Bones, diamonds and jacaranda

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Day 18, Tuesday 9 October
We both woke up fine! No noticeable aftermath to Paul's attack yesterday.

Today was about old bones, very, very old bones. There is a site to the North West of Johannesburg titled the Cradle of Humankind, with two visitable places - a visitor centre at Maropeng and the Sterkfontein Caves.

The Sterkfontein Caves is one of the world's richest sites for hominid remains especially "Mrs Ples" and "Little Foot". Mrs Ples is dated to around 2 million years and 'her' remains were discovered in 1947, the skull encased in breccia, a sort of naturally concreted aggregate. The guide said 'her' but admits that there is uncertainty about this. The best sexing info for fossil humans remains the pelvic bones. The 'her' for this skull is based on the slightly less pronounced eye brow bones and smallish jaw. But there is also thinking that it could be a youth rather than a female.

This skull helped highlight the thought that 'humans' originated in Africa, which was somewhat disregarded at the time. The name comes from Plesianthropus transvaalensis, "near human from the Transvaal", but was shortened by a journalist who couldn't cope with big words! Must have been from The Sun!

She was later re-identified as being the same species as Australopithecus africanus. She was clearly on the road to humanity. The brain stem entry point shows she walked upright but her brain was only similar in size to a modern chimpanzee.

The museum near the cave entrance was very well presented and did a good job of explaining all of this.

The cave itself would not rank high on list of caves to visit, with few of the standard visitor cave features eg 'interesting' formations, but a light was shone towards where "Little Foot" was found. Little Foot is even older than Mrs Ples. One age measurement - paeleo-magnetrometry - gives an age of 3.2 million years, whilst another based on proportions of particular elements and isotopes (but not carbon 14 dating, far too old for that) gives an age of 4.1 million years. As we said earlier, very, very old indeed.

The other unique aspect of Little Foot is that they are essentially excavating a full skeleton. Yes, full. The person fell into this position through a hole, breaking bones and consequently over time the skeleton became encased in breccia. They have been excavating this one skeleton for 15 years, bone by bone, and are probably only about a half dug out.

The Maropeng visitor centre was a bit of two halves. The first, special exhibition was about finds of Homo naledi. Whilst much more recent, around 300,000 years, this is an enormous find of over 1500 bones from many individuals. Best current thinking is that they appear to have been put or thrown into this one place. A very good, modern display.

After that however it all went a bit third rate theme park. Transfer from room 1 to room 2 was by a water ride, supposedly through earth, air, fire and water, though why one room was encased in ice was beyond us. The exhibits were then very child orientated and juvenile.

Day 19
Driving out today we noticed how many roads in and around Melville had British origins : Cardiff, Denbigh, Cardigan, Chester, Torquay, Bolton, Wicklow, Tyrone and Derry. And some huge, affluent houses too.

One business to be in here is security. Every premise has a high wall or fence around it, usually with some 'topping' of either razor wire or electric fence, and a locked gate, often remote controlled. And they all have 'Protected by Security Company' signs too. There are many private security firms and armed response units patrolling. In fact it was a private, armed unit that apprehended and handcuffed Paul's assailant before the police arrived.

It's no way to live though. And the sight of so many hawkers, peddlars and beggars at every major intersection is so depressing. Some are practically decamped permanently between the lanes of traffic. Anything to make a little money. Some carry bin bags inviting motorists to deposit their rubbish, for a tip of course.

And practically all the menial workers we have seen - road side, waitress, petrol stations, miners, train staff, ..... have been black whilst the managers or supervisors have been white. It will take a long time for entrenched positions to change.

We headed out firstly to the Cullinan Diamond Mine which gives both surface and underground tours. Tempting as the latter was it really would have taken too much out of the day so we took the 1.5 hour surface tour.

We were given only 2 instructions. 1-No smoking 2-No picking anything up! But were those small glittery specks amongst the dust, dirt and mud on the ground very small diamonds? Or just broken glass?

The Cullinan Mine may not be the biggest - Kimberly has a really vast open mine hole - but it has produced probably the most famous diamonds ever found. The Cullinan Diamond, when found, was 3,106 carats and was given to Edward VII by the Transvaal government. That's one hell of a gift. The stone was cut into many gem stones, the two largest being in the Crown Jewels, in the Sceptre, followed by King Edward's crown. Anyone who watched the TV programme of the Queen being interviewed earlier this year may recall that she was wearing a somewhat impressive diamond brooch. Colloquially this is known as being made from 'lesser bits' of the Cullinan. In reality they are the 3rd and 4th largest gem stones taken from the original.

Other famous diamonds from the mine include the Taylor-Burton stone, 69 carats cut and polished. They are also the best source for really rare blue diamonds. Over 750 stones greater than 100 carats have come from the mine, and over 25% of the world's 400+ carats.

We saw some massive hunks of machinery including the pit head and winding gear. They mine 11,000 tonnes of kimberlite ore daily to get 4500 carats of diamond 80/20 split between industrial and gem stone.

Big emphasis on health care, big push on HIV/AIDS. Every worker is breathalysed at the beginning of shift. And the surrounding town of Cullinan looked like a nice place with good housing - but 'good' workers' housing compared to many townships. All things are relative here.

Into Pretoria, firstly to the Union Buildings, where Mandela was inaugurated on 10 May 1994 as South Africa's first democratically elected President after 3 1/2 centuries of colonialism and apartheid.

They command an imposing position, being on high land overlooking the city in the valley below, rather than in city centre. But you can't visit, nor can you really get a total ground to roof view of them because they are further up the hill and set back behind walls and surroundings.

Just below stands a bronze statue of Nelson Mandela , 9 m high, unveiled only 10 days after his death.

Something else that really stands out looking at the city from below the Union Buildings is the vast number of flashes of jewel-like purple from the Jacaranda trees which are in full bloom at the moment. One of the reasons we timed the trip to now was that Pip had such fond memories of the Jacaranda blossom from when she visited on one of her"educational trips". The do call Pretoria "Jacaranda City"

Finally we went to the Voortekker Monument, a teutonic looking, monolithic brute of a building, celebrating the Great Trek of 1838 to1854 where settlers, mostly of Dutch and other European origins, migrated north and east to get away from the British rule and their laws eg no slavery. The trek divided SA into 2 British colonies and 2 later Boer republics that joined in 1910. The "great" in Great Trek is about the importance of the event not the numbers involved.

The Afrikaans-speaking pioneers later became known as Afrikaaners. Republicanism promoted a feeling of unity amongst the whites which later transcended into nationalism, apartheid and all its ills. It also fanned the Republican ideal leading to withdrawal from the Commonwealth in 1961. And it hardened even further in the 60s and beyond with the Sharpeville Massacre heralding the beginning of a far more brutal and intensive phase of state repression.

Afrikaaners = Right Wing, and you could imagine the monument looking perfectly at home in a Nazi Germany. It is very much of the "it's big because we can" school of architecture. It's main hall has an enormous carved marble frieze around it depicting the settlers as the right and proper, God is r/might crusaders conquering the heathens - mostly Zulus. But the museum below is much more about the everyday travels, trials and tribulations, and personal possessions and lifestyle of the trekkers.

That evening we ate at the restaurant across the road from our b&b which it turned out is amongst the top 10 in all Johannesburg. Food was excellent. Paul was once again on one of his let's further deplete the indigenous population meal choices and had snoek, a mackerel-like fish, followed by slow cooked shank of springbok, which we may possibly have seen gambolling across the African veldt on one of our safaries. Ah bless!

Day 20
One of the advantages of traveling the way we do is that not all of it has to be full-on, getting from A to B as quickly as possible. For this reason we decided to travel across from Johannesburg to Cape Town, 1600 km, by train rather than fly. 26 hours, or more likely more.

There are 3 types of train. The basic tourist class costs around £40. Don't think you can get 1600 km for £40 in the UK. At the other extreme is The Blue Train, which gives Orient Express levels of luxury, but at a cost approaching £1k pp.

But, there is a much more affordable Premiere Classe train, which works out about the same as airfare, plus hotel room plus 26 hours of meals. And this is what we are now on.

We have a private 4 bed sleeper to the two of us; coffee and drinks welcome, 3 course lunch, afternoon tea/cake, 5 course dinner, full breakfast, morning tea. And if it's late possibly lunch again. It has a reputation though of not being accurate in its timings. Before we set off the manager gave us all an arrival time in Cape Town of 1.30pm, 50 minutes later than the published schedule. Then shortly after told us there was an engine problem, and so it was 45 minutes late departing on this revised schedule. Fortunately we have nothing planned for tomorrow and the next Explore trip starts on Saturday.

A mixed bunch of tourists and S Africans. The most eye-catching is a tall, dapper, white haired gentleman in a white with very fine black-pinstripe crimpoline suit, purple woven or crocheted tie, purple braces, patent shoes and a fine caterpillar moustache. He must be 80 and looks like a cross between Vincent Price, Bruce Forsyth and Sebastian Flyte but he most looked like the Monty Python cartoon figure Conrad Pooh "The Man With the Dancing Teeth", but with white hair (and white face).

The trip is very stop start but we have seen some wildlife, several mines (some looking like Cullinan ) and very remote ramshackle/almost falling down homesteads that appeared to be lived in by whites.

Day 21
Sleeping was reasonably comfortable if a bit asleep/awake related to the stop/start of the train. Watching dawn come up over a mostly deserted veldt was fun, with more animal spotting.

As we said earlier, the punctuality of this service is a world away from the impeccable timekeeping of Japan's railway system. At breakfast, at 07.45 am, the attendant said it would be another 6 to 8 hours "depending on the driver". Depending on the driver!? Have you ever heard of a railway timetable 'depending on the driver'? 6 hours would be a result as that would be barely half an hour late compared to the original 'target' of 1.30 pm. Shortly afterwards the train manager told another passenger that it would be 7 to 9 hours.

Around 2.40 pm we stopped at Worcester, signposted as being 108 miles to Cape Town. Wehey we thought, a couple of hours and we will be there. Around 10 minutes after we left Worcester the train manager said it would be about another 3 hours! Oh well. But later, as we checked progress on Google Maps, we found that instead of heading West from Worcester direct to CT the intervening mountain range is taking us a good 50 miles or more north then back south again.

During this 2nd day of the journey, as we have progressed west towards the Cape the landscape had gradually changed from, well-barren to fertile, especially hectare after hectare of vineyards, or winelands as they are called here, and fruit orchards.

Around 4.30pm the train manager informed us that due to signals failures around and beyond CT the train would be parked up for an indeterminate length of time. Anyway, no more point by point updates - we finally got in to Cape Town at 7.45 pm, over 7 hours later than the published time.

Had hoped to get a photo of Table Mountain for this blog but that will have to wait for a future blog.

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