Blogs from South Africa, Africa - page 579

Rob and I got up early on Tuesday morning and headed for Stellenbosch. After only a few mistaken turns (eep) onto the wrong side of the road, Rob mastered the skill of left-sided driving. Stellenbosch is a beautiful old university town about 45 minutes north of Capetown. The university dates back to the 1600's and it is one of the only schools that still teaches everything in Afrikaans. We wandered around the town for the morning and early afternoon, then headed to wineries in the afternoon. The area around Stellenbosch is speckled with vineyards and is a wine-tasters paradise. Our first stop was at Spier, a very commercialized place. They also have a cheetah sanctuary (though I wasn't very impressed with the way they keep their animals). The wine was ok, but nothing to write ... read more

The image of Africa that I hold in my mind is one of grand wildernesses filled with strange and exotic animals. This image was formed mostly in my childhood with the help of the pages of National Geographic and the heavily abridged stories of Dr. Livingstone and Mr. Stanley's adventures in Africa that could be found in my school textbooks. Later, the African wildlife documentaries and the grand stories from Hemingway, Conrad and Haggard, as well as the unabridged stories from Dr. Livingstone and Mr. Stanley, filled in the gaps and brought life to my mental image. I knew when I stepped off of the Europa in Cape Town that my image did not match the reality of modern Africa, but I also knew, that with a little searching, the wilds of Africa could still be ... read more

The past several days have been unbelievable. The last time we blogged was I believe right before we were about to go shark diving, with great whites the following morning. So I can see how we left everyone reading in such suspense! We did survive (thanks Jess, for concern!) That is a whole adventure to the trip that I will do a separate blog- it will be very detailed, because Oh My God- we were close. Just a little detail for now, it was exciting, adrenaline pumping, and the first time on the water in Africa, to an area in Walker Bay, called ‘shark alley’. Need I say more? Right now we are at the airport in Johannesburg, to go on safari again! Forgot to mention that all those days we didn’t blog, they will ... read more

After a typical late start we headed east along the coast to a campsite in Hermanus which was packed full with redneck Afrikaners getting their Easter fill of barbecued Boerwors (a traditional South African sausage) whilst scouring the 'outsiders' with distaste...well, that's the way it seemed at the time anyway! Maybe it had something to do with turning up late the night before leaving the motorbike running to cool-down whilst setting up the tent? So we entered the Garden Route area of S.A as we rode east towards Mossel Baai, a legendary surf-spot which turned out to be one of the old "you should have been here yesterday" spots. Like a lot of places in the world, the South Africans have cottoned onto the tourist dollar charging exorbitant prices to do anything. To camp at ... read more

Hello everyone, Sorry for the lack of bloggage in the last few weeks but damn these underdeveloped countries. Don't they know how important the internet is?? Only kidding, we've had a hectic last 2 weeks involving lots of driving. After Zanzibar/Dar es Salaam in Tanzania we headed to Malawi. We camped at 3 different sites around Lake Malawi which makes up a fifth of the size of the whole country! Basically Lake Malawi is like a tropical island location in reverse-the land surrounds the water (obviously) but the beaches aren't dissimilar to Zanzibar's. Did very little but chill out for the majority of Malawi as all the places we stayed were by beaches, visited Lilongwe-the capital but it's small and consists mainly of people selling African artifacts/'curios'. Had one highlight of a night on Kande (pronounced ... read more