Pegs, poles and canvas

Nile Source, Uganda: Not a hundred meters from our tent, at the bottom of a steep slope covered with dense rainforest, the massive beginnings of the Nile splashes over rocks and fallen tree trunks. Throw a bottle in there and it ends up in Cairo.

Lake Nkuruba, Uganda: We might have coughed up a ridicoluos amount of money, spent a frantic thirty minutes behind some hyped up national park's high voltage fences waching miserable animals, while being sheparded back and forth between fat and pale tourists by the most unenthusiastic guide in the southern hemisphere. The thought of the tourists scared us, so we pitched our tent by an old crater lake where wild birds sang us lullabyes and the monkeys were our neighbours.

Lake Tanganyka, Tanzania: The only thing better than waking up to the tranquil clucking of a calm lake shore while the reflection of sunrays plays across the tent canvas, is walking naked down to the water with only a bar of soap in your hand to give the day a refreshingly clean start.

Livingstonia, Malawi: The first sunrays of a new day filtered through purple clouds, a vast lake, hundreds of husbands returning from a nights work in their tiny fishing canoes, rolling hills dotted with wifes campfires preparing a hard earned breakfast, a dramatic mountain rising vertical in jagged rock formations lit a deep red by the morning sun, a tiny ledge clinging to its unforgiving position, our tent.

Chintsa, South Africa: When you wake up in the black of night, tent piched in the middle of a dead quiet forest, to the approaching sound of rustling leaves and low hoarse grunting, the fabric separating you from whaterver's lurking out there seems pretty thin. Luckily it's only a tiny black pig too cute to be allowed.

Little Karoo, South Africa: Piching our tent between the rusted tracks of an old and abandoned railroad station. Getting drunk on local wine while digging into a fresh garden salad. Hardly not the grandest adventure our worn tent has seen, but a satisfactory end to our amazing journey of pegs, poles and canvas none the less.

The tales of Hansi, Book Two

It all begins (or continues) in the waters of Jeffrey's bay. Us, being turned upside down and inside out by a wave. It feels like taking a ride in a washing machine. We're your dirty clothes, Indian Ocean. Right then we even forget about who or what may be lurking in the deep waters and the chances of being served on our boards as lunch for a hungry great white. All I can think of is that I have to keep my head above the water. Of course I fail. So we stand back and watch the guys who know what they're doing in those Supertubes of theirs.

Hansi moves quickly down the coast. Soon we're in a place called Wilderness, and there we meet our dear Dar-Mbeya train mate Alice again. We hadn't seen her since Malawi. It's such an amazing coincidence that our celebration explodes in climbing trees, red wine, dancing madly and laughing wildly. When I wake up the next morning, still a little dizzy, the words that buzz and echo around in my head are "cockroll" and "North Umberland". From the look on Jesper's face, his echo is more like 'please make it stop, oh stop, don't puke, oh no oh no oh no'. In Wilderness we watch whales a hundred meters from the beach, lurking inside surfer's waves and find ourselves canoeing our way up a river in total silence and peace. Maybe that is what wilderness really is, the crazy jumps your heart can make.

We leave Fairy Knowe behind us and start making our way towards South Africa's blossoming heart, the little Karoo. First stop, Oudshoorn. In one day we get to have a look inside Mother Earth's guts, breathe in antique madness and make childhood dreams come true. The entree are Oudshoorn's beautifully decorated 'feather palaces', once a property of the 'feather barons' who made their fortune by stripping ostriches and making the hats of Europe's grand madames and gentle ladies ridiculous. Next came the Cango Caves, colossal inside-out domes first explored in the eighteen hundreds by a farmer with a candle. Past the gigantic chambers we find tiny passages through rocks with names such as 'the devil's pipe' or 'the letterbox'. The guide's accounts of those who got stuck in there aren't the most reassuring for a half-claustrophobic mind. But it's fun and the ever-living Indiana Jones inside us has never felt so good. Than comes the grand finale. Since I was a kid and read Don Rosa's biography of Uncle Scrooge, one of my goals in life has been riding an ostrich, laugh as much as you want. The dream come true didn't last more than a minute, but feeling like a grumpy comic hero is worth it all. Watching Jesper at it was even better.

Somewhere in the middle of the Little Karoo winter suddenly ends. Just outside Oudshoorn I guess. When we get to Calitzdorp the blossoming world explodes. We pitch our tent by the rails of an old train station. It smells of rusted iron, trains that'll never come again and the fresh paint and fresh garden salad of Cheryl, our lovely host. Two days spread around us like seeds in the wind. The evenings with Cheryl, the old houses falling apart in a valley which name we've forgotten, the afternoons that tastes like port but smells like white, soft and infinite apricot blossoms.

We cross yellow mountains and somehow leave spring behind us. It slips through fingers and thoughts and suddenly the flowers are gone. The landscape slowly gives up the colors, one by one. First red, than orange and at last the green of the fields, as if sea and sky has swallowed everything else. Maybe that's how the world is going to end. In any case we're sort of at the end of the world. Of Africa, at least. Cape Argulhas, of whitewashed houses, stones, water, clouds. Then again, an explosion of color. Someone has hidden the yellow away in his pocket only to make the end of Africa pretty. Seeds from beyond the ocean, a sea of flowers. We are hit in the face by the wind on top of the lighthouse. We can se for miles and miles and miles.

In the morning we step into a world of mist. Ghost mountains and fog in the distance, the Overberg route to Hermanus is the breath of a whale. We can see them in the distance, graceful giants in a world of their own. Silent down there. We walk between rocks, the foam of the sea and bunkbeds for chipmunks. The whales keep quiet in their endless bubble. They might be suggesting the show's about to end.

Cape Town is getting closer and we're carefully circling around it the same way you save the most gorgeous looking chocolate or the biggest present for last. We slide through Franschoek and settle in Stellenbosch, the heart of the winelands. It's a day of Cabernet Sauvignon and cheese and a thousand different tastes that in the end melt together and stick to our tongues like heavy metal. We sip and sniff and observe chameleons on bushes and try to do it all with grace. If there is any left.

Souh Africa ends, once again. All we can see in front of us is endless sea and the storm coming. As for being an end, Cape of Good Hope looks appropriately dramatic. Waves crash against towers of rock, crazy birds float on the wind above pools of foam. What we've left behind seems more and more ghostly. We're guided around by the wind, the sun warming up our path only to disappear the next second. Hansi's got to run, the storm will chase us all the way to Table View.

We walk along an endless white beach and watch the sun set a few waves to the right of Table Mountain. Hansi smiles lazily, he knows it's his last day of work. Than we'll pack the speed and the wind and the miles past in a duffel bag of memories. No more road, only a week in Cape Town and a plane home. The time has come for forgetting about days gone and days to come. It's time to take each second and feel it, as if nothing else was ever going to happen.

The tales of Hansi, Book One

The sun sets on Mozambique and rises over South Africa. We wake up with endless tarmac stretching ahead of us, countless possibilities, but we already know. A roadtrip is not something you experience once. It's something that goes on and on and on, and even when it's over it still goes on in your head, and than it goes on to the next roadtrip. From the last roadtrip we were on in the country of the long white cloud, we brought Hansi. Or his name, at least, and gave it to our car, a baby Chevrolet Spark Lite. We picked it up three weeks ago at Kruger international Airport, just outside Nelspruit, and have been rubbing our arses against its seats ever since.

A giant crack in the earth, red ground like open flesh and dry bushes dressed in their autumn colors. Sun-baked earth and the miles of air beneath our tingling feet and the abbys. We get a taste of what flying could be like, breathing in a view that belongs to the Lord of the Rings. Blyde River Canyon opens up like a gentle mouth, blowing us away rather than trying to swallow us.

Sometimes we watch the South African horizon float beside Hansi's windows. We see mountains wrapped up in clouds that seem to disappear into nothingness and think, if the world was to end somewhere, this would be the place.

One of the most surreal experiences of this journey has to be driving our tame city Hansi into the wilderness. After a night spent in our tent listening to the odd warthog lurk around in the dark, the daylight shines though the clouds on a brave little buddy making its way through gravel roads, surrounded by zebras, more warthogs, wilderbeest, and the strangest antilopes one could imagine. One of them being again a sight belonging to the Lord og the Rings. We finally give Hansi some rest and dismount our destrier on four wheels to sit in silence and admire two sleeping hippos mirrored in the quietest lake since the calm waters of Buggala island. The whole world seems doubled, and as we drive away we're not sure on which side we are anymore.

Lesotho's an undisturbed spot of truly chaotic african life. Yet, as soon as we leave the towns behind the sounds fade away, choked by the presence of majestic mountains. Up on the top it's bitter cold, but minds forget to shiver when they flutter somewhere near the top of the world, or what feels like it. You end up wondering how all those mountains and all that hight can fit inside your eyes, or your mind.

How can all that past fit into a painting on the rock, or in the traces left after dinosaurs. We look up at the negative footprints of beasts millions years old. They hang from the ceiling like huge stone spiders and it's like being underneath the waters surface, looking up at hulls of a pirate fleet, only those ships have long since sailed. As long gone as the hand that drew orange and red lines on a rock fivethousand years ago. Still, the secrets of their nameless gods linger in the walls, the animal headed warriors still smell of the spirits of nature, and of fight for survival.

There we are, sipping seawind and poking at the sun on our plate. The air is hot and lingers on our shoulders like an overloaded backpack. The noise, the traffic, the crowd, everything bursts like a giant soap bubble when we cross the gates of the Gardens of Durban. It's a calm, distorted fairytale where Uncle Scrooges lurk in a shallow pond and plants pretend to be artworks. Well maybe they are. The smell of newly cut grass is like nothing else in the world. It's summer, over and over and over again. It's been summer for almost six months now, we realize.

We follow the thin, remote arms of the Wild Coast as they stretch out to hidden pearls more or less overrated. Chintsa takes our breath away. At least for a few seconds at the night of our first arrival, when menacing grunts are produced by unknown monsters in the forests. In the morning we find our tent surrounded by clumsy little pigs and curious monkeys. We're hidden by our own walls of clothes hung up to dry and by the wood itself. We're in an invisible, secret castle. Down on the beach horses trot and the wind whips sand into our clothes and salt on our faces. The bay curves like a soft spoon, a light fog dripping towards its end. Everything is silent, though something is happening in our minds. It's the wheels still turning, the hunger still burning. If you can't get behind your own life get behind the driving wheel. On, and on, and on.