Wild at heart
May 25 2007 David Mastin experiences the comfort of a Saga cruise and the excitement of an African safari in one holiday.
You could have heard a pin drop. Six of us sat in an open game reserve Land Rover as quiet as mice – although we had come to see bigger things.
In the African bush, parked on sloping grassland facing a belt of bungalow-high trees and shrubs and the only sound was the ticking of a cooling engine.
Our ranger, a rufty tufty Afrikaaner with a wrestler’s shoulders, kept a finger to her lips. You wouldn’t argue with her.
Suddenly came ripping and tearing noises, crunching and creaking from the green haven slightly below us. The few hairs left on the back of my neck really did stand up.
Trees shook and parted and then right in front of us was a huge female elephant, matriarchal head of a following tribe of six in descending size to the baby of the family. Our collective sigh of awe was punctuated only by clicks of cameras in sweaty palms.
Kariega Game Reserve in Eastern Cape, South Africa, was our first foray on land from the the aptly named cruise ship Spirit of Adventure, on a voyage to unlock mysteries of the dark continent.
At the risk of sounding wimpish, the idea of exploring Africa from a five-star floating hotel had been rather appealing.
Let it not be said I am a timid person – cautious maybe, certainly about health and leonine dangers. But sailing into port, exploring ashore by day, and returning to our ship at night sounded ideal. It was.
Our route took in South Africa, both its outstanding beauty and hidden crime dangers; Mozambique, racked by civil war and recently ravaged by cyclone, flood, and poverty; the piratical trading lands of Zanzibar Island in Eastern Tanzania; and on to Mombasa, Kenya via Mayotte in the Comoros Islands north of Madagascar.
We saw elephants and lions, giraffes and white rhinos, saw amazing vistas, met the poor and very posh, and felt we were walking the wild side in the best and safest way – from a smallish ship, wrapped in acquired knowledge and cared for by experts.
So it was that we embarked on Saga’s Spirit of Adventure, packed largely with couples of a certain age but all refusing to lie down and roll over.
Ahead lay 4,350 kilometres of the east coast of Africa with on-shore day trips, on an elegant floating home with good food, good folk and a sound night’s sleep without mosquitoes. This is so-called grey adventurism at its very best.
The crew, without exception, and the food, were first-class. Here was a floating culinary orchestra conducted by executive chef George Streeter from that county of exemplary eating, Cornwall.
Exotic menus apart, surely few other ships offer a porridge alternative for breakfast and traditional English desserts of spotted dick and treacle pud in the tropics.
No floating nightclubs here but a piano bar, a quiz perhaps, dancing and a classical trio.
I’ve tried bigger cruise ships with 2,000-plus passengers but on balance I prefer smaller ships, maybe not as stable in freshening winds and somewhat challenging in the middle of the cyclone season, but with a very real sense of "family" and familiarity.
These modern, or modernised, ships – big or small – have sophisticated communications and advance weather warning systems and captains are smart at nippy diversions to avoid discomfort to passengers.
Things you can’t and shouldn’t avoid include yellow fever injections (£40 each at your local surgery) for certain parts of Africa and malaria tablets (£2.20 each Malarone tablet, but it pays to take the best).
On the other hand we did avoid most of the worst storm to hit the coastal city of Durban for 25 years, swamping seafronts, damaging restaurants and closing the airport.
Captain Martin Breen, a gentle giant of an Irishman who actually sounded like Bob Geldof on the ship’s tannoy, decided to outrun the worsening weather and we fled north on a rather bumpy ride.
We tried twice in the next 24 hours to reach the safer haven of Richard’s Bay further up the coast but the closed port ordered us to clear the area.
Day three finally saw us moored peacefully in Maputo, capital of Mozambique, where a changed itinerary allowed a two-day stay. There was time to enjoy guest lecturers, including former ITN war reporter Mike Nicholson and international watercolour artist Jackie Devereux, who held onboard workshops.
It was also an opportunity to journey cross-country in hastily-arranged transport to the Kruger National Park, after long border crossing delays. We saw hippos and elephants again, and savoured a never-to-be-repeated lunch of kudu (antelope) stew, after running the gauntlet of unbelievable corrugated iron and reed suburban slums where thousands live with nothing.
Amazingly some of these grim areas spawn early-morning crocodiles of children, smart and neat in their school uniforms, ready to climb the ladder of education with hope and a smile.
We sailed ever north and nearer the equator to the Mozambique port of Beira where we were the second ever cruise ship to visit.
The bustling port acts as a gateway for land-locked countries including Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. Most ships tied up were Chinese freighters.
The squalor in parts matched that of Maputo. But locals, warned of our arrival, produced an eco-friendly welcome.
Youngsters had been employed to make bamboo fans for passengers using the vehicles hired for tours. They didn’t have soft seats, but local merchants had supplied foam, and women had made cushions for the passengers to sit on.
As each passenger boarded, they got a white necklace made from scrap paper pulp, produced by young people on a UN aid programme.
We sailed that night over calmer seas towards historic Mozambique Island – once the capital and now a UNESCO World Heritage site – where most people still live in reed houses.
Our anchorage was two and half kilometres offshore because of sandbanks and we reached this boiling tropical hot-spot in rubber boats, running up onto a beach because the jetty had collapsed.
Not a trip for the faint-hearted but we were up for it – running the gauntlet of necklace-selling locals in dugout canoes and rewarded on the return by a show from playful dolphins criss-crossing our wake. Very exciting.
The French island of Mayotte in the Comoros followed. A beautiful place ringed by exotic reefs, where giant fruit bats fly through the canopy of trees and porcupines roast on barbeques.
And finally, wafted by winds from the Arabian peninsular, came Zanzibar, lying in a natural harbour and a trading post since the eighth century, still fascinating and once the main slave entrepot on the eastern coast of Africa, trading more than 50,000 slaves annually.
We chose an away day to snorkel on the reef – much superior, I thought, than the better known Grand Cayman and Bonaire sites in the Caribbean – with a crayfish barbeque, cooked by the very laidback crew of our transport, an Arab dhow. Dolphins circled the island as we ate. Home via Mombasa airport in Kenya. But I still picture whales on the port bow, flying fish bursting from foam-flecked seas and the mariners’ faithful companion – an albatross – that "pious bird of good omen" – guiding us safely in stormy waters.
- FACTBOX
* David Mastin was a guest of Spirit of Adventure, which offers fare reductions of up to 45 per cent on Mediterranean voyages this summer, from £1,577 (two sharing inside cabin) for the voyage from Harwich on August 15 to Guernsey, Villagarcia de Arousa (Spain), Leixoes (Portugal), Seville, Tangier, Malaga, Cartagena, Soller (Majorca), Mahon (Majorca), Tarragona (Spain) and Barcelona. Free UK travel package to port or airport within 120km.
* Spirit of Adventure has a 22-night voyage – From the Amazon to Argentina – from November 28, 2007, from £2,759 (two sharing inside cabin).
* Most Spirit of Adventure cruises include flights from a range regional of airports.
