December 2010 – Camping at Sodwana Bay

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Fired up the red fire engine and left at 5.30am, always have to leave in the dark, and always have to take egg sandwiches as well. It's something we used to do before there were Wimpys along the way and now both kids insist they have to have egg sandwiches or its not a real holiday.

The drive was uneventful – which for us is a bonus as we normally manage at least one flat tyre – apart from the potholed road and the roadworks where we had to sit and wait for the traffic to pass one lane at a time. Arrived at Sodwana mid afternoon, very hot and sunny, pretty cramped pitch considering we had 2 large tents and 2 vehicles to park and of course deciding where to pitch the tents took the longest time as normal.

Snorkelling at Sodwana wasn't easy as they weren't long tides and low tide was late afternoon but when we did manage to get in the fish were still as good as I remembered. Saw huge shoals of several different types of fish and swam right through them and had a brief glimpse of a blue spotted ray. Saw lots of the tiny brightly coloured ones as well. The last day we snorkelled in the kiddies pool we saw a blue moray eel in his hole, bet some of those people in there wouldn't have been too relaxed had they known.

Weather was mostly hot and sunny with a breeze so it wasn't too uncomfortable. We had quite a bit of rain in the night, fortunately our new tents stood up to the test and were dry as a bone, only the poor old gazebo gave in again snapping 2 of the side bars with the weight of the water, it's now held together with duck tape and 2 tyre spanners but does look a bit precarious.

We took a day to drive to Kozi Bay, unfortunately when we got there we couldn't get a permit for the beach (nt surprised really) so decided to come back on the 4 x 4 trail via Black Rock. The road was pretty bad so we decided it wouldn't be wise to attempt it. We tried to come back via Mabibi but again due to the lack of signposts, lots of crossroads and some slightly dodgy looking people hanging around we decided it was now too late to continue and chickened out and came back on the tar road. As we got into Sodwana we realised we had a puncture so it was probably just as well as I wouldn't have fancied trying to change the tyre in the deep sand in some of the places we had been driving. But we did get an ice cream at Kozi Bay so it wasn't an entirely wasted day, oh and the guys enjoyed all the 4 x 4ing as well.

New Year's Eve appeared to be celebrated by every single 13 and 14 year old on the campsite, mostly at drunken parties which were fortunately quite a way from us. Lots of fireworks of course but you weren't allowed on the beach so ours was a fairly sedate affair with us just managing to stay awake to see the New Year in.

We had planned on staying at Sodwana on the 1st and leave on the 2nd because of all the Africans coming to the beach for the day. As it was impossible for us to get on the beach at all that day we rather rashly decided to leave a day early. Although it was quite a spectacle as we drove through Sodwana village, it was like a completely different place, there were literally thousands of people, tents set up cooking and selling food, a field turned into a huge car park, lots of police around keeping control, and taxis just streaming to the beach. It was rather intimidating and I was quite pleased when we got through the masses. It was a very long day driving to Nelspruit and we got there late at night, fortunately we had booked a B&B so didn't have to worry about pitching tents.

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