Birch
Gary Bearchell Joined: July 19th 2006
Logged in: December 17th 2008
Logged in: December 17th 2008
Travel Blog Posts
Judy and Carvel's House
Got to town and immediately took a wrong turn bringing us to the completely wrong end of town during rush hour with no decent map. Sweet. ...on the plus side, feeling a million times more confident about Johannesburg compared to a month and a half ago when we were there! (or at least driving on the other side of the road) Stopped at the mall for one last shop, headed north to halfway between Jo'burg and Pretoria to stay on a farm with one of Jen's distant cousins. Johannesburg and Pretoria have been steadily growing towards each other over the past number of decades, inevitably meeting each other in the middle sometime in the near future (if it hasn't already happened!). Together they nearly fill the state of "Gauteng"... someone told me Gauteng is responsible for ... read more
View from the camp
An EXTENSIVE day's drive from Port Saint John to the northern part of the Drakensburg Mountains (probably 9 hours with a number of wrong turns in there), pulled into our guesthouse near the foot of Cathkin Peak near sunset. The Drakensburg Mtns (or at least the area where we stayed) have recently been deemed a World Heritage Site (c. 2001?), they form a good portion of the border with Lesotho (pronounced Le-soo-too), and they're pretty spectacular to look at. You can do as much or as little of them as you'd like: we did a couple short day hikes from near where we stayed, Jonathan, our friend from Capetown had recently done a 10-day hike in the Drakensburg! I keep being amazed at how accessible they've made these attractions all around SA (I have visions of ... read more
Chintsa
An hour from Jeffreys Bay back to Pt. Elizabeth, then a good 3 hours east to East London (plus another half hour to Chintsa). Not far after PE is the start of the "Wild Coast" which is legendary for its miles and miles of untouched/unspoiled beaches, beautiful rolling hills dotted with tiny villages everywhere... one last taste of being back in the "real" Africa. Past through Grahamstown which was a very pretty little colonial-style town filled with really neat old buildings... could have stayed a night! Stayed at "Bucaneers" which is said to be THE best backpackers in SA (in fact we likely wouldn't have gone to Chintsa had we not heard this)... it was a decent enough place but after staying here (as well as the next place), it's rather obvious to us that we're ... read more
Hermanus
After a night up in Franschoek (more winery, lovely dinner at one of SA's finest), headed up and over the mountain pass that dominates the town (starting to feel a little "wined out" by morning), around an hours drive to the pretty little coastal village of Hermanus. Hermanus is said to be the best place in the world to watch whales from the shore, especially during winter (ie. now) as the whales head to the Antarctic to feed during summer, then back up to SA during winter to calve (they're Southern Right Whales which are big, humpy things with balleen for teeth and barnacles stuck all over them). Parked the car, walked over to the shore, and yup... sure enough there was a whale right there (or at least some sign of a thing with swirley ... read more
Beautiful Painting
It truely can't be overstated how beautiful Capetown is. Easily the most liveable city we've been to on the trip, in my opinion the 2nd nicest city in the world (after Vancouver of course...or maybe it's the first...). Right on the ocean, surrounded by beaches, built right around Table Mountain and others (high rises literally encroaching on the lower slopes of it), safe to walk around, lush with a very comfortable climate. Would love to go back one day! Checked into Fawlty Towers guest house and were almost immediately invited to share some brandy and cokes with Kenny (friend of the owner). Seemed like a nice guy - he and the owner (Nick) had been working on building an airplane for the past 3 years. Didn't take long before it became apparent why the project was ... read more
Solitaire
After a night in Walvis Bay (which included a second walk up Dune 7, and the demise of my second camera of the trip) back to Solitaire, this time indulging in a piece of Africa's best apple strudle (it could very well be true!). Yet another sundowner in the car enroute to our destination. Decided to splurge for yet another night on one of the "luxury tents" at the Sossusvlei Desert Camp ($60/person), since everything in the area is obscenely expensive, but we wanted to avoid driving for hours in the morning to get to Sossusvlei. Figured we'd do the cliche thing of getting up early to watch the sun rise over the dunes; up at 5am, breakfast, pack the car up, get to the gate, aaaaand... gate doesn't open until sunrise (plus it's a good ... read more
Sandboarding
Swakopmund is a very tourist-friendly town with an array of possible activities from sandboarding to skydiving, as well as plenty of shopping (assuming you don't show up on a Saturday afternoon like we knowingly did... like many other spots in Southern Africa, most things close for the weekend starting saturday around noon). Managed to find enough things open in the afternoon to keep us busy, headed to the Tug for dinner which is a really great restaurant on the beach which has been built from an old tugboat. Between Henties Bay and Swakopmund, we managed to have some of the best seafood of the trip! The next day was a day I had been anticipating a long, long time: showed up at the Desert Explorers office for the 9am outing; loaded onto the minivans with about ... read more
Shirley and Ray at the Guesthouse
Unfortunately it's been a while since I've done a new blog... travelblog's server has been down for a good couple weeks now :o( (and as well it looks like I've permanently lost a couple that I'll probably be too lazy to redo) Anyway, Did the 100kms south from Naua Naua Guesthouse (near Etosha) to Outjo and stopped for breakfast, another 100 paved kms west to Khorixas. Thought maybe we'd spend some time touring around the attractions in the area that afternoon, but then mistakenly made the decision to come back up from Uis the next day to see them; trudged onwards south another 150kms on dirt road to Uis. The whole way down kept passing by local Himba women all dressed up in their traditional clothing (which in fact looks quite strange as it's derived form ... read more
Mating Lions
Plan was to get to the park from Windhoek, drive the 150kms through the park from the southern gate to the eastern gate, stay at the Mokuti Lodge just outside the gate and do game drives into the park from there. Got to the southern gate around 2:30pm which gave us a good 3 hours to get through the park (you'd think that'd be plenty of time). Etosha has been around amazingly since 1907 (ie. 100 years old this year); it's around 200kms wide by something less tall (maybe 70-80kms??) and a good portion of it (maybe 25%) is nothing but a massive, flat (called the "pan") made out of limestone. As you approach the pan it looks like you're driving up to the ocean... apparently a lot of the animals like to sleep in the ... read more
Winebar
Left Walvis Bay shortly after lunch, stopped in Swakopmund briefly knowing we'd be back to the coastal area after our tour through the north, did the 400kms to Windhoek (pronounced "Vindhook"), Namibia's capital city, arriving shortly after dark. Windhoek is likely the nicest, cleanest, safest capital city we've been to, possibly on the trip. Surrounded by mountainous, scrubby desert, only around 250,000 people, plenty of good shopping and restaurants... all very much like home, really. Jen and I tend to be pretty bad at planning ahead and therefore booking ahead (we haven't really needed to on the trip, and is almost impossible to do on a trip like this anyway), and so ended up having to stay in 3 different rooms at 2 different places because we kept getting booted out! First night found some sushi, ... read more
