And I would walk 500 miles...

Day 6: Happy New Year! Crossing the border

Woke up early. The 3 of us girls made breakfast (mmm eggs, sausage and fresh mango) and did dishes and in exchange the 2 guys were to drop off the rental car. Both groups were going to cross the border and the plan was to meet on the other side in Mozambique. Well things sometimes don't go as planned...

Us girls were going to walk to the border from the hostel, while the guys were going to drop the car off in Nespruit and take a minibus there. So we slathered on sunscreen, but our bags on our bags, filled our water and off we went. We were told that it was 4km to the border. 10km later we reached the border, hot and sweaty, but happy to get out of the heat. Ankle fortunately had healed over the previous 2 days. After crossing from South Africa into Mozambique, the guys weren't there. We hopped a bus (looked similar to a Greyhound) and headed for Maputo, Mozambique, as our back-up plan was to meet at the next hostel.

While on the bus, I was musing about what my grandmother always says about New Years Day: "Whatever you do on that day, you will be doing the rest of the year." Apparently I will be traveling into new borders this year (both figuratively and literally).

In Maputo, after some navigational skills (Thank-you LonelyPlanet for your map), we arrived at Fatima's hostel. The guys weren't there, but apparently had been there earlier. We booked dorm rooms for the night, then got an e-mail from them saying that they had gone someplace else if we wanted to meet up otherwise to meet them at the airport the next day.

We took a taxi out to dinner at "Fierra Popular." Which turned out to be a fair with surrounding restaurants. We picked one (can't remember the name), and we shared calamari, prawns and cod. The menu was entirely in Portuguese, with a National Geographic video playing on the wall. Fortunately, one of the girls speaks Spanish fluently, which made it easier to make words out. It made me want to take Spanish again. We had an excellent time and then headed back to our hostel before another long day ahead.