After my exciting trip through northeastern Africa it was time to see the south, leaving for Johannesburg, to visit my friend Stephan and his wife Francette... they have a son, Luca, now and I was excited to seeing old friends in new places.. she is from Ghana he is Swiss and they moved to J'burg not too long ago. Mike, my best buddy from Switzerland was joining me for this 6 week part of the trip, South Africa, Swaziland, Leshoto and Namibia. Basically the very bottom part of Africa.
J'burg was not worth the visit other than hanging out with Stephan and Francette, but their house was nice and protected from the raging crime, so we had a nice "warmup" there... there are alarm buttons and at night when I had to go to the bathroom I accidentally pushed one of those instead of the light, within seconds there is a phonecall, if you dont answer within 30 sec and give em your security code they send in troopers and snipers (I wish I were kidding) and if necessary break in with force to try to save you from kidnappings... thats the new vogue things criminals do in South Africa.. seldom the kidnapped survive. Enough for scare, we were warned and informed how to not get kidnapped (in theory, but better than nothing) and rented a car... once outside of the big cities we felt very safe.. but the cities are not.
At Stephan and Francette's house...
Hanging out with Luca and the neighbor's girl
Drove out to visit some canyons and other landmarks and got to Swaziland in a few day's time, spent three very nice days there, including a 2 day trip in a park full of white and black rhinos.
Lovin the hostels... heated pools, beer, what else do you need?
Driving through Leshoto...
After that we hit the coast of South Africa and apart from a one day detour to Leshoto followed that all the way down to Capetown. Leshoto was very nice to look at with the clay huts, but is one of the poorest countries in the world... it has its fame for being the highest country in the world (highest low point that is), and not much grows there. The roads, built by foreginers 10s of years ago were deserted and had accumulated potholes galore, so it was like racecar driving in an arcade mall... just with worse consequences if one messed up. I did, once only... but that was because I realized after about 10 minutes driving that I had accidentally been driving (with full speed, like 100km/h) on the (wrong), right side of the road... this was a former english colony... not a good idea. Fortunately we only saw a car every 30-50 minutes so no accident happened...
Seriously? Seriously! There was no game park nearby...
Lucky punch, a little (2months) old elephant...
Playing with the front bumper.. i hope the bit momma is not coming over!
This is when I stopped feeling comfortable and told the guide to please drive backwards...
The garden route is the road in south africa that follows from Durban to Cape Town and it is one of the most beautiful coastal roads in the world, and we stopped often along the way and stayed in nice hostels. The thing about backpacking in South Africa is the hostels... they are the quintessence of traveling. Many of them are resort-style large complexes, with hundreds of rooms, dozens of dorms, swimming pool(s), bars, gigantic surroundings, private beaches, and/or large peripheral programs such as rock climbing, cycling, game viewing, diving, riding, you name it. Such a place we ended up staying in Cystna, along the coast.
Another gorgeous hostel...
Malin at the beach, riding horses with the swedes we met...
Travelling Buddies
At Mats home... thanks for the invite!
Nestled away from town, close to the beach, the hostel at cystna is all a traveler needs, for days. With its private access to a large beach, miles of sand dunes, and opportunities to ride, bike, hike and explore the Xhosa culture (a common people of South Africa), we spent several days there, and got to know some really nice Swedish Girls that, along with their mentor, taught handball in South Africa and were on a relaxing vacation. We spent several days together, riding horses, and just relaxing, and then were invited over to their house further down south for another few days. It was kind of like a vacation from a vacation, living in a house, we spent the days running in the AM (Malin is a strong runner), then hanging out by the pool and visiting the town. Unfortunately we had a plane to catch, only a little over a week from when we left there, and so we had to go. The rest of the trip down the coast was rather lame and uneventful, maybe party due to the fun times spent with Malin, Jenny and Mats up in East London, maybe because we were just a bit tired from the travelling. Well in any event, Mike and I traveled well enough together to figure out quickly where we liked it and where not, and drove the couple of hundred miles straight through to a small mountain town just northwest of Capetown. There we spent a couple of days doing fun stuff. What fun stuff? We stayed at a hostel where we could do lots of bike trips to nearby wineries, austrich farms, caves and mountian passes. It was a great place to hang out, and we met a lot of good people to do that with. First off we rented a bike and rode out to the austrich farm, where we got a very thorough introduction into the animals. It was educational, but also a lot of fun. Particularly riding one of those things.... WWF is probaly going to kick my @$$ for stating this, but I had to lie about my weight (they allow only 180lbs max rider weight, so i am 185lbs, no big deal, its like the safety thing for bridges.. 5 extra lbs wont matter...). Anyhow, noone else (e.g. as always I was the only idiot not seeing the danger) wanted to ride it, so I did. Austriches are dumb animals.. in fact they have one of the lowest brain/body mass of any animal, and it shows.... when you put a bag over their head, no matter how hard you had to chase it, it immediately stops and stays there, thinking it is night now. So I did and comfortably got to sit down on one of those... now you lift the bag and hell does the guy shoot off... uiiiihaaa here we go... the head can be used as a joystick and when turned in either direction the animal sees the ground at an angle and immediately wants to make up for that by going in the other direction. Hillarious.
Whatcha looking at punk!!??
Note to self... do not feed the animals.
Austrich rodeo!
That night we booked a trip, well mike did, to be dropped off at the top of a mountain to bike back the 50 miles to town, and pass by some impressive caves. I wanted to be the tough guy and bike out and back, a gnarly 100 miles with 3000 feet of gain, hey after all I had been trainning lots-NOT! Anyhow, get up at 5am, get going, I d be at the top before Mike gets dropped off... well plans dont always work out where there are hostels, fun travelers and beer in the equation... but most I blame it on Swiss Soccer... its a bit like US soccer, sucks most of the time but when they actually play well everyone gets into it... well we beat the Irish, another great soccer nation (tsisss) and qualified for the world champs... so I had a beer or two... and the german group I drank with told me about killer pool. Its Billiard with a twist.. not really a twist but more like an excessive drinking game attached. I figured one game cant be that bad... and told everyone including the owner of the hostel that I needed to be in bed by 11pm... yeah, like anyone gave a bleep mate! One game became two, and the second game I won (out of like 30 some people) which spared me having to drink three small glasses of beer (for every shot missed) but the winning price was a tshirt and three shots of hard liqueur to be drinken in one go.... the rest is fast forward... more killer pool, then a pub, then some disco-like thing where all I remember is the tall, qute German girl I danced with, and coming home around 4.30am... well there was no sense in sleeping now, so I drank 1.5 liters of water and started cycling. Hell is a crummy old Mountain Bike, a Hangover and a 3000 foot climb I tell ya. I never made it all the way up there by myself.. Mike and the driver caught me a few miles short and the driver took pity in the hungover dork that was trying to get up there and gave me a free lift.... oh yeah and the caves were nice on the way back :)
Playing killer pool at the hostel... one bad, very bad idea...
Amazing caves along the way...
Stalactites (or Stalacnites?) I never remember..
Fun evening at a Xhosa village
Jump, Jump, Jump! Oh crap...
Lost solo penguin (top) and breaching whale (bottom)
Funky, its my shadow!!
Nice evening walk on a dune...
A tad bit on the hungover side...
Wavy sand....
J'burg was not worth the visit other than hanging out with Stephan and Francette, but their house was nice and protected from the raging crime, so we had a nice "warmup" there... there are alarm buttons and at night when I had to go to the bathroom I accidentally pushed one of those instead of the light, within seconds there is a phonecall, if you dont answer within 30 sec and give em your security code they send in troopers and snipers (I wish I were kidding) and if necessary break in with force to try to save you from kidnappings... thats the new vogue things criminals do in South Africa.. seldom the kidnapped survive. Enough for scare, we were warned and informed how to not get kidnapped (in theory, but better than nothing) and rented a car... once outside of the big cities we felt very safe.. but the cities are not.
At Stephan and Francette's house...
Hanging out with Luca and the neighbor's girl
Drove out to visit some canyons and other landmarks and got to Swaziland in a few day's time, spent three very nice days there, including a 2 day trip in a park full of white and black rhinos.
Lovin the hostels... heated pools, beer, what else do you need?
Driving through Leshoto...
After that we hit the coast of South Africa and apart from a one day detour to Leshoto followed that all the way down to Capetown. Leshoto was very nice to look at with the clay huts, but is one of the poorest countries in the world... it has its fame for being the highest country in the world (highest low point that is), and not much grows there. The roads, built by foreginers 10s of years ago were deserted and had accumulated potholes galore, so it was like racecar driving in an arcade mall... just with worse consequences if one messed up. I did, once only... but that was because I realized after about 10 minutes driving that I had accidentally been driving (with full speed, like 100km/h) on the (wrong), right side of the road... this was a former english colony... not a good idea. Fortunately we only saw a car every 30-50 minutes so no accident happened...
Seriously? Seriously! There was no game park nearby...
Lucky punch, a little (2months) old elephant...
Playing with the front bumper.. i hope the bit momma is not coming over!
This is when I stopped feeling comfortable and told the guide to please drive backwards...
The garden route is the road in south africa that follows from Durban to Cape Town and it is one of the most beautiful coastal roads in the world, and we stopped often along the way and stayed in nice hostels. The thing about backpacking in South Africa is the hostels... they are the quintessence of traveling. Many of them are resort-style large complexes, with hundreds of rooms, dozens of dorms, swimming pool(s), bars, gigantic surroundings, private beaches, and/or large peripheral programs such as rock climbing, cycling, game viewing, diving, riding, you name it. Such a place we ended up staying in Cystna, along the coast.
Another gorgeous hostel...
Malin at the beach, riding horses with the swedes we met...
Travelling Buddies
At Mats home... thanks for the invite!
Nestled away from town, close to the beach, the hostel at cystna is all a traveler needs, for days. With its private access to a large beach, miles of sand dunes, and opportunities to ride, bike, hike and explore the Xhosa culture (a common people of South Africa), we spent several days there, and got to know some really nice Swedish Girls that, along with their mentor, taught handball in South Africa and were on a relaxing vacation. We spent several days together, riding horses, and just relaxing, and then were invited over to their house further down south for another few days. It was kind of like a vacation from a vacation, living in a house, we spent the days running in the AM (Malin is a strong runner), then hanging out by the pool and visiting the town. Unfortunately we had a plane to catch, only a little over a week from when we left there, and so we had to go. The rest of the trip down the coast was rather lame and uneventful, maybe party due to the fun times spent with Malin, Jenny and Mats up in East London, maybe because we were just a bit tired from the travelling. Well in any event, Mike and I traveled well enough together to figure out quickly where we liked it and where not, and drove the couple of hundred miles straight through to a small mountain town just northwest of Capetown. There we spent a couple of days doing fun stuff. What fun stuff? We stayed at a hostel where we could do lots of bike trips to nearby wineries, austrich farms, caves and mountian passes. It was a great place to hang out, and we met a lot of good people to do that with. First off we rented a bike and rode out to the austrich farm, where we got a very thorough introduction into the animals. It was educational, but also a lot of fun. Particularly riding one of those things.... WWF is probaly going to kick my @$$ for stating this, but I had to lie about my weight (they allow only 180lbs max rider weight, so i am 185lbs, no big deal, its like the safety thing for bridges.. 5 extra lbs wont matter...). Anyhow, noone else (e.g. as always I was the only idiot not seeing the danger) wanted to ride it, so I did. Austriches are dumb animals.. in fact they have one of the lowest brain/body mass of any animal, and it shows.... when you put a bag over their head, no matter how hard you had to chase it, it immediately stops and stays there, thinking it is night now. So I did and comfortably got to sit down on one of those... now you lift the bag and hell does the guy shoot off... uiiiihaaa here we go... the head can be used as a joystick and when turned in either direction the animal sees the ground at an angle and immediately wants to make up for that by going in the other direction. Hillarious.
Whatcha looking at punk!!??
Note to self... do not feed the animals.
Austrich rodeo!
That night we booked a trip, well mike did, to be dropped off at the top of a mountain to bike back the 50 miles to town, and pass by some impressive caves. I wanted to be the tough guy and bike out and back, a gnarly 100 miles with 3000 feet of gain, hey after all I had been trainning lots-NOT! Anyhow, get up at 5am, get going, I d be at the top before Mike gets dropped off... well plans dont always work out where there are hostels, fun travelers and beer in the equation... but most I blame it on Swiss Soccer... its a bit like US soccer, sucks most of the time but when they actually play well everyone gets into it... well we beat the Irish, another great soccer nation (tsisss) and qualified for the world champs... so I had a beer or two... and the german group I drank with told me about killer pool. Its Billiard with a twist.. not really a twist but more like an excessive drinking game attached. I figured one game cant be that bad... and told everyone including the owner of the hostel that I needed to be in bed by 11pm... yeah, like anyone gave a bleep mate! One game became two, and the second game I won (out of like 30 some people) which spared me having to drink three small glasses of beer (for every shot missed) but the winning price was a tshirt and three shots of hard liqueur to be drinken in one go.... the rest is fast forward... more killer pool, then a pub, then some disco-like thing where all I remember is the tall, qute German girl I danced with, and coming home around 4.30am... well there was no sense in sleeping now, so I drank 1.5 liters of water and started cycling. Hell is a crummy old Mountain Bike, a Hangover and a 3000 foot climb I tell ya. I never made it all the way up there by myself.. Mike and the driver caught me a few miles short and the driver took pity in the hungover dork that was trying to get up there and gave me a free lift.... oh yeah and the caves were nice on the way back :)
Playing killer pool at the hostel... one bad, very bad idea...
Amazing caves along the way...
Stalactites (or Stalacnites?) I never remember..
Fun evening at a Xhosa village
Jump, Jump, Jump! Oh crap...
Next station was Hermanus just off the coast and near Capetown. Mike really wanted to go white shark watching and I did not so we split up (much to the dismay of mike)... for those of you that have read the blogs till now, very hard to believe but for once there was something potentially dangerous and I did not feel like trying it out... was I getting tired of traveling? Well they feed the sharks while they go out there with all the tourists, then throw the tourists in cages to dive down and watch them... now I am not an animal behavioral specialist but when White Sharks associate getting fed every time they see a human, I feel queasy at best, so I skipped. Mike really wanted to go and probably would have changed his mind, but hindsight is 20/20. After getting out there he found out he gets seasick (hehe, like all my travel buddies), and ended up throwing up for almost all of the time on the boat. No cage diving, too choppy out there that day, but they did see a great white, and mike saw it the closest. While he was throwing up on the left side of the boat everyone spotted the shark at the right, everyone but mike ran over, the shark dived under the boat and up on the other side. Mike may have done humankind a huge favor, barfing (throwing up for non-native speakers) all over the shark. Now the poor fella will always associate humans with a very bad smell of half digested mexican food... andele andele!! :)
I stayed at the coast, put in a great 2h run (started running again since my friend Helen Bridle, who is on the national orienteering team, convinced me to do this 2 day run in the mountains in summer... which is in like 2 months!!), and then sat on the coast, chatted with two lovely travellers and saw whales breach very close to us. Plus a penguin, which apparently are never seen in Hermanus, the poor guy must have really gotten lost
Lost solo penguin (top) and breaching whale (bottom)
Well we finally made it to Capetown and had a great time there, we spent five days there, going to the cape of good hope (e.g. the southern tip of africa), and more importantly and impressive, the prison where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for decades! We were guided through the prison by a former inmate and he talked very openly, emotionly about the imprisonment, the horrible torture, abuse. It was very emotional, and many women started crying by hearing this man's story, he was a cripple from the torture, and these scars do not lie. Made me want to punch (or worse) someone for the first time in a long time. It is the 20th century and we are still treating each other worse than animals, hard to believe.
We stayed at a big hostel (more like a hostel complex) where hundreds of backpackers stay, and many use this as the hub for trans africa travel (12 weeks, to cairo) and vice versa. We stayed there haning out with two swiss guys and Marina, a german/russian model that took a sabbatical and worked there with children gunshot/burn victims, to work through their horrifying experiences... so much for all models are superficial.
Nelson Mandela's cell (that is the whole size) where he was imprisoned for 28 years...
Marina, Marcus and I after a game of pool at the hostel
In fact she was about done with her work there and planning to head up to Windhoek/Namibia, to work in developing schools, and we headed out there to do a 10 day exploratoin tour of Namibia, so I was happy to reconnect with her and have her show me around what she was doing out there.
So we flew to windhoek and took that tour. It was certainly a good way to see the interesting sights in Namibia. The dunes were particularly spectacular. We travelled in a group of 10, and there really is not too much to write about, drive, see, explore, hang out. After 8 of the 10 days I decided to drop the tour and head back early to Windhoek and hang out with Marina, and got a good idea of her work with the children there, went to some schools talking about traveling, enterpreneurship, and various topics, and to a prison for young delinquents as well. All in all I had a great time, and it rounded up my trip to Africa as a "must return one day". Traveling with Mike was awesome, a bit bumpy at times, but as best friends we had no problems getting these out of the way ASAP. I am a morning person, he barely waked up before the sun goes down.. but hey, traveling with you best buddy you find ways to meet i the middle.
SandDune51 (they are indeed numbered)
Chameleon!
Mystic Giraffe
Byebye Africa, see you soon again!
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