Blogs from South Africa, Africa - page 647

well this is gonna be an all rounded blog cos i haven't had an opportunity to write specifically about everything i have been doing. there has been lots going on so i thought i would just do a general blog and put some photos up of various places i've been and what i've been doing. i haven't updated since april which i know is really bad - sorry bout that! i am still having an amazing time and at the moment am travelling the garden route with Kelly and Ruth who we met up with a few weeks ago in Durban. only 1 month left before i come home..so am enjoying myself a lot but also very excited about seeing all your faces again! yay! and tell you all the stories with facial expressions and everything!!!! ... read more

Today was a really fun and active day in contrast to the lazy day I spent yesterday tasting wine. Woke up at 6am to have and early breakfast at the backpacker's that we were staying at. Left our little town of Swellendam by 7:30 and headed towards towards the coastal town of Knysna (pronounced nize-na . Heading out of Swellendam, the fog was pretty thick creating a really beautiful effect as we drove through flat grassy green expanses of land with mountains in the background. Pillows of fog sank really low so it looked it the mountains were rising out of the clouds. We made Jen (scenic papparazzi) in charge of identifying photo ops and making Erika pull over so we could take pictures. The fog lifted later in the day and you could see heards ... read more

Soweto. The name conjures up a myriad of images and thoughts: the long dusty road along which the schoolchildren marched in 1976 to protest against the use of Afrikaans as the medium for their education; the "black hole" of Johannesburg (forgive the expression) to which the Blacks were forcibly removed from as early as 1904 and where Whites feared (and perhaps some still fear) to venture; endless "matchbox" houses and squatter camps; the birthplace of the New South Africa; the home of Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu, shebeens and high crime rates... I could go on and each of us will have their own images. I had wondered about the ethics (if that’s not too strong a word) of going on a tour of Soweto. It seemed voyeuristic, gazing into the lives of ordinary people much ... read more

We were quite scared of Jo'burg, so landed, collected our hire car and pretty much bypassed the city, stopping only for a tour of Soweto. This was very good, if somewhat intrusive, but we got to see the township - from its millionaires row with Winnie Mandela's 24 room house with pool to the poorer areas where they had only recently had water provided. From Jo'burg we drove across to Kruger National Park, enjoying the scenary as we went. Really good views across the landscape - better in the morning as it was burning season so in the afternoons the valleys tended to fill up with haze.The animals in Kruger gave a fabulous performance, which we watched from our car. A herd of elephants crossed the road just infront of us soon after we entered the ... read more

Hello All! I know I'm jumping ahead and I don't have time to really go into detail, but you must know one thing and you must know it now. Today we went into the townships (shantytowns/hoovervilles/etc.) around Capetown. Yes, it was part of an official tour, but this tour is not like the "I rode a bus past Dustin Hoffman's house!" kind of tour. This was more like seven of us following a local into the homes and lives of people who had to build their own shacks, illegally, on government land all because of the racism of the establishment. Anyway, we can go into that later. What's important is that Stacey, Devan, Daniel and myself sat down inside a smoke-filled shack made of corugated steel, cardboard and scrapwood. We huddled around a fire in a ... read more