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Louise and Ross in Knysna
We were glad Louise came to visit.It feels like ages since I last wrote an entry, although it's only a couple of weeks. I seem to have lost all concept of time (although that could involve the fact my watch stopped the other day).
Anyway. Louise accompanied us on our South African extravaganza. She went home on Thursday night, accompanied by a giraffe that's almost as tall as her and a hippo which took up all the room in her backpack. I should point out these are wooden; she's not smuggling animal dwarves out the country or anything.
We started off in Cape Town, which is a really lovely city. We stuck to the tourist areas and felt completely safe. We went to the Cape of Good Hope which did feel a bit like the end of the world (who cares about Antarctica anyway?) and stopped by Boulders beach where the African penguins live, which felt slightly strange. It was a bit like seeing elephants in the Highlands - just felt wrong, somehow. It was a really nice daytrip, made all the more entertaining by Ross and the other tourists donning cycle helmets and cycling 10 kilometres up a hilly road. Obviously I couldn't cycle
due to The Hand and Louise accompanied me in the tour guide's van, even though she was obviously desperate to leap on a bike.
We did a wine tour as well which was stupidly cheap and oddly involved drinking as much wine as possible. By the end of the day we were practically inviting the other folk on the tour to come on the rest of our trip with us. The tour leader, Bruce, was a strange man. He apparently grew up in the bush, trained as a clown and then started doing wine tours. As you do. He laughed at himself a lot - maybe you have to if you spend all your time with drunk foreigners.
We also went to Robben Island, the ex prison where political prisoners (including Nelson Mandela) were held during Apartheid. The tour of the prison itself was given by an ex political prisoner, who finds it amusing that the authorities are sprucing the place up. He was fascinating - he now lives on Robben Island and his next door neighbour is a white guard who worked in the prison when he was an inmate. He has no bitterness and explained that
Wine tour
Ross made the most of it. the best way for him to come to terms with what happened to him is to face his demons and live and work on the island. He said that Nelson Mandela was highly respected by the prisoners and guards alike during his time in the prison and that he was essentially a peacemaker. The only negative thing I have heard about Mandela during my time here is that, according to one newspaper, he is "begging Amy Winehouse to sing for him at his 90th birthday party".
The one thing we didn't manage to do in Cape Town is the one thing everyone's going to ask if we did so I'm telling you all now - no, we did not get to the top of Table Mountain. We got halfway up if that's any good though. The cable cars were constantly broken due to "technical problems". Even if we had wanted to climb up (we didn't), it was either far too hot or so cloudly you might as well have taken photos from the pavement below - visibility was practically nil.
So we left Cape Town last week and went on the "Baz Bus", a hop on hop off
Table Mountain
With the so-called "tablecloth" on top. I found that funnier that it probably should be. backpacker bus which takes you from hostel to hostel. It was a good service, if you don't count the fact that on our first day, a girl threw up over our bags with no warning.
We started off in a place called Knysna, a little harbour town. To me it summed up what I think is wrong with South Africa. The town centre is inhabited almost exclusively by whites and is pretty wealthy. The blacks live in the townships on the outskirts in appalling poverty and work for the whites in town. I suppose it's a difficult situation to sort but the contrast is very stark. Sorry, that's all a bit deep for this blog. On to elephants.
In Knysna we went to an elephant park where we could feed and touch the elephants. It's all laid on for tourists, but we enjoyed it all the same. Louise's body language at the beginning was funny to watch, in that she was standing as far back as possible and playing a kind of weird basketball by trying to chuck bits of fruit into the trunks (you're meant to hold the fruit out in your hand, palm up and the
Inside Jurassic Park
This was immediately before we had to get out the jeep and push it. The animals couldn't have cared less. elephants will kind of hoover it up). Anyway, she overcame her concerns and we all really enjoyed the experience.
So we stayed at a hostel which consisted of a large house, run by a woman who was out of town for a few days. In her place was a strange man who seemingly lives in a dorm in the hostel permanently. He's probably in his 40s and likes listing things. For example, "I made a stew last week. In it I put ". He materialised out of nowhere every time we set foot outside our room and ended up putting on a barbeque ("braai") for us one night. He insisted he accompany us to the supermarket to show us what sausages to buy and on the way, pretended to hit his head really hard off a lamp-post (I think he kicked it with his foot). As he clutched his head & writhed with pain we were thinking about getting an ambulance, then he stood up and announced it was a joke. Ross thought he was genuine and quite sweet, Louise was a nervous wreck because he kept appearing and was generally odd and I just
After feeding the elephants
At least the elephants look natural in the picture. wanted to laugh every time I was in his company and had to keep leaving the room.
At around this time news of the xenophobic riots had reached us and we were being cautious about where we should go next. Our list loving friend chatted to Ross as they cooked the meat on the barbeque (assuming they could manage to see one another over the testosterone flying around) and told him the riots had reached Knysna. Late in the evening, I had just finished saying "it's all fine - this is a sleepy wee town and the guy's an idiot" when wailing police sirens split the night. Turns out there had been some trouble in the townships outside, so we were glad to leave the next morning.
We headed to Port Elizabeth to a hostel which was not in the most pleasant area. We were miles away from anywhere touristy and the hostel was full of male refugees, who were preumably escaping the violence. List guy in Knysna had been asked to take some refugees in and had refused, whereas the place in Port Elizabeth obviously decided to agree. My feelings were a bit mixed - on the
Lion
See, I did get good photos. The demon eyes are a bit scary though. one hand I was glad these guys had somewhere decent(ish) to stay, on the other we felt a bit worried that people were effectively hiding out a couple of rooms away from us. The hostel was easily the most run down so far and we all felt a bit uneasy. We had 2 nights and one full day there, so during the day we did a full day safari tour.
The safari was impressive. In the morning we saw lots of animals interacting with one another at a waterhole - baby elephants teasing warthogs, huge buffalo trying to decide whether to dare to stand next to a bull elephant to drink, that sort of thing. Then in the afternoon we went to a private game reserve which felt like Jurassic Park. There was something a bit Disney-esque about it, as the animals couldn't care less about the humans as they'd obviously been raised in a relatively false environment, but I say forget the morality of it all - we saw lions really close up so were happy. Call me shallow but I have good photos.
***parental advisory - my mum should look away now as this paragraph is
Lion & Lioness
The lioness had been stalking a warthog so was thirsty. The male lion had been lying watching her so was obviously thirsty too. about snakes***
We also met possibly the most insane man I have ever come across, which is saying something, given some of the clients I had. I'm just going to call him "Snake Man" as it's early in the morning and I can't be bothered to think up anything else. Anyway, he keeps snakes in a sort of hut thing in one of the parks. His first "trick" was to get a snake, put it in his mouth and close it. The snake sort of slithered out through his lips as we all gaped in horror. Louise was already outside the hut by this point. Then he proceeded to chuck snakes round our shoulders with no warning. Inevitably I was given the biggest snake called Tiny (see what he's done there - it's a joke). It was really heavy. He said it was ok as "Britney Spears had one like this round her shoulders in a video". Yes Snake Man, you can hold Britney up as a symbol of normality, but I won't. He also grabbed my hand and teased a snake until it bit me. Then he laughed (insanely, obviously) and said it wasn't venomous. It didn't hurt
although I did have little fang marks. He was like a dangerous version of Steve Irwin.
I've just realised this blog is ridiculously long so if you're still reading - thanks, although you're probably either bored or drunk. I'll try to cut the end short... After Port Elizabeth we headed to Port St Johns which is an idyllic place with lots of old hippies who haven't cut their hair since the 70s, Durban where we nearly got mugged, Swaziland which was lovely but we didn't get to see much of it and Johannesburg where we are now. It's not safe to do anything in Johannesburg so we haven't seen any of it. We fly to Hong Kong in a few hours - a 14 hour flight which Ross appears to be looking forward to more than seems normal, in my opinion.
Quote of the fortnight: Louise on entering her first safari park: "my God, I thought it would be like Blair Drummond".
Food of the fortnight: kudu, a type of antelope.
Bye.
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Louise
non-member comment
Bungee???
So KT, how was the bungee jump???