Blogs from South Africa, Africa - page 645

Hello all, Well I believe this is it for us. Tomorrow we take the long trek back to Johannesburg (6-7 hours) followed by the long flight to London (11 hours) followed by a brief layover and scramble through customs (2 hours) followed by the long flight to Los Angeles (11 hours) followed by a coma. I can't afford to stay on long so here's what's happened. Our hostel in Hazyview was the shadiest place ever and the staff was entirely drunk and the guy in charge (Darrel) didn't change his clothes once during our three night stay. We actually saw him once at the Kruger park gate just as we were embarking for a night drive but he ignored all of us (this was odd as he had addressed me by name that morning and had ... read more

There are many impoverished townships scattered around South Africa. During the apartheid era, many blacks and coloreds were forcefully removed to some of the lands that were a lot less fertile. I've past many townships during my trip through South Africa. People live in tiny shacks that are constructed out of corrugated metal sheets and each township has a population of tens of thousands of people. Friday night, Amy and I decided to take a tour of the Bongolethu township just outside of Oudtshoorn. The population of Bongolethu is about 15,000 which is considered small and 93% of the men, women, and youth are unemployed. Our guide's name was Thando (pronounced ton-do) and he was very enthusiastic about his township which he has grown up in for the last 25 years. He told us that Bongolethu ... read more

We drove down to the "Wild Coast", which meant we drove through large sections of the Transeki - the Xhosa homelands - hill after hill after hill covered in huge numbers of small black homesteads, and many of these hills were far too steep to farm. No idea how the people manage in these areas. The beach at Port St. Johns was lovely, we only had to share it with one other person as we played in the relatively warm waves. No development at all along this section of the coast. Lots of rumors that this would soon change. We then moved onto Cintsa, a more developed area with a few holiday homes on the beach. But the beach was enormous, really really wide and stretching far further than we could walk. Had to share it ... read more

I've had two full days of work so far not counting orientation day so I'll give a quick run down of some of the tasks that I help out with. We've been split into 3 groups and each group is paired up with a curator. Wednesday: Amy and I were paired up with Francois, the animal trainer. We mainly worked with the cheetahs and the tigers. Our morning consisted of cleaning all of the cheetah's cages, draining and cleaning the tigers' pool area, and cutting up large chunks of meat for the cheetahs and the tigers later on in the day. We also cleared away a lot of brush that was intertwined in a fence right next to the lion's den. There's a male lion, named Charlie, and three females who have names but are collectively ... read more

And no, that's not a clever title. So my friends, it's now time for me to do a quick countdown of animal attacks. Chronologically speaking, the first was the vervet monkey who tried to steal Daniel's candybar. Unfortunately not on tape but Devan does a fairly accurate impression. Number two was the gibbon that swung out of a tree and ran at Devan (Not really an attack per say, but still pretty funny. Also not on tape but word on the street is that the gibbon does a pretty good impression). I'd love to say that the sharks made the list but as we spent the entire day (9-5) on the deck of a boat and only saw one shark, at a distance, from above the water, who then quickly swam away, leaving us nothing to ... read more