501 Places

World Cup Group A nations

Like millions of others I’m counting down the days till the start of the football World Cup in South Africa on June 11th. Once the final 32 qualifying countries were decided, I was looking at the list and thinking of which ones I had visited, which ones where on my immediate to-do list, and which I knew little about but would like to discover more.

The idea behind this post/series of posts is to collect some of the best off-beat facts about each of the 32 participating countries. So if you’ve visited the countries in question, tell us why they are unique destinations and what you found there that stuck in your memory; the quirkier the better.

We’ll start with Group A today, which features South Africa, France, Uruguay and Mexico. I’ve been lucky enough to have visited all four of these countries (there are other groups where I have to admit to a complete blank). So here’s my starting facts; I’m hoping others will chip in with their experiences too.

This is a robot

South Africa

It’s got to be the robot. It was a strange picture that I painted when I picked up our rental car and the receptionist told us to head for the first robot, turn left then look for another robot after half a mile. Expecting to see giant Tranformer type characters in the streets of Cape Town, I was relieved to learn that robots are in fact nothing more or less than a humble traffic light.

France

Perhaps my biggest surprise about the French is the carefully choreographed etiquette that exists in public encounters, and which visitors would be well advised to follow. Walking into a shop? You should always greet the shop assistant before starting to browse. Finished your dinner in a small local restaurant? It is not unusual to bid farewell to the other diners on your way out. This ritual is probably confined to the smaller more traditional communities, but is a very endearing spectactle to observe.

Fray Bentos

Uruguay

One highight stood out for me here: Fray Bentos. To generations of British folk the name is synonymous with cheap pies, packed (or not) with processed meat and a handy part of the student diet. Little do most people know that Fray Bentos is actually a large city in Uruguay that made its living processing meat. Today the good times have passed Fray Bentos by as the meat business has left town, but for those who travel through this country and who grew up on these tinned delights, the sight of the name on the side of the road will raise an eyebrow.

Church in Valladolid

Mexico

A few days at a convention in Cancun doesn’t really qualify me to speak about Mexico, but on a drive out to Chichen Itza I did get to see a little of the Mexican countryside. One thing that stuck in my memory? The provincial churches. Beautifully decorated and so well cared for, these are the focal points of the local communities. They also offer a welcome relief from the midday sun, surrounded as they are by low-rise blocks. The one place I did stop in for a while was the charming town of Valladolid, and as a Mexico newbie I was startled that I could have walked straight onto a film set of any Antonio Banderas movie!

If you have visited any of these four countries, feel free to share your most unusual memories here.

10 game drives in 5 days (sunrise and sunset); standard for most safari lodges, and in many cases guests opt out of the early morning ones after the first couple of days. We were determined to make each drive; after all we had paid for it, and in any case there wasn’t a great deal to do during the daytime other than putting your feet up and watching the sun drift across the sky.

We stayed at Elephant Plains lodge, which seemed to offer a good level of comfort without the prohibitive prices of other lodges nearby. They collected us from the airport at Nelspruit, and the three hour drive passed through captivating scenery. Small villages full of life, valleys green and lush and people walking busily along the roadside, it was more reminiscent of Uganda than of the South Africa we had just grown accustomed to along the western Cape.

Once in the lodge, the daily routine centred around the game drives. If you are going on a safari with the intention of seeing the big 5, this place takes some beating. We saw three or four of this famed group of large mammals on every drive. Our tracker instinctively knew the whereabouts of a pair of leopards and we would reliably observe them sleeping, climbing and on one occasion feasting. Elephants greeted us on almost every drive, and lions were plentiful too.

The rarest sighting we enjoyed, and even our driver and tracker were excited by this, was a pack of wild dogs. Roaming at pace across vast distances, they are almost impossible to locate predictably, and this was the first sighting in Sabi Sands for eight months. We observed them for ten minutes or so before they moved on. From the reaction of our experts we knew we had been very fortunate to witness these creatures.

Five days was a long time to stay, and I think we ended up outstaying every other guest who we met there. Yet we didn’t regret it, such was our fascination in the amazing sights that greeted us every day. And of course, when the animals weren’t cooperating the landscapes and the amazing skies that we could enjoy were just as memorable.

I like Cape Town. It is listed in many Top 10 cities lists, and rightly so IMHO. Great restaurants, attractive waterfront, fascinating museums, a place steeped in history, and of course a backdrop that very few places can compete with.

Yet my own memory from our visit there centres on the day we spent out of the city, driving down to the Cape of Good Hope. It’s a couple of hours leisurely drive, and there are interesting stops along the way. One was to see these guys! The colony of African penguins at Boulder Beach receive a steady flow of tourists snapping their pictures, and they do seem well versed in posing for a good snap. Tame to the point of almost walking up to us, once down on the beach we were in their habitat and they were happily wandering around with a care for their taller two-legged neighbours. I haven’t yet been to Antarctica, but from the southern countries this is the best place to view these fellows.

On to the Cape, and if you like walking in windy places, then this is the place for you. Not officially the southern tip of Africa, but still the point where ships would stop travelling south and start to turn east. As you look along the headland towards the end of the Cape, the water on your left is the Indian Ocean, and is up to 6C warmer than the Atlantic waters to your right.

Once you leave the mass of visitors around the car park and the shops, you can have the place pretty much to yourself, and there is some great little coastal hikes that make the most of the spectactular surrounds. Just make sure you bring a wind proof jacket!

It’s hard to beat the multi-coloured beauty of an African sunset. The sky seems bigger, the hue of the reds and oranges more expressive, the clouds more dreamy. And the sounds of the plains around us while watching the sun dip below the horizon leave you in no doubt where you are.

We stayed in Sabi Sands Reserve at Elephant Plains Lodge. Safaris are not cheap, and I suspect whenever tourists make the investment of going to a lodge for a few days, at the back of your mind there is always that thought that maybe you won’t see anything. We were certainly spoiled for game viewing. Countless leopards and lions, elephants and rhino on most days, a pack of wild dogs (a very rare sighting), and buffalo and giraffe on numerous occasions. By our fifth and final day we had become spoilt and almost expected the animals to be waiting for us! But our tracker told us we had been exceptionally lucky.

The safari experience is something special, and nowadays can be as basic or as luxurious as your taste, and budget, allows. Whatever animals you do see, the enduring images of African nature will ensure a memorable trip. Soon after the red sunset the stars come out, and the sky is awash with a thousand million bright specks the like of which us urban dwellers can never see at home. One way or another, Africa is bound to touch you and leave you wanting to return.

(Apr 2006)