Here is a full account of the expedition, as appeared in The Carrickfergus Times:
Student brothers see the world.
Two local students are working abroad this summer as part of a student exchange program. Mark Branagh is working for Hammersly Iron in Australia and his older brother David is working for Telkom in South Africa. Both students secured their employment through the International Association for the Exchange of Students for Technical Experience (IAESTE). IAESTE is sponsored in the UK by the British Council which is an organisation devoted to promoting educational, cultural and technical co-operation between Britain and other countries. Mark left for Dampier in north-western Australia on June 11th and David left for Pretoria in South Africa on June 12th. David has sent the following article :
The flight to South Africa departed from Belfast International Airport at 2pm on Thursday 12th and did not arrive into Jan Smutts international airport in Johannesburg until 7am the next morning, with a stop in Holland on the way. On arriving in South Africa I had a little trouble getting through customs as they were unsure if my "training" should come under "study" or "business". After about 20 minutes of deliberation they decided to just photocopy all my documents and they gave me a temporary residence permit. I was collected by Chris, a South African student who is involved in the IAESTE scheme in South Africa. He took me to the office of the regional coordinator and from there I was able to make the obligatory telephone call home to say that I had arrived safely.
The rest of the day was spent sorting out accommodation and money, and sleeping. In the evening I was collected to go out and meet other IAESTE students. The favourite hangout is Maginty's, an Irish pub in the student centre of Pretoria. It was there that I met Mike and Martin - both German, and Dan who is Vietnamese American. Mike told me how he had been mugged twice in two days when he arrived - this wasnot very reassuring. Conversation soon changed to the plans for the weekend and I was invited to help hire a car and see some of the country. This meant that barely 24 hours from arriving in the country I was off to see around. It was decided to visit Swaziland. This is an autonomous state completely encircled by South Africa.
It took most of Saturday to reach Swaziland and after a little trouble at the passport control we were allowed into the country. We made our way to Mlilwane game reserve near the centre of the country and we were fortunate enough to find accommodation in the park. This took the form of bunk beds and a communal kitchen. We arrived just about sunset (which is about 5:20pm) so did not see any animals besides some Impala that roamed about the camp. Later in the evening we heard the sound of drums. We went to have a look and discovered members of the camp staff performing traditional Zulu dances. Although it was clearly just put on for the tourists it was very entertaining and gave me the feeling that this was real Africa. After the performance, on the way back to our accommodation I noticed the African stars for the first time. It was a perfectly clear night and there was very little light pollution so thousands of stars could be seen. The Southern Cross, the constellation used for navigation as "the plough" is in the northern hemisphere, was soon pointed out to me. We talked late into the night about what we hoped to see the next day.
The next morning we were up at 6:30am to tour the park (the early morning and late evening are the best times to see animals especially at water holes). From the campsite we were able to see a number of zebra in the distance and we set off in the car towards them (you are not allowed to leave your car except in designated areas or with a park warden.) As we drove through the bush on a rough dirt track we soon noticed Impala, springboks and the zebra we had seen from afar. Rounding one corner we were amazed to see what looked like a floating black feathery mass, as big as child's go-kart supported on 3 "legs". We looked for a head in an attempt to find out what it was. Then one of the "legs" came up and had a birds head at the end - it was an ostrich! It stared at us for a few moments and then continued grazing, unconcerned with us human spectators. Someone commented that ostriches can be very vicious animals and have a very strong kick. We drove on after taking some photographs. Around another corner someone exclaimed "Stop!". We all looked in the direction indicated, at first seeing nothing, then there was a slight movement and we started to pick out the shape of Kudu - an antelope type creature - carefully camouflaged in the long grass. This was often the case that it required careful scrutinising to see the animals and often it was only when they moved that we were able to pick them out.
Coming round the edge of a pool I noticed a rock nearly submerged below the surface. As I watched I noticed that it moved and then another "rock" appeared beside it - they were hippopotamuses (or should it be hippopotami?). We drove as close to them as we could and sat and watched their movements. There were three in total. They would stay submerged with just the tops of their heads out of the water. We wanted them to come out of the water so that we could get some good photographs but we were wary not to leave the car as there were also reported to be crocodiles in the water. Hippos give the impression of being slow and gentle but they account for the most injuries by wild animals in South Africa every year. They can run at speeds up to 35 miles per hour and are fierce in protection of their young. Before we left the park we also had close encounters with zebra and warthogs. The warthogs reminded me of Pumba from the Walt Disney animated classic "The Lion King" - the way they burrowed around in the dirt searching for insects. We were to see quite a few of the rest of the animals from the "Lion King" over the rest of the weekend.
We left the wildlife reserve at about 10am and after a quick stop for breakfast we headed south east in search of the Indian Ocean. We crossed the border from Swaziland back into South Africa at about midday and arrived at St. Lucia on the east coast at 2pm. It was quite warm there - a lot warmer than it had been in Pretoria, and even the air temperature at the coast was a lot higher. After finding a campsite we went and paddled in the Indian Ocean and then investigated St. Lucia - a popular white tourist resort.
The next morning (Monday) we set out to investigate the St. Lucia Wetlands onboard the Santa Lucia. This is a two-level tourist boat that tours the estuary every day. We soon saw our first pod of hippo's - about 20 in total and it was possible to manoeuvre the boat right up close to them. Some of them even obliged by opening their huge mouths - we were not sure if this was a yawn or an act of aggression! The trip lasted several hours and as well as numerous African birds we also saw an eagle and a crocodile. At the pier where the boat began and ended its trip was a large craft village selling all sorts of wooden animal carvings and traditional Zulu masks and baskets.
We headed out of St Lucia on the start of our trip back to Pretoria. Conveniently situated on the route was the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi game reserve. This reserve is over 65km long, by 30km wide. As we had some time we initially headed south. We soon saw zebra and then a group of giraffe. The giraffe were grazing on the treetops just beside the road. We stopped the car, took photographs and watched these graceful creatures who where completely unperturbed by us. As they moved along one got left behind and when he realised this he burst into a precarious canter to catch up. I was amazed at the sheer size of these animals - it is one thing to see them on television or in a zoo but something completely different and awe-inspiring to see them in their natural habitat, almost close enough to touch.
We soon had to turn around and headed through the northern section of the park. We passed through landscapes or rolling savanna and bushland reminiscent of scenes from Tarzan - this was real Africa! Impala and springboks soon became "common" and not worth stopping to observe as we looked for the bigger game. As we headed north the abundance of wildlife decreased and we started to get a little disappointed as we approached the exit gate of the park. Only about 5km from the gate we rounded a corner to see a water hole below which the road passed. Something was moving close to the water hole. Was it an elephant? We slowly drove closer. Someone looking through binoculars was able to say it was a rhinoceros! As we approached we noticed that there were 2 rhinos, sparring with each other. They were on the right hand side of the road, the water whole was on the left. We stopped 20m short of them, there were no other cars around. We noticed a third rhino a little way behind the others, grazing in the bush. We watched the rhinos. None of us knew if they were just playing or whether we were witnessing a serious contest of authority. There seemed to be a lot of pawing the ground and calculated stares and not very much actual physical contact. One decided that he had had enough, and the sun was getting too hot and he turned and slowly crossed the road in front of us. The others slowly followed. One started rolling in the mud. Suddenly we noticed two more rhino had appeared out of the bush on the water hole side of the road. Five fully grown rhino, less than 20m away from us; our car did not feel very safe. The rhinos jostled and rolled in the mud as we watched in total silence besides the occasional click of a camera. Soon more cars arrived and after about 20 minutes the rhinos headed off into the bush - they had done their show for the day.
The drive back to Pretoria took about six hours and we were back at 11:30pm. We had driven about 1500km over the weekend. It was a short night that night as I had to get up the next morning to start work (Monday had been a national holiday, otherwise I would have started then) but already there was talk of the next weekend - Kruger National Park.
Kruger
Having been in South Africa for one week and worked 3 days (Monday was a public holiday) I decided to take Friday off and go with 2 German friends and a Hungarian to Kruger National Park. Described in the guide books as "THE national park to go and visit - it is twice as big as Belgium" I was quite excited about seeing some big game. Mike had arranged to hire a car and enquired about accommodation in Kruger park. We were a bit worried when we arrived at the main gate at about 3pm and were told that there was no accommodation in the park at all. It was only after a little persistence that we discovered that although all tent sites may have been booked, all the people had certainly not all turned up and the time for closing the gates was fast approaching! The message came through that there was space at Sukuza but it would take us a full 2 1/2 hours to get there before the gates closed at 5:30pm. We were warned that we had no time to stop and look at the wildlife and there would be a fine if we were late getting to Sukuza. As it happens we arrived at 5pm and after checking in we set out for a short drive as the sun was setting. We had not seen much and we turned to return to the camp. We soon noticed a landrover stopped by the side of the road and as we approached we could see that about 150m down from the road, at the river bed, was a herd of elephants. Unfortunately the light was failing fast and they were quite far away but we were quite satisfied with our game viewing for the night. We returned to the camp, put our tent up and had a braii (Barbecue) and soon went to bed in preparation for the next morning.
We were up at 5:30am the next morning and we headed out of the gate as it opened at 6am. We had not driven more than a mile down the road when as we rounded a corner we spotted a lioness calmly walking down the road towards us. We all nearly jumped out of our skins! The was a mad clicking of cameras and manoeuvring for the best view as this wonderful golden beast plodded by without giving us a second look. If this was a taste if things to come we would not be disappointed!
About half an hour further down the road a lion was spotted. There was a watering pan, pumped by a windmill, and the lion was heading towards it. We soon spotted another lion and a lioness heading over for their morning drink as well. The watering pan was about 500m from the road and we switched off the engine and sat and watched these magnificent beasts. Without the sound of the engine we were able to hear the sounds of the wilds a lot better - the lions would growl and purr at one another and there were numerous bird noises and other sounds which we had no idea what was making them. The lions had a drink and then lay in the shade of some bushes. After about 15 minutes they got up one by one and headed towards us and crossed the road about 50m behind where the car was parked.
We were heading towards the Sataka camp for lunch and were not far from it when we saw a lone bull elephant about 10m from the roadside. Often as bulls become older they leave their herd and become solitary animals which can be quite aggressive. The day was hot and it was good to get out of the car and stretch our legs at Sataka. After lunch we changed driver headed off again. We were still heading north towards our camp for the night at Moela. In the afternoon we saw many giraffe and zebra but the highlight was when a herd of elephants crossed the road in front of us. When we spotted the elephants they were all on the right hand side of the road - about a dozen in total. There were grazing their way towards the road and it soon became evident that they intended to cross. You could tell that they were apprehensive at the cars and it was only one at a time that they "ran" across. Calves followed after mums, holding her tail for security. One of the young bulls thought that we were a little bit too close and gave us a show of his authority by flaring his ears and stamping his feet and providing an excellent photo opportunity!
We were a few minutes late in arriving at our campsite but luckily that gates had not been closed and we did not get a fine. This was a smaller campsite than the previous evening and was surrounded by a large electric fence but this did not stop the hyenas visiting for food scraps.
On Sunday we were up at 5:30am and in the park until 4pm. We did not see any more lions or elephants and it was surprising how quickly that zebra, giraffe, springbok and impala can become mundane. We were back in Pretoria by 10pm ready for another weeks work.
The ensuing weekends were spent water skiing, kloofing and hiking at Cathedral Peak. These activities were all organised by the local IAESTE committee, the scheme through which I had arranged my work experience. Water skiing was at a dam about one hours drive from Pretoria. A lot of the dams are used for water sports and recreation in South Africa. Kloofing is an Afrikaans word describing an activity which involves, walking, scrambling, swimming and climbing up a gorge in which a river flows and this was great fun. Cathedral Peak is a 3004m summit in the Drakensburg range near Lesotho which took a full day to climb but the view from the top was amazing.
The next weekend I took a conscious decision not to go anywhere - I had been in South Africa for 5 weeks and I had still not seen Pretoria where I was staying. I had also never had a lie-in!
On Saturday I went downtown, about 20 minutes walk from were I was staying in the Majella Hotel. I had been told that it was safe enough during the day but it is a place best avoided at night. The city centre was like any other cosmopolitan city with the usual variety of luxury goods and electrical appliances store, banks and supermarkets to choose from. I visited some of the remnants of the apartheid era, Strijdom and church squares as well as the state theatre. Not far from my hotel, on the hillside are the Union Buildings. This is an impressive red sandstone construction full of imperial grandeur and surrounded by an expanse of gardens. For six months of the year this is the seat of government so it is locally known as Mr Mandela's office.
I returned to the hotel for lunch which is only rivalled by Sunday lunch as the best meal of the week. After lunch I headed on out of town towards the University of Pretoria and the surrounding student area of Hatfield. Although we would regularly have IAESTE meetings here I had not looked around it in daylight yet. This is a very new part of town with new buildings still being constructed. There are a large number of student residences and some older private residences. It is the norm in South Africa for the private homes to be surrounded by 7' high walls with signs detailing which rapid reaction armed security force would be called if you were to try to enter illegally. There is a lot of crime in Pretoria but by all accounts it is not as bad as Johannesburg. Many cars have central-locking anti-hijack systems, gear locks and engine immobilisers and ninety percent of white people will have a story about how their house was robbed or car was stolen.
It was only when I arrived in Hatfield that I realised that the majority of shops are closed on a Saturday afternoon - only the street traders remained. This seemed quite strange to me and I still do not know what every one does on a Saturday afternoon!
The price of goods in South Africa was generally comparable to here in Northern Ireland and many of the consumer products are the same. Alcohol is a lot cheaper there but chocolate is quite expensive.
Although the years of apartheid are over the legacy lives on. Generally black skinned people have not had as good an education as whites and are therefore exploitable as cheap labour. Every shop has a black security guard, every petrol station has half a dozen black pump attendants and a lot of white homes have black maids and garden staff.
I returned to my hotel and wrote a few letters. The postal system from South Africa is abysmal. A letter would take about 15 days to get to Northern Ireland or the US and a letter from either of these parts of the world would take about 9 days to get to me.
On Sunday I went to St Andrew's Presbyterian church in the centre of Pretoria. It could have been a Presbyterian church at home, the layout the same with a nice pipe organ and a predominantly white congregation. Thankfully the service was in English as if I had come to the earlier service I would have not understood a word as it was in Afrikaans. Of the 11 national languages that South Africa has English is probably the most widely spoken. Afrikaans is probably a close second but it is seen as the language of the apartheid so English is preferred as a multi-cultural language.
Sunday afternoon was spent as Sunday afternoons should be spent - doing not very much and that rounded off a very enjoyable weekend. I could hardly believe that I had only 3 weeks of work left and then I had 2 weeks to travel - a German friend, Martin, was finishing work at about the same time as me and we had agreed to travel together but we had not yet decided whether to head north to Zimbabwe or south to Cape Town.Decision
Having worked for eight weeks and completed a lot of planning for our 18 days travel, I finished work on August 7 and went back to my hotel to finish packing.
The rest of the Germans staying there had organ-ised a bit of a party and my friend and travel companion Martin Rosnitcheck arrived about 9.00pm. Our bus was leaving at 11.00pm, travelling overnight to Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe.
CHAOS
The bus journey was uneventful except for the chaos at the border. We were there before it opened at 5.OOam, as were a few hundred others. We all had to get out of the coach and join the scrum in the cus-toms office, get our passports stamped and complete a customs form. We then had to go back to the bus, unload all our luggage and stand as it was inspected by officials. They seemed in no rush and were definitely not friendly. Having survived the border crossing we travelled on north. The land became drier with rounded rock lumps several stories high, punctuating an otherwise flat landscape. Frequently along the road, we passed villages of mud huts with a few animals nearby.
At one point we were stopped by a police patrol who claimed that the bus had been speeding. The bus driver denied the charge and I probably believe him but this being Africa the police wanted an immediate fine to be paid. We arrived in Harare at 3.l5pm and headed for a backpackers hostel which we had selected. Two English girls who had been on the bus were also heading there so we all went together and adopted the maxim of safety in numbers. Once there, we set up our tent and then went for a walk around Harare.
SAFER
"The city centre was very pleasant with wide streets and, for some reason, it felt a lot safer than Pretoria. When we returned to the backpackers we had some food and discussed the next day. We had a full day to get to Kariba on the Zambezi river to the north of the country before our canoe safari was to start. The Lonely Planet guidebook said that this was a popular white tourist resort and that hitching a lift there on a Friday or Saturday should be relatively easy. Neither Martin or I had ever hitchhiked before so we were a little dubious but financial restrictions dictated that we did! We were up quite early in what turned out to be the norm for a hitching day. We would get a taxi far enough out of town to be beyond the 'in town' traffic, usually to a bus stop. We would then take it in turn to stand at the road with out thumbs out and attempting to look friendly. We stood for about an hour just beyond a bus stop where there were about 30 black people waiting. Eventually a bakkie (a pickup truck) stopped and offered us a lift. The driver Kevin was a white Zimbabwean and although he was not heading to Kariba he offered to take us further out of town to a better spot. He also gave us some tips about hitch-ing. Kevin left us at a remote bus stop in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere! It was after 11.00am when another bakkie pulled up and two women offered us a lift to Chinhoyl which is a distance of about 100km towards Kariba.
BEAUTIFUL
We piled our rucksacks into the back and climbed in after them. It was a beautiful sunny day and it was a great feeling to travel along In the open. They left us at the Cave Hotel in Chlnhoyi and we were just moving our rucksacks to some shade when another bakkie pulled up and offered us a lift the rest of the way to Kariba - we could not believe our luck. We spent the rest of the afternoon in this bakkie (it even had a fitted mattress in the back) and arrived in Kariba at about 3.OOpm some 200kn from Chinhoyl. "We then got another lift to the actual campsite where we were staying and booked in. I telephoned the canoe safari company to tell them we had arrived and where they were to pick us up the next morning. It was interesting to read in the guidebook that this campsite had installed an electric fence several years previously to keep elephants out but the elephants had not been put off. The fence was no longer used and the gate was left open so that they did not have to break through it!
The next day was Sunday and we were up at 6.00am. We packed our stuff up and decided what we needed to take with us and what we could do without. We made our way to the gate to be col-lected at 7.30am and it was only then that I discovered that there were three other young people from Ireland who were doing the same canoe safari. Malcolm. Simon and Julie were medi-cal students from Trinity College, Dublin and they had just completed eight weeks work in a remote Zimbabwean hospital. The rest of the group was made up of a Norwegian couple, a middle-aged American woman and a Norwegian man. It was good to hear some voices from home again!
We made our way to Chirundu from where the safari was to start and put our Canadian canoes into the water at about midday after some lunch. The Zambezi is a huge river - some 500 metres wide and after a brief demon-stration we set off downstream. We saw some hippos and a few small crocodiles that day but none very close.
We stopped to make camp at about 5.00pm on a small, sandy island with Zera, our guide, making dinner before we sat and watched a glorious African sunset. We talked into the night, some-times stopping to notice the stars, Besides a few small lights on the Zambian side of the river there was no other light except for the moon.
STARS
There were millions of stars - more than I had ever seen before and it was breathtaking. The river gently lapped the banks and all night there was the soft mooing of the hippos close by. On Monday we were up at 6.00.am and saw lots of hippos and crocodiles during our journey. We even came across some Zambians fishing from their mookoris - traditional dugout canoes. Our fiberglass Imitations of the American Indian equivalent somehow seemed out of place. On Tuesday we entered the Mana Pools national park section of the safari. This meant that the amount of game visible from the river greatly increased. It was not long before we saw our first elephant. We also saw Kudu, waterbuck, Impala and water buffalo and of course hippos.
Wednesday was the last day of our safari and we saw lots more game. One of the best parts of the day was the campsite. Here we were able to have our first shower in four days and in the evening we went on a game drive. The campsite even had a resident elephant. After several days travelling we were in need of a rest, so we decided to have an easy day of sightseeing. We had been told that the view of the Victoria Falls from the Zambian side was as good as from the Zimbabwe side and it was a lot cheaper. But on arrival at the Zambian check-point we were disappointed to learn that a few months earlier charges had been introduced both for entrance visas and for entrance into the park to see the falls. We entered the park and made our way along 'knife edge' to the vantage point. We could see the Eastern Cataract fall 100 metres into the gorge below and look along the falls to the Main Falls and Rainbow Falls. Unfortunately, because it was winter there was not a lot of water in the river and we felt that the best views would be from the Zimbabwe side so we left Zambia and paid another fee to enter the Zimbabwe park.
We made our way along to the far end of the falls, Devil's Cataract and slowly worked our way along this one kilome-tre wide jewel of Africa. We saw the statue of Livingston and appreciated his awe and wonder at this magnificent spectacle. Several rolls of film were used that day! The next day was the time to complete another of the objectives of our jour-ney - to raft the rapids on the mighty Zambezi river. The first rapid was called "Morning Glory" with subse-quent rapids having names like "Stairway to heaven" and "Devil's Toilet Bowl." We only lost one guy overboard during the whole day although I was thrown out of my seat a few times!
"My IAESTE placement to South Africa had turned out to be an experience of a lifetime and one I will never forget Needless to say all my journeys would not have been possible without my "lonely Planet' guides for which I am eternally grateful."
MORE TO COME.....
If you have comments or suggestions, email me at d_branagh@hotmail.com