in the far north to Cape Point at its most southerly, Kilimanjaro at its summit and the Dead Sea at its foot, I have long wanted to traverse the African continent, the “Motherland”.
To substitute my inclination towards the English “two pints of lager and a packet of crisps” ethos for the exhilaration of two mountain treks - Kilimanjaro and Sinai, and a 167m Bloukrans Bridge bungee jump.
For all the morbid stories of malaria, Aids and the Big 5 I had read in gap-year literature - and been reminded of by hysterical parents, anxious grandparents and teasing friends - the swift, six-week, 10 000km-plus journey through six of Africa’s most tourist-accommodating countries has been a safe one.
Despite being 22 years old and about as fully grown as I’m going to get, I heeded my family’s lectures and organised five separate trips through GapAdventures.
This meant spending the duration of the journey on private coaches with plenty of leg room, accompanied by guides, speaking very little other than English with a dozen or so other predominantly Western tourists. For what would be my first holiday as a single traveller and my longest stint away from England I didn’t want to be overly risky.
Barring the Kilimanjaro trek and a nine-day safari in Tanzania’s national parks, lodgings have been two, three, and even a couple of swanky four-star hotels every step of the way. Not your average penny-counting backpackers idea of a trip, but in hindsight I’m glad tales of springy mattresses, hot showers and fancy restaurants are the most common reflections of my travels.
Leaving behind piles of excrement
The alternative was hearing colobus monkeys try to pry open the lock on the door of my hut on Kilimanjaro. Or camping in the Serengeti, having to dodge giant mosquitoes in squat toilets and listening to warthogs brush against the walls of my tent, leaving behind piles of excrement to greet me in the morning.
Amazing experiences, but not incidents I would have appreciated having no reprieve from for six consecutive weeks.
Thoughts of going hungry in “Third World” Africa were also well off the mark. There were buffets galore in Egypt and Jordan, with a selection of what seemed like every type of bread that has ever been baked available for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Carbs and protein around the Tanzanian campfires followed in the form of pasta, rice, chicken curries and marshmallows. Another five days of sandwiches, pasta and other economic food in Uganda meant I was able to tighten my belt-buckle a little more.
That was relative starvation compared with the mass of wild animals sampled on menus throughout SA, springbok being my favourite - revenge for England’s rugby defeat.
By the time I arrived at Plettenberg Bay it was dubious as to whether the bungee cord would be able to withstand the love handles I had amassed. To my relief, it did.
I’ve always been a far more consistent danger to my own wellbeing than any con-artist or mugger.
I saddled up on camels and donkeys in Egypt and ostriches in South Africa, shared play-pens with four cheetah cubs in Stellenbosch, swung from tree to tree 50m above ground on a canopy in Tsitsikamma and thrown myself from the world’s highest commercial bungee jump outside Plettenberg Bay and out of a plane 2 700m in the air in Cape Town.
The most iconic of each nation’s landmarks
All of which I’m keeping quiet about, so far as my health insurance company is concerned.
As far as ailments go, the few problems that have arisen have all been of the self-inflicted variety.
Hangovers from one-too-many springbokkie shooters in Haga Haga, beers accompanied by sheesha in Egypt and a touch of stomach cramping on Kilimanjaro have been the only complaints - nothing for my mother to lose sleep over, but enough leverage for her to give me a finger-wagging.
The itineraries have rarely strayed from the trodden tourist trail and in visiting Egypt, Jordan, Tanzania, Uganda and SA in the short time for which my budget allowed, I had only enough time to take in the most iconic of each nation’s landmarks.
Our adventure started with 17 days shared between Egypt and Jordan. Whizzing frantically in our nimble and, more importantly, air- conditioned coach between the Great Pyramids of Giza and Petra - as well as the numerous other examples of these countries’ ancient heritages: the Valley of the Kings, Karnak Temples and Abu Simbel. Monuments and preserved civilisations immersed me in their otherworldly existences regardless of the number of tourists clicking cameras in their grounds.
It was like being in an Indiana Jones movie, literally for another member of the group who bought an imitation “Holy Grail” to pose alongside from the Indiana Jones Memorabilia shop in Petra.
Giving our legs time to stretch we also spent a glorious day aboard a felucca cruising along the Nile, free from the noise of the busy Egyptian city roads, the cheeky banter of market salesmen and away from the 4am prayers blurting out of megaphones, seemingly positioned next door to our hotel rooms!
Speaking of market tradesmen, they were as troublesome as the behaviour of the reputedly chauvinistic Egyptian men who shouted offers of anything between 10 and 100 camels in exchange for the hands in marriage of various female members of our group. It was all in good humour.
Far more dangerous than any bazaar hustler, our Tanzanian 4×4 Jeep took us as close as one would possibly want to get to leopard, cheetah, elephant, giraffe, buffalo and black rhino. Grazing zebra, warthogs and gazelle watched our Jeep suspiciously while helping themselves to the all-you-can-eat grass buffet.
And lion impersonated turtles stranded on their backs, resting in the midday heat with their legs limply raised in the air. One lion and his partner shared an intimate moment that should have carried an “18″ viewing certificate.
Sightings worthy of Richard Attenborough’s narration were enough reason to tolerate eight nights of questionable toilets, assembling tents, and wondering which animal you can hear munching grass on the other side of the canvas.
Challenging the wildlife as Tanzania’s most magnificent natural spectacle, Kilimanjaro was a crippling trek.
I pushed my chicken-legs as far as they would take me for four days through forest, alpine desert and the gruelling final midnight push to the summit, all to stand atop Africa’s peak for my first, and if I’m completely positive, only time.
Not even the worst hangover a night of drinking every alcoholic concoction imaginable in a hotel in Haga Haga could compare with the fatigue “Kili” inflicted on me.
But glimpses of neighbouring Moshi beneath the layers of cloud and the glaciers surrounding Uhuru Peak obviously made for a more inspiring sight than my bedroom walls and drawn curtains.
That said, my porters did the very same trek, only with 30kg of thermal clothes, kitchen pots and pans and food balanced on bags twice the size of their heads.
I was in no position to complain about a slight headache, a few blisters on my feet and feeling like I had received two dead-legs from the school bully.
Foolishly, I booked yet more uphill walking a mere three days after descending from 5 895m, this time in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest of Uganda.
However, an 18-hour round drive across two days to spend one hour with several families of mountain gorillas was a sacrifice I would make infinitely more times than climbing Kili again.
Tourists were familiar and welcome companions for the great apes as much as they were for the proprietors of curio shops throughout the country.
That meant that we could get as close as 15m to one of humans’ closest living relatives without provoking an intimidating beating of their broad chests or even more unnervingly, a charge.
Timidly eating forest vegetation and climbing - and, in some cases, falling from trees as with one of the youngsters who gambolled down the hill after tumbling from a low branch - it was clear that the primates were completely unaffected by the incessant clicks of cameras and snapping of branches underfoot,all resounding from the direction of a group of 10 uninvited guests to their mid-morning brunch. Reaching Mount Kilimanjaro’s summit, Uhuru Peak, at 5 895m was a crippling trek.
To know the gentle giants were totally at ease with us was the most satisfying factor, and after an unforgettable hour the trackers had to thump their own chests to make us retreat back to the lodge.
Not too dissimilar in size to the gorillas were the South African rugby team I bumped into at Joburg airport on my way to Durban for the 3 000km, 11-day road-trip along the Garden Route to Cape Town.
Covering a daily 250km on average in a mini-van with 18 people - made all the cosier with a shopping trolleyful of ostrich eggs, wood carvings and other curio clutter - was interesting.
Despite witnessing an ostrich hatch from its egg in Oudtshoorn, the ostrich steak on my plate later went down my hatch particularly memorably.
All in all the trip had been very comfortable and I’ve seen some of Africa’s most stunning attractions, but I can’t help but think travelling on an organised tour has shielded me from the “real” Africa.
Six weeks on the continent and I can only recite two Swahili words: Jambo, meaning “hello”, and hakuna matata, “no problem”.
Visits to Bedouin tribes in Jordan’s Wadi Rum and the iconic Masai villagers of Tanzania gave a fantastic insight into the otherworldly traditions each community still practise - lion’s teeth attached to necklaces dangled on the Masai shupas, evidence of a boy’s passage into adulthood.
In Jordan our dinner of chicken, lamb and rice was cooked in a storage bin and sealed underground - a bit different from what I was used to, but for taste it certainly rivalled home cooking.
More humbling than the dazzling dances of the Masai, a village of Zulus in the foothills of the Drakensberg mountains provided an honest portrayal of township life in Africa.
The poverty was abrupt. Where it had been obscured in the previous two nomadic tribe meetings by ritualistic performances, the Zulu village served as a reminder that there is a very different Africa behind much of the natural and cultural tourist attractions - a perspective of the continent I have only been able to glimpse at from the coach window in 54 days of travelling.
amp,elephant,glimpse
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