African short stories

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...

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.

Funky, its my shadow!!

Nice evening walk on a dune...

A tad bit on the hungover side...

Wavy sand....

SandDune51 (they are indeed numbered)

Chameleon!

Mystic Giraffe

Byebye Africa, see you soon again!

Africa, BABY!, Africa....

Off i went again about a week ago, where this time i am dragging my bum across Africa! First part was a bit more touristy, but no less fun, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro with my dad, and then doing a safari with mom and dad across the serengeti.

At Kilimanjaro airport we had no visa problems, getting our bags right away and our guide was already waiting to take us to the hotel, it was almost scary how everything worked out. Well until I unpacked and found that my hairgel had exploded (what dork travels with hairgel anyways, serves me right I say!!!) I am currently still brushing my teeth with that faint taste of gel, I think it s pineapple flavor!

After a good nights sleep we got up the next morning and found the porters, cook and guide, already preparing everything, our bags were (despite our disagreement) taken by the porters and we were given these tiny backpacks to carry, we had the mandatory guide, assistant guide, cook and four porters that all carried up to 35kg up the mountain. A little on the insane side when you see that they are carrying tables, chairs, and non-dried food up there... but hey, arguing was senseless, that s the way it s been done, no change to come... hmm....

Us and our porters/guide/cook...

Several groups on their way...carrying their load on their head



Camp 1

After starting from Machame gate at 1500 meters we walked slowly (pole pole, in the Swahili language) up to the first camp, enjoyed the easy hike through the jungle, talking to the cook and learning the most important words of Swahili, now, after a week me and my dad can already properly introduce ourselves, talk about the weather and most importantly haggle and bargain, its great fun!! We slept at 3000 meters the first night (about 10000 feet) and over the next three days slowly hiked up to 4600 meters, to properly acclimatize... of the 50 people or so that tried to summit the mountain the same day we did, many were already complaining of AMS (accute mountain sickness), which can occur above 10000 feet and lead to headaches and vomiting in the beginning, but become much more serious later if not properly treated. Having learned a thing or two from Lucas, the swiss doctor i traveled with in Nepal, I tried to help a couple of people that complained about problems, and explain basics how to minimize the altitude problems (e.g. staying above camp for a couple of hours before sleep if there is time, lots and lots and even more fluids, nope guys, beer wont do the trick!).

Last leg we were supposed to get up at 11.20 pm, no sleep for me as my dad was snoring like he s at sea level.. all the power to him if he can sleep at that altitude... we got up to get ready, had a hefty breakfast... strange only 5 hours after dinner.... and set off at midnight to watch my most spectacular hike i have done so far.... star lit sky, the moon lighting some of the way.... it was bitter cold... about -20C/-10F, so the breaks we took were many but short, again hydration was very important... at 5 30 am, about 2 hours ahead of schedule we arrived on top of Kilimanjaro at 5895 meters, 19345feet, VERY exhausted (me that is, my dad is a machine, I dont know how he does it with 57 years old, but i sure hope its heredetory!!)

Creatures at the top... my dad, guide and porter...

Did it!

Amazing bud sadly slowly disappearing glacier...

Picture of a lifetime: Glacier, Mt. Meru (small one) and shadow of Kilimanjaro (big one)

I was hyper taking tons of pictures as the sun came up, it also kept me warm. After an amazing sunrise and about 45minutes rest we descended at six fifteen, passing by all the ones slowly making it to the top. Back on the steep volcano rock face we could easily surf down the gravel, but had to take care, falling would have been quite painful, we descended the 1200 meters elevation in 45minutes, and finally got breakfast, WONDERFUL....

My mom arrived a day later, having made the trip by herself to Tanzania. She was picked up by achmed, our fantastic tour organizer. Like so many others that have booked tours with him, I inquired about 1 year ago about kili and safaris, and though i knew little about this guy called achmed, with flawless english and good german skills (never occurred to me to ask), I was very surprised to see this tall skinny English guy picking us up at the airport. Truth is i would have been less surprised by a 5foot1 Pakistani with a small mustache...

Achmed proofed to be a great choice, no surprise after the meticulous answering of my questions and thorough inquiries.

At the serengeti, we witnessed all the wonderful wildlife (we saw the big five over and over... (big5 being elephant,lion,buffalo,rhino and leopard, the latter two really hard to encounter), plus lots of cheetas, birds, baby lions playing...a male lion 5 feet from our car, etc....), then returned to a wonderful lodge, and reviewed the day by having a cold beer and looking at the pictures on the digital camera, followed by a wonderful dinner....

Impressions from the Serengeti....

I knew already the days of plenty and posh hotels would soon be over. After spending the last night in a gorgeous hotel in arusha and having a grand time with my parents, i left last Saturday to backpack again, .... first i visited Kate and her family in Nairobi, a girl i met while skydiving in New Zealand. She was so nice to offer her "hilton gardens lodge", a shack they have below their huge house in a nice district a bit off Nirobi downtown, like the beverly hills area. I was received very nicely with a great curry her dad made and spent two days there, visiting museums and a snake farm, and decided to go off by myself to the north a bit too.

That was quite the trip I have to say.... I haven't seen another traveler in two days... just taking matatas (like minibuses for locals), spent yesterday at lake naivasha visiting a gorge. I had to stay in the hotel all night since I ran out of money, the banks close at three and the cash machine was broken.... so crackers and water is was.

Hiking the devil's canyon

Now i am in nankuru, it is deserted from travellers (the tourist hotel is absolutely empty, I am the only visitor and have been for days)... after the extremists set fire to three german hotels in kenya people are scared, but I feel very safe here... its totally off the radar out in the boonies. Not what most of you would call "nice traveling", a lot of poverty and no tourist facilities, but people are very friendly and it is certainly interesting and gives you a different perspective. I ended up taking a 5h minibus, cramped in with 10 locals and about 20 boxes of young chickens (2000 chickens, not chicks unfortunately!! :), the noise was UNBEARABLE, i am still coughing up feathers, but its a trip i wont forget.

Roger and the 2000 chicks

p.s. 1
note that the correct translation for roundabout in swahili (as found in the official english-swahili dictionary from daressalam university), is keepylefty keepylefty

p.s. 2
it is said to be a fact that the great massai tribe that live in his area, claim to be the rightful owners of all cows around the world...they just haven't had the time to collect them yet....

p.s.3
katia (a friend i met traveling in bolivia, chile and new zealand, gave me a book called "the essential survival kit for traveling", and I actually already used it: there is a section called "how to pass a bribe", which I had to do yesterday since I was out of money and could not pay the entry fee to a nice park, the guard, after a textbook bribing conversation let me in for free (after i paid him a third of the entry fee i was supposed to pay... good stuff to know!