Katie and Tommy: Around the World

While we were a little sad to leave the beautiful and comfortable hostel in Port Elizabeth, we anxiously and excitedly left for Durban. Durban was dramatically more humid than Port Elizabeth, with good reason– it’s significantly farther north and receives more of the warm Indian Ocean currents. By sharing a taxi with an elderly couple, we were able to save a few rand. It was an interesting experience riding in the taxi, observing the street signs. Understandably, the black majority has over the past decade been attempting to “reclaim” as many sectors of the country as possible. Therefore, street signs are being changed from names such as George or Victoria to more local names (often, a new sign sits on the old one, with a red line crossing it out). In the case of our hostel, Point Road was now Mahtma Ghandi Road, reflecting Durban’s significant Indian population. The major Black ethnic group here is the Zulu people. Afrikaans is fairly uncommon in comparison to the Western Cape though English is still fairly well spoken.

The hostel is worth mentioning because Katie and I loved the style in which it was built. It was a former warehouse/industrial building and that theme was carried through into the new hostel as well, with lots of unfinished metal and concrete floors, accented by bright colors and African motifs.

Seeing as it was Sunday, we tried to find a Catholic church to attend mass. We ran into problems however when we discovered that despite having a population of nearly 4 million people, only three catholic churches existed in the city. Though one was actually close to our hostel, it was completely sealed off by a large barb wired fence. Calling revealed that they had only one Sunday mass, 8:00 AM, and no other masses would be held until Tuesday. The only other church that we could locate was in a terrible neighborhood, so we felt it most prudent to wait till Tuesday’s daily mass.

We went to a shopping area called the Workshop, which had many restaurants and a large flea market. Durban’s Indian population has invented a fabulous dish called “bunny chow,” which we couldn’t wait to try. It consists of serving a curry dish inside of a hollowed out piece of bread. Delicious.

In the evening when attempting to charge the PDA, I realized that we had blown the step down transformer in Knysna. I tried asking the hostel staff where I could buy a new one, but frankly, had I shown them a Martian space gun, they probably would have been even less surprised.

Therefore, Tuesday morning was spent searching for one. We went to every hardware or electric store we could find. Not only was the concept of such a device wholly foreign to them, they could not even suggest where I could find a new one. I shouldn’t have been too surprised though– to call many of these stores “electronic shops” would be a stretch anyway. They mostly sold TVs, radios, cell phone accessories and were staffed by a non-technically educated staff. Considering that really only Americans would have a use for such a device, we thought why not ask the only other Americans we knew in the city—the staff of the US consulate. We were saddened to discover that they were in fact closed because of what the African guards referred to as an “American holiday,” and we realized it was in fact Martin Luther King Day. Later in the day, however, I passed by an Indian who was selling lots of inexpensive plug converters on the street. Though he did not have a transformer, he knew where I could probably get one—South Africa’s answer to Radio Shack. As soon as we walked into the store, A1Radio, and saw dozens of digital multimeters on display, I knew we had found our mecca. The staff immediately knew what we were looking for and, for only $7, we were back in business.

But what I haven’t mentioned is how we spent the middle of the day, between the US Consulate and A1Radio—laying on the beach reading books. Though we reapplied sunscreen regularly, we still got sunburned quite badly.

We had dinner at an Indian restaurant that Wikitravel recommended, and spent the 40 minutes prior to their opening at a beautifully quirky cafe next door called Bean Bag Bohemia.

Sleeping that night proved to be quite painful and restless as my back rubbed against the sheets, so the following morning, I ended up staying in bed while Katie went out birding to the botanical gardens.

Our major activity of the day was visiting the Victoria St. Market. It is in the middle of the Indian district and is essentially a huge flea market. The first floor of this market was filled with mostly tourist oriented items, but there were many interesting Indian shops selling spices, everything from curry and masala to “mother-in-law exterminator” and “KFC spice.” The other floors and areas around the market proved far more interesting, most notably the fish and meat market. There was a bit of a rotten meat smell lingering in the air and it seemed like there were more entrails or whole goat heads for sale than actual slabs of meat. Outside of the building, stalls were selling all kinds of bark, herbs, and animal pieces (including horns, hooves, and gutted birds), presumably for ritualistic purposes. We saw many ads for ritual healers in the area too. We were getting more stares than usual so we thought it best to leave and start heading more towards the beaten path.

A little tired of curry, we ended up settling on chicken/cheese schwarmas for our early dinners and caught a public bus back to our hostel and went to mass. In the church, there were paintings of the Divine Mercy and Our Lady of Czestochowa on the walls. Adjacent to them was a marble slab with an inscription in Polish. It was erected a few years in ago in celebration of 50 years of involvement between Polish priests and the Zulu people. From my conversation with someone after mass, Polish missionary priests have been in South Africa a very long time.

We flew to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania early this morning and arrived twelve hours later at our hostel.

Photos from Durban

We woke up in Knysna on Friday morning with two more days to drive the Garden Route. We ended up spending nearly the entire day in Tsitsikamma National Park. It’s a beautiful  preserve with a dramatic coastline of boulders and crashing waves. We took a trail along the coast called the Otter Trail, which took us through some lovely forest as well. It became tough going as the trail led down to the coast, where we had to scramble over boulders and rocks. We were sore and exhausted by the time we reached the trail’s end, a lovely waterfall where the Storms River meets the Indian Ocean. While it was a more difficult hike than we expected, it was quite worth it for the lovely views and the adventure.

We stumbled into our car, hungry and exhausted, and drove next to Jeffrey’s Bay, a famous surfing town. We were hoping to find some dinner, and stopped at a pizza place to see the menu. We were about to walk out and perhaps find somewhere else, when the owner informed us that in twenty minutes there would be a scheduled power outage for two and a half hours, and that we should order quickly if we wanted food. We decided it would be prudent to eat there, if the entire city was about to lose power. This explained why there had been power outages once a day since our arrival in South Africa–there are scheduled blackouts due to a power crisis in the country.

We had a small adventure trying to find the road to Addo in the fading evening light, and ended up rolling into the much larger city of Port Elizabeth after dark, where we are staying at the extremely charming Hippo Hostel. The owners were away when we arrived, and suggested we go the Boardwalk Casino to kill time. Whatever we were expecting from this casino, we were quite suprised when we arrived. It was a very stylish commercial area, a boardwalk with restaurants, bars, arcades, stores, and rides. The casino was very upscale. We thought we might spend a few Rand playing slots, but discovered that you had to register for a gaming card in order to gamble.

This morning, we got back in our trusty rental and headed to Addo Elephant National Park, about 50 km north of Port Elizabeth. Coming from this direction it was easy to find. A lot of people do guided safaris, but seeing as we had a car and have already booked a guided trip in the Serengeti, we decided we’d try our luck on our own. We drove into the park, fingers crossed that we might see some wildlife.

We came to a watering hole after sighting a couple of Kudu, a kind of antelope, and Tommy stopped the car. I began to peer through my binoculars at some shapes in the distance.

“Are those elephants?” Tommy asked.

“No,” I said, “They’re ostriches.”

“Not those,” he said, pointing as I lowered my binoculars. “Those.”

I looked, and my mouth fell open. Coming straight towards us in the distance was a herd of elephants, more than I could conveniently count. They were stirring up an immense cloud of red dust. I fumbled for the camera and began frantically snapping pictures. They came closer and closer, and finally converged on the small puddle of a watering hole we were parked in front of. We couldn’t believe how close they came; less than 100 yards from the car. We took so many pictures we had to put a new SD card in our camera. They were magnificent, and so much fun to watch. They began to wallow in the watering hole, rolling around and splashing themselves with their trunks. They stayed there at least a half an hour, and we stayed there as well, transfixed. Finally, they seemed to make a collective decision to move on. We smiled as three or four adults had to use their trunks to help a clumsy youngster out of the water.

I never thought I would say the words, “Oh, keep driving, it’s just another elephant,” but it happened quite frequently today. That first encounter set the pace for an amazing time in the park. We saw zebras, kudu, hartebeest, warthogs, ostriches, countless small birds, flightness dung beetles, and tons of elephants. They came close to the cars without fear or agression. Our favorite encounter was rounding a bend and finding a massive male in the middle of the road. I was afraid it might approach the car, but we backed out of its way, and it merely strolled by, its feet making gentle scraping noises against the dirt road. It was truly spectacular. We were only sorry we didn’t see rhinos or lions, the park’s more elusive residents.

We stayed nearly until the park closed, and then drove back to Port Elizabeth. We decided to save some money and cook a dinner at the hostel, so we set out in search of a supermarket. We found a tiny place with a relatively good selection and began discussing what we could make when one of the workers came up to us. He told us that most of the food in the store had been sitting there for a year or more, and that there was a supermarket with a much better selection right down the street. He gave us excellent directions. Grateful but very confused, we went there and bought ingredients for a delicious vegetable curry. Our evening was spent editing the 400-something photos we snapped in the park today.

Pictures from Addo National Park

Elephant Video

We spent the early part of Wednesday in the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. We read that they’re amongst the world’s best and Katie and I both felt that they very likely were! To get there, we took a “Rikki” taxi, a converted London taxi that works on a shared-ride basis. As you are enroute to your destination, it is totally possible that you could divert and pick someone else up before you arrive. Being in the taxi and then later in the gardens reminded me of an interesting part of South African culture–its 11 official languages! Amongst the white population in the Western Cape province, Afrikaans is the language most children will learn first. Afrikaans is a Dutch variant that evolved from the earliest Dutch settlers in the 17th century (what Cajun is to modern French, Afrikaans is to modern Dutch). The native black African population in the West speaks a language known as Xhosa, but thanks to the consequences of the 17th century arrival of the British, nearly everyone in the country speaks some English as a second language. This is what makes getting around so easy!

After we had spent a sufficient amount of time in the gardens, we called for another Rikki and went over to Cape Town’s waterfront, which was a quite lovely area. On the walk back to our hostel, we also stopped for a late lunch at what best can be described as a “gourmet hamburger restaurant.” I got an ostrich burger with beets, whereas Katie’s had a tuna steak with a mango sauce. I should also mention that we passed by Bentley and Jaguar dealerships. Sometimes the poverty of South Africa can be easily hidden.

I have been very surprised by the number of luxurious cars that I have seen around the city. If you’re white and living in Cape Town, there seems to be a very good chance that you will drive a Mercedes, BMW, or Audi. The book I am currently reading puts South Africa in an interesting context. If you took just the white population of South Africa (about 10%) and looked at all the general indicators of its economic fitness, the country would seem to rank comfortably amongst the Western European nations. If one looks at the whole population of South Africa, however, the country doesn’t seem to fare much differently than any other African nation. Most of the population lives in stark poverty.
 
From the drives we’ve done around and out of Cape Town, the remnants of the apartheid system are still visible. Townships (immensely huge slums) are still where most of the black, “coloured,” and “Indian” population live. Also, two phenomenon which are almost non-existent in Latin America and Europe exist here–strip malls and suburban neighborhoods. I think that these can be partially explained in the context that the historically very wealthy white population always was able of purchasing cars and with there being no real “middle class” the need for public transport never arose, as it did in the cases of Latin America and Europe. The consequences of this artifact we felt right away on Wednesday when we tried to get around the city without a rental car! Almost no public transportation exists!

We flew through an internet café to post a quick entry off our PDA, then went to the city’s bus station to catch our bus to George. It is funny how bus stations, in the US or abroad, never seem to be nice places, both in terms of their physical appearance and clientele. The bus we took was also a bit of a dud. We sat on the second story in front of the windows, and every time we stopped, these small cockroaches would emerge from the air conditioning vents. And because the driver would stop the bus seemingly every hour for no other apparent reason than to smoke, we ended up arriving an hour late (though safely I must say) to George, right around 2:45 in the morning. After a cell phone call to our hostel, we were soon asleep in their very lovely place.

Freedom returned again on Thursday when we got our new rental car, a beautiful Honda Jazz. We spent the day shamelessly lying on the beach, birdwatching, and exploring both the nearby wilderness and the resort towns.
 
Another interesting South African reality– the black population suffers from a very high unemployment rate (~30%) so they have a way of “making jobs” for themselves. One example is unofficial parking attendants. There will be a few males in literally each parking lot that will direct you to the closest free parking spot, help you back out, and supposedly also make sure your car doesn’t get jacked while you’re gone. In return, a small tip is expected.
 
The Garden Route, the name given to the 400 km roadtrip we’re making over the next few days, makes for a neat setting because both mountains and the Indian Ocean beach are within just a few miles of each other. Towards the late afternoon, we found a great hostel in a small town called Knysna and called it a day!

I must admit, the suburbs, strip malls, and coastal condos make us wonder… are we in Africa, or Florida?

Pictures from Cape Town

Pictures from the Garden Route

As we drove along the coastline of Cape Town, gazing down at pristine white beaches gently kissed by sparkling blue and green waters, one thought kept entering into our minds: this is only the first day.

It was hard enough to believe that we were actually leaving on Sunday, when we loaded our packs into the back of the car and drove to the New Orleans airport in the dark of early morning. A quick flight brought us to Dulles Airport in Washington, where we found an excellent way to pass our six-hour layover: the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum near the airport, where all the large planes and space vessels are on display. A quick shuttle took us there and back. On the return trip, we were on it with two flight attendants and two pilots, whose conversation drifted into the subject of getting very drunk. Halfway through they stopped and looked at us, slightly alarmed. “Where are you flying?” they asked, hoping we weren’t on their next flight.

The rest of the layover went by quickly, and soon we were boarding a massive South African Airlines plane via a large shuttle that took us across the tarmac. We looked curiously at the other passengers, wondering what each of their stories was, and what brought them to South Africa. It was a diverse group, but as we’ve found so far, it is a diverse country.

We hadn’t slept much the night before, thinking that with the eight-hour time change, we should try and be as exhausted as possible when we boarded our flight across the Atlantic. It certainly worked. Tommy didn’t even remember takeoff; I remember tiredly lifting my head and then going back to sleep. It was a good flight. Near the end, we gazed down at the ground below us and marveled, “That’s Africa!”

We landed in Johannesburg and had to pick up our bags to go through customs. Because we had arrived in D.C. so early, they were on the bottom of the pile. By the time we had them, our flight to Cape Town was leaving in only 30 minutes. We flew through customs as quickly as we could and then ran to the domestic departures gates, which were in a separate building entirely. Airport employees who saw us running asked where we were going and quickly arranged for help. One of them grabbed our bags, rushed us through security, and got us to our gate. We made it with only nine minutes to takeoff. They ended us holding the plane until all of the connecting passengers made it anyway, but I suppose it was exhilarating trying to make it on time. Tommy and I have already established on numerous past occasions that it’s not really a vacation until you have to frantically run somewhere.

By the time we reached our hostel, it was after 8 pm, so we didn’t see much of Cape Town that night. We went out for some beer and a little food, and toasted the beginning of our trip. It was hard to believe we were really sitting at the tip of Africa at that very moment. It had taken us a lot of hard work and planning to get there.

The next morning, over breakfast, we decided on all of the things we wanted to do in the area. Then we asked the hostel staff what would be the best way to get around. Their answer was to rent a car. It would only be thirty dollars for the day, and it would be at the hostel in a half hour. We looked at each other and shrugged–why not?

In less than the promised 30 minutes, we were cruising down the coastal highway–the left side of the coastal highway–in a much-abused but still functional Fiat Uno. It was a little overcast, but the sun was sparkling over the water, and the beaches looked pristine and white. Towering over it all were immense mountains, including the majestic Table Mountain, all cloaked in fog. It was breathtaking. And seeing it all in our own car gave us a marvelous freedom. All we had to do was remember to keep to the left side of the road!

We drove down the Cape Peninsula to the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve. We had stopped for birding along the way, but we got our first real taste of African wildlife at the Reserve entrance. We were paying the entry fee when Tommy said, “Oh my god, baboons.” Sure enough, there was a whole troop of them wandering around and even sitting on top of a parked car. There was one big male, a female with a baby clutching her chest, and several smaller individuals. Tommy turned to the woman in the toll booth. “Are they friendly?” he asked hopefully. She gave him a flat stare I’m sure she reserves only for foolish American tourists. “No,” she said. “Roll up your windows.”

Once we had taken a sufficiently ridiculous number of photos, we drove on into the park. The landscape was interesting, covered in the unique fynbos vegetation that is only found in the western Cape. We went all the way to the tip of the peninsula, where we hiked up to the lighthouse for a breathtaking view. Driving back out of the Reserve, I made Tommy slam on the breaks for our second big wildlife sighting: an ostrich!

Our next stop after the Nature Reserve was the town of Boulders, famous for its penguin colony. I’d consider any day in which I saw both penguins and an ostrich ornithologically successful, and Boulders did not disappoint. There’s a board walk along a shrubby beach, and there are African Penguins everywhere, right next to the walkway. I have to say… they were pretty darn cute.

We had lunch in the charming town of Kalk Bay and then, realizing how much time we still had, headed out to the wine region of Stellenbosch. We stopped at the Spier vineyard for a great tasting for only 10 Rand (roughly $1.40) and then some coffee and cheesecake in their lovely gardens, where ducks and weavers begged for food. As we made our way back to the city, we recounted what a wonderful day it had been, and marveled at how little we had spent. Not only that, but we hadn’t gotten in a single driving-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-road-related incident. Definitely something to be proud of. Exhausted and still a little jetlagged, we called it an early night once we made it back to Cape Town.

Pictures from Cape Town