Leaving Tofo
July 21st, 2018. It’s hard to imagine that in two weeks we’d be home. Leaving Tofo was starting to feel a lot like the end of our trip. There is an inevitability to all the packing and stowing and cleaning out that loomed ahead and it began to dominate my thoughts.
We were missing the wildlife we had seen so much of earlier in the trip. To shake off the pending finality we resolved to make one last visit to a national park and do some game viewing. We had bypassed the parks in Malawi and Mozambique’s Gorongosa, so set our sights on Limpopo National Park, and to take advantage of the relatively new (opened in 2006?) Giriyondo border crossing that allows passage directly between Limpopo and Kruger National Parks.
We got a late start and didn’t leave Tofo until 10 in the morning, but we were warming up to the leisurely start plan, a change from our predawn wake ups while we were in the parks, or when making long dashes across Tanzania. Limpopo is too far to drive in a day so we set off aiming to find a place somewhere near Xai Xai to spend the night.
Road conditions were excellent, and being a Saturday traffic was light. Driving along we were again confronted by brave vendors, staring the cruiser down from the middle of the road, willing us to stop. Overpriced cashews, peri-peri and papayas were the products of the day, by zone, as always. We bought some peri-peri from very nearly the last vendor in an unusually long length of peri-peri vendors. We felt like giving a sale to the last person was a good thing, and it’s never bad to have some fiery red chili paste.
As we closed in on Xai Xai we consulted iOverlander and T4A for a place to stay, and settled on the Sunset Beach Resort, which was said to offer camping as well as rooms and a restaurant. A few kilometers down a sandy track and you creep up on the place from the back side of a hill. After parking we walked through to the office and were treated to an incredible panoramic view of the ocean. Perched fairly high on the hill, it’s a spectacular vista, and there is a huge deck where we sat and gazed out on the sea.
We checked in, and were shown to our site. The camp sites are adequate but relatively uninspiring. Clearly geared to groups who plan to stay for the week and fish, the campsite is not the attraction, just a place to base activities. You are given a key to a private ablution, but it’s a cement block house sort of thing without much ventilation, and in the humid Mozambique climate fungus had grown and had a strong moldy odor.
Campsite aside, we headed back to the deck to enjoy the wonderful view. Sipping on beers, we watched humpback whales breaching from horizon to horizon, it was incredible. I work on a ship on the California coast and we see humpbacks whales often. Breaching is always a special behavior to see, but I had never seen such a continual display of jumping whales, and never with such a panoramic vista. It was particularly enjoyable.
To Limpopo National Park
The next day we were off to the Limpopo National Park. Just out of Xai Xai we crossed the “great grey-green greasy Limpopo river”, as described by Rudyard Kipling, though just outside of Xai Xai it is not “all set about with fever trees”, nor teeming with crocodiles and hippos, more like farmland and cows, but nonetheless it conjured romantic notions of our few days ahead in the wilderness.
There are a few routes up to Limpopo National Park from the coast. We continued along the N1 and turned inland on the N101, transitioning to the N221 at Chokwe, to the R445 which took us all the way to Massingir, the last outpost outside the park.
This series of roads winds through flattish farmland and low but persistent density population. We stopped at the market in Chokwe and Jenny loaded up on more of the beautiful boldly patterned bolts of cloth for sale in the market. Not sure what it’s destined to be, but she couldn’t pass up those striking colors and prints.
There is fuel in Massingir, but cash only, and we had to try several bank machines to find some cash to top up before heading into the park.
The park itself has a wonderful entrance, parking area, toilets, and office to pay the fee. Everything was looking very tidy and professional, we were the only ones there. $8USD per person entrance fee paid, (take that Serengeti!) we headed into the park.
Limpopo National Park was formerly known as Coutade 16, a hunting concession, until 2001 when it was gazzeted as the Limpopo National Park. It lies adjacent to the famous Kruger National Park of South Africa, and is now part of a 35,000 km2 transfrontier park. Plans are underway for an enormous, nearly 100,000 km2, conservation area called the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area (TFCA).
There is a broad effort to create transfrontier conservation areas in the Southern African region, to preserve freedom of movement for animals across borders and restore some level of migration patterns in the wildlife populations. This also allows animals to move as the environment requires, leaving areas of drought, for example. There is another spectacularly large project underway in Kavango Zambezi region that will be over half a million square kilometers. Truly amazing work.
The Limpopo NP area has been over hunted and poached and game numbers are low. Efforts are being made to translocate animals from other parks, to reintroduce species, and build populations. Anti poaching units are working in the park, and the fence between Kruger and Limpopo is not being repaired when damaged, allowing animals from Kruger to move into the Limpopo portion of the park.
For now though, the Limpopo National Park is in its infancy, and our guidebook lead us to have low expectations. Since visiting I’ve been watching the area on windy.com (the most excellent weather website) and the Limpopo region is routinely the hottest part of southern Africa. So beware if you plan a visit in the summer, when temperatures are routinely 40°C+.
We found the roads in the park are in pretty good shape, with some corrugations along the main routes but nothing too extreme. Vegetation seemed very dry, and though we didn’t see any game as we went along we were enjoying being back in the bush.
In a particularly sandy part of the road it looked like a great heard of something had been through and we wondered what it was. The hot sand was too loose for our inexperienced tracking skill to make out the spoor. Rounding a corner, our question was answered. Cows. A lot of cows. The herders cracked their sticks and pitched a few rocks and kindly moved the cows out of the way for us, and we inched through the herd.
Remember how I said this was a new park? We came to learn that it is so new that there are still small villages and cattle kraals inside the park. I have no idea what the plans are, to allow a multi use park, or to eventually relocate the village, which always brings up the moral questions of these sorts of endeavors.
Moving along we saw one antelope sprinting away from us into the brush, and no other game before arriving at our destination for the night, Campismo Aguia Pesqueira, a campsite run by the park. There is a small tidy office and we checked in, paying our USD $5 camping fee, a total bargain.
There are a series of eight or ten sites perched high above the waters of Lago Massingir, the lake created by the dam. Each site has an excellent view, braai stand and spot for a fire, and is tucked tightly in the trees. The only other visitors we saw in the park were camped a few sites down, in a smallish big rig.
After a few beers celebrating our last night in Mozambique, as dusk fell, we decided it was time for a haircut. I was looking pretty feral, my last hair cut being quite some time ago, I was long overdue. We had a battery (under)powered set of trimmers, and Jenny set to work on her first ever haircut. Maybe not the best strategy, but I think it came out pretty good. Come daylight, she said maybe she would approach it differently next time.
Being in game viewing mode, the following morning we got an early start,. We were headed for the border post inside the park, and we thought that maybe as we got closer to the Kruger boundary we might get lucky and see some animals.
Again we saw a glimpse of a steenbok (maybe, it was fast), but not much else. We did see elephant spoor and some other unidentified dung, so animals are certainly around. It did seem like conditions were very dry and many animals had moved into a different part of the park.
We explored one of the side tracks labeled 4×4 only. In this park so empty of visitors it really felt like exploring the wild wilderness all on our own. We wound through the bush, brush scraping down the sides of the cruiser on the narrow track, eyes peeled for wildlife. Even though we didn’t see anything, it felt special to see a park so early in its life. We fantasized about an alternate life where we joined the team bringing this park back to life*.
Even with its sparse wildlife I think Limpopo NP deserved more than the one night we gave it. There are more roads to explore, including one that parallels the Rio Singuedxi for a while. I understand there are some more difficult 4×4 tracks in the park as well, so if you are seeking out that sort of thing that could be fun too. We really hope to come back to this park and see how it’s changed.
Eventually we arrived at the Giriyondo border post. Checking out of Mozambique was quick and efficient. We drove the short distance to the South African side, and ran into a surprise. When we confidently handed over our passports the immigration official informed us that we would only be given seven day transit visas. What, what? Seven days?
We had been to South Africa several times before and always been given 90 day visas on arrival, so we asked what the issue was. He replied that yes, we were eligible for a 90 day visa on arrival, but since we hadn’t returned to our country of origin we were still traveling on the original 90 day visa, which runs out in 3 days. He could give us a 7 day transit visa, but no longer. He wasn’t rude, but was firm in his position. We ran through numerous options, and he even said we could try at another border post and they might not know the rules as well, but it was also a risk that we would waste a lot of time driving and get the same answer.
We had talked about possibly entering South Africa, but then going into eSwatini (Swaziland changed their name to eSwatini in April 2018) and trying to reset our 7 day visa, but the immigration official said that there was a risk that when looking up our passport in the system that the officials there would not allow issuing a second 7 day transit visa, and we could be stuck in eSwatini. After pondering our options we resigned ourselves to returning home about a week early. So, seven days to enjoy a bit of Kruger, reschedule flights, race back to the farm to store the cruiser and make it to the airport.
After sorting all that out we chatted with one of the park staff who managed to book us some last minute camp sites in Kruger. We ended up with one night at Shingwedzi, another at Tsendze, and the last night at Satara. Driving into Kruger was another world, the roads immediately become better, and we started the last leg of our adventure.
*Since our visit I read White Man’s Game, an illuminating look into the difficulties of conservation. The book mostly uses Gorongosa National Park as an example of how complex conservation work is, and why conservation frequently has unintended negative consequences. Certainly something to ponder, and also frustrating that is seems so hard to help, that helping one worthy thing can impede or hurt another very important thing.
Logistical notes
- Fuel, food or anything else you need is readily available along the coast. Be stocked up before you head inland, including on cash, as other than Chokwe availability of most things will be limited.
- Tofo to Sunset Beach Resort, (near Xai Xai), 233 Km, 5h 15m
- Sunset Beach Resort to Campismo Aguia Pesqueira, 352km, 8h 15m
- Limpopo NP fees – $8pppd, I forgot to note if there is also a vehicle fee. It seemed very inexpensive to us. Camping $5pppn, a steal.
- Campismo Águia Pesqueira to Giriyondo Border Post, 64km, 3h
