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Lusaka To Cape Town – By Road
By Clive Kawana
If you were to stumble upon your first chance to travel
from Lusaka to the southernmost part of
Africa and you
happen to be the adventuresome type, you would probably be very
excited. You would become even more excited about the experience if
you call yourself a writer and decide you are going to put down on
paper the various impressions along the way.
The distance is about 3,200 kilometres and you are to
travel by ‘surface’, but you don’t really mind for that will give
you a better chance to see and put on record all that you consider
worthy of doing so. After all, you have just read about this
European guy with a Marco Polo spirit who is walking on foot all the
way across the world for some charitable cause and is to reach
China
in 2006. He motivates you somewhat. You put the idea of flying aside
and focus on your journey by road.
One good thing about a Zambian traveling to ‘Big Brother’
in the south is that one does not need a visa, unlike some countries
in the region, some of which share a common border with that
country. The other good thing is that you have a host of transport
providers servicing the Lusaka/Johannesburg route so you have a
choice - City to City, Translux, CR, Linking Africa etc. All of
them providing a luxurious coach service. As you buy your ticket,
someone reminds you to be inoculated against yellow fever. But you
are not too pleased to find there is only one public clinic in
Lusaka administering this vaccine, and you have to part with an
amount which ismore than half the bus fare.
Of course you don’t forget to procure some foreign currency
- a couple of Zim Dollars and some Rand, and more convenient, the
Dollar. As you leave
Lusaka
at midday, you realize that you have twenty-four plus hours on the
bus to Johannesburg awaiting you. This could be quite tiresome and
boring. The bus crew is aware of this and as soon as you roll down
the hills towards the
Zambezi
Valley, the crew put on some soft music or play a popular video. You
do not watch the video for too long, for before you realize it, you
have dozed off.
The first stop is Chirundu border post and as you come out
you are hit by the heat. Immigration formalities follow. The story
is almost the same at both Chirundu and
Beit Bridge –
long queues of passengers to be checked, with the process being done
more rigorously at Chirundu as you enter Zimbabwe. Suitcases and
bags are opened and thoroughly searched.
“What are they searching for?” you ask.
“Anything. Anything that shouldn’t be brought into this
country”, someone answers you. One women’s bottle of face cream is
confiscated because it is allegedly dangerous for the skin. Another
passenger has no yellow fever vaccination and an immigration officer
charges him several Zim Dollars or South African Rands but gives him
no receipt.
The currency dealers jostle you and immediately you notice
the weakened value of the
Zimbabwe dollar.
You need quite a bunch of them to buy a small item.
The journey goes on and by the time you put the immigration
and customs officials behind you realize that too much time is
spent, or even wasted at the borders. The inter–country journeys
would be much shorter without some of these formalities. The varied
landscape on our way strikes you. On several occasions you have to
hold your breath as the road eats into the side of rocky hills with
a yawning deep valley lying on either side, reminding you of the
infamous Manenelela stretch on the
Great East Road.
You cannot help praying that some mishap that would plunge the bus
into this valley does not happen. But you have no choice, for you
have to pass through similar spots at several points.
Just after Chirundu you are in a game park. A huge lone
elephant or a whole herd of the large beasts stand or stride by the
roadside or a herd of Zebras silently grazes by. You find the
creatures amusing and feel refreshed.
Whatever lime you leave
Lusaka for
Johannesburg you have to drive through the night. And if the maps
have given you an impression that Zimbabwe is a small country, you
will be proved wrong. The stretch from Chirundu to Beit Bridge
through Harare is long. So soon you will be fast asleep on your
reclining seat as your bus tears through the night and the
countryside.
You understand why the white minority apartheid government
tried to perpetuate their stay in power when you enter
Pretoria and
Johannesburg. The level of development of the infrastructure
overwhelms you. But you are aware that beneath this apparent
affluence, there is still a lot of poverty among the people,
especially among the blacks. You have also read and heard so much
about crime in this city of gold that as you disembark at Park Bus
station you feel insecure and uncomfortable. You ensure that your
wallet is safe and you feel you should head straight for your hotel.
You do not want to take chances. But later you feel somewhat
relieved when someone assures you that the crime situation in
Johannesburg and South Africa in general is grossly exaggerated.
“ We have crime all right”, someone tells you. “But
South Africa is
like any other place. You may witness a crime on your first day in
the country but not witness any in many weeks or months”.
The journey from
Lusaka
to Cape Town is so long that you are discouraged from connecting
from Johannesburg to the ‘Mother City’ without taking a rest.
Luckily, you have a wide range of places to stay and you choose
according to the size of your pocket. There are a number of buses
leaving Johannesburg Cape Town from which to choose. The buses both
to and from Cape Town travel in the evening. But inevitably you
notice that the majority of passengers on your bus are white with
only a handful of blacks, a situation you are not accustomed to. You
wonder whether it is the type of bus you are using or the type of
community you are going to. You discover later that both assumptions
are correct.
You pass through
Bloemfontein
and the diamond city of Kimberly at night so you do not see much of
these towns. Your bus only stops at traditional South African bus
stops-cum–fillings stations that you find on all major routes called
Ultra Cities. Their standards and services are excellent. When the
sun rises you are still several hundreds of kilometres away from
Cape Town. You are instantly struck by the bareness of the vast open
land around you. Later your bus tears through a long narrow valley
bordered by steep rocky mountains on both sides. A chain of
vineyards stretch for kilometres. Makes you somewhat thirsty for a
glass of wine.
When you finally
enter Cape Town you are immediately struck by the beauty of this
city. The limitless vast Atlantic Ocean immediately greets you. But
it is the legendary Table Mountain that impresses on you most, the
ancient mountains towers above the city beckoning, reminding all
about the long history of the city going back to 1652 when the Dutch
explorer Jan Van Riebeeck discovered it and gave it its name.
Eleven kilometres
into the Atlantic Ocean is the famous, previously infamous Robben
Island (Dutch name for island of the seals) where the former South
African President Nelson Mandela was incarcerated. The famous prison
is now a museum and hundreds of tourists pay R 150 to visit this
prison, most of them from America, Europe and Australia. It is the
ultimate for many a visitor.
But Table
Mountain keeps on beckoning. About half way up this mountain there
is a cable way station where you get into a cab that will take you
to the top of the mountain. On top you see the whole city. The
scenery below is simply exhilarating.
The city and its
modern infrastructure have blended so finely with the natural
environment that it is difficult to imagine one was there before the
other. And the locals, who comprise largely whites and coloureds,
are proud of their city. They remind you that you cannot see Cape
Town in a week. You believe them for indeed there is a lot to see.
But as you sit and relax back in your room you remember that you
have a tedious 3,000 kilometre journey back to
Lusaka.
You have a feeling that this time around you should fly. |
September 2004