These are from Pat's and my trip to South Africa and Mozambique in December 2002. The commentary has been extracted from a series of emails I sent to Erica along the way.
Look at me, internet two days in a row! We're stuck here in Durban temporarily as it is Sunday and EVERYTHING (save for this internet cafe) is shut down! We're hoping to buy our board tomorrow but I think THAT is a holiday (Day of Reconciliation, honoring the referendum that gave everyone equal rights) so we'll see what happens. It’s not a terrible city but I am getting antsy just hanging around and surfing today. We are at the halfway point and so much to still see!
I hope now you are studying furtively for physics. Know that your hardy tutor is sending you physics vibes directly through the middle of the earth from the southern hemisphere...
Speaking of physics and the Southern Hemisphere, I did a scientific experiment last night. I filled a sink with water, added some peri-peri powder (that's a local spice) and observed it draining CLOCKWISE down the sink! Incredible!!! Outstanding!!!!! A scientific wonder!!!!!!!!!
Okay, well, it may not have been THAT exciting but everyone else around there was zoned out watching TV and wondering what the strange guy was doing in the bathroom whooping and cheering! Repeat this experiment in your own laboratory (or lavatory) and you will see the water move COUNTERclockwise (which they call anticlockwise here) into oblivion...
I wonder what happens on the equator. Maybe the water goes straight down... or maybe it explodes! Yikes, I had better leave that one to the professionals.
More physics phun... The eclipse was really excellent. We were camped out on a beach called Xai-Xai (which means "shark-shark") in Mozambique, but the morning of the eclipse it was cloudy by the beach so we piled into the bakkie (that's a small pickup truck. Very small. And this was Sybrandus and his girlfriend and her two friends and Pat and I all jammed in it like a clown car) and tore haphazardly across the countryside. We ended up pulling into a tiny tiny tiny village in the woods with grass huts and everything and everyone ran out to greet us and we passed out those 25 eclipse glasses and watched the eclipse with the whole lot (which was only about 20 people) except for grandpa who stayed in his hut with a bad back. And we're talking full-on real Africans here, with colorful skirts and grannies and muddy little kids and pregnant teens and National Geographic boobs and goats wandering around and wooden farm tools and everything. They had a blast, and so did we, but as the sun was about 80% blocked it got cloudy there too so we frantically piled back into the bakkie, wqaved goodbye, and headed further inland, just two steps ahead of the approaching cloud cover and PHEW made it out into a sunny (I use the term very loosely!) clearing where everything went black and we saw the sun's corona in all its exquisite glory. Holy shit, it was beautiful. [Sorry, my big brain made me use an expletive there since it couldn't come up with a descriptive enough adjective. There go our big brains getting us into trouble again.]
Let me tell you a bit more about Moz before my time runs out on this ghetto computer:
We spent a week exploring some beaches and of course eclipse chasing. The beaches are beautiful, the days are long, the people are friendly, and the water is warm. The beers are cheap and so is the food, I so far have dodged malaria and land mines aren't even an issue. We eat fish every day and everyone takes a siesta midday (because it is freaking hot and because of Portuguese colonialism).
Wow, Mozambique is great and it makes me want to check out so much more of Africa.
We returned to South Africa after filling out nine pieces of flair at the border (Pat and I have Office Space and Big Lebowski totally wired into our heads all this week. "PC load letter? What the f@%k does THAT mean?!?" and we are craving white russians but everyone seems to be out of vodka) and parted company with the friendly, illustrious and thoroughly hospitable Sybrandus and headed to Kruger National Park, which is far bigger than England and you drive around the roads and dirt roads (paved roads are called "tarred roads" here which hilariously sounds like "tard roads". there are many funny names here, many of them from afrikaans. Towns called Humansdorp and Volksrust. Come on, now, HUMANS DORP??? A local hero called Dick King (dicking), a B&B called the Cock House, and the plentiful sausage tree! Kruger's founders are called the Groenleggers (groundlickers) and Sybrandus cooks our meals in a potjie (pronounced POIKIE). ) and see the incredible wildlife everywhere. This list is not complete but we saw rhinos, giraffes, zebra, hippos, springbok, baboons, warthogs (cute cute cute!), wildebeest, crocodiles, elephants, dozens of types of birds, dung beetles (so cool! remind me to tell you about those) and a lion, just to name a few. Pat hasn't tamed any wild beasts but he almost had to regulate on an elephant who came frighteningly close to our car (we're talking fifteen feet from the bumper) as my big brain failed repeatedly to get me to start the car, keep it from stalling, get the e-brake off, and back off to safety. Instead, my big brain had me take photos which surely won't turn out since my hand was shaking too much! Once I was able to override my big brain's inability to get the car going the elephant backed off but WOW it was amazing. Those things are so freaking huge. Three times the height of our car. He could bring down a single foot or trunk and bash the engine block into mincemeat. Bye bye little VW. Oh well, it's a rental anyway.
The last morning, itching to hike after two days of confinement to our car, we took a guided bush hike with two well-informed naturalists with rifles. (protection is case shit hits the fan, I guess, although I got the impression it isn't a big deal and the guns were just to make people feel better). the cool thing is the other 5 people cancelled so it was just Pat and I and two armed experts. We tracked a rhino, which was cool, but the dung beetles really blew me away more than anything and I'm not kidding. Freaking incredible! Again, remind me to tell you about how entertaining they are.
We drove through the tiny but pretty and friendly independent mountain kingdom of Swaziland and then spent the next four days in the Drakensberg, which I think I told you a little about... imagine you are standing, gazing at rolling grassy highlands stretching for an eternity to the horizon. Lazy rivers (with water so clean and sweet you can drink it right from the flow) make their way out of the flat round shallow mountains and eek their way across the landscape. Maybe you spot a goat or a baboon tooling about. Then you turn around and realise you are standing at the very edge of a sheer 3500-foot cliff. We're talking 3500 ft, that's about 2/3 mile, straight fucking down (big brain cussing again). and then the land is only slightly less vertical for another few thousand feet and you see rugged grand-canyon style valley stretching to the other horizon more than a mile below you. Those lazy little rivers are now 3000-foot waterfalls that cleave massive gashes in the mountains and leave you breathless. But unlike the grand canyon, this massive valley below is the most lush and green place you have ever seen or even imagined. We're talking Lord of the Rings. We're talking the Princess Bride, with the Cliffs of Insanity leading to the steep valley in which lies the fire swamps. Except the fire swamps here are actually thick forest buzzing with birds and monkeys and cicadas and hidden inside of which are isolated waterfalls that dash 50 feet into beautiful swimming pools. Beautiful blue polarized sky with spots of white fluffy cloud and as you and Pat (well, I and Pat) hike from the top to the bottom in all this wonder you are bewildered that the entire scene is practically devoid of all people. If this existed in the US, you'd need a reservation three years in advance. And all of South Africa is like this... incredible scenery that exceeds what I ever thought could exist outside of fairy tales and Norse mythology. We flew Pat's kite right at the edge of the cliffs (when the wind wasn't too strong) and even spotted an endanger Lammergeyer eagle, of which only about 200 are left, and only in the Drakensberg. Oh yeah, and these cliffs, the violent change from highlands to lowlands, go on for a hundred miles or more. Drakensberg means "Dragon Rock". Excellent. And the Zulu name for it means "A battlement of spears". Also excellent.
We spent two nights up on top and then hiked to the bottom and made our way here to Durban. It's otherwise a big shitty city but the interesting thing is 1/3 the population is Indian so the food is at least more than that typical "meat-and-potatoes" South African fare. So far, the cuisine is the only factor of SA that hasn't been exceptional. But it's still not that bad, and has its goodies. For instance, we love potjie, and BILTONG is our new hero. It’s like beef jerky, but the seasonings are great and it's not so rough and dry. It's tender and a bit moist, and they cut it into little pieces. Mmm Mmm mmmm! I wonder if customs would let me bring some home. I'm also way into the various chutneys, especially the ones with peri-peri peppers in them.
Oh, and everything is ridiculously cheap! You expect places like Mexico and Peru and Thailand to be cheap but a first-rate, first-world place like this??? We're talking beers for 50 cents (if you're UNLUCKY) and $2 meals that fill you up. We are spending next to nothing, since we are camping everywhere we go, even at the hostels. Right now we’re staying at a place right on the beach and the water is warm warm warm. The crowd is the annoying "surf or die" type of long-haired dudes who do nothing but watch TV and surf,. but we have been out in the city during the day anyway, and hopefully we'll move on tomorrow...
Driving on the left side of the road was intimidating before doing it, and very natural and easy after about ten minutes of it. Amazing. No problem at all, except for the occasional running over a pedestrian. Just kidding. About the pedestrian bit, not about it being no problem!
Oh, I forgot to tell you about our 10 hours in Madrid. That was great, too. It was a bit cold, but we were excited and had beer and wine and tapas and in general walked wide-eyed around the buzzing city all day. We watched a game (forgot the name) which is like soccer, except you throw the ball around instead of kicking it, like Ultimate Frisbee but with a ball. amazingly enough, by the time we made it to Johannesburg we had absolutely no jetlag whatsoever! amazing.
Speaking of sleep, the sun rises early and since we are camping we are up with it at 4:30/ 5-ish every morning. Can you believe that? I think they need to readjust their time zone here, but I guess it IS the middle of summer so the days are really long. They'll be even longer in Cape Town, being further from the equator.
We're going to work our way along the Coast to Cape Town now, and hopefully spend Christmas with Stefan's family (sans Stefan) before making our way back to Jo'burg.
South Africa seems like California in so many ways. Shopping malls and golf courses and suburbia and all that; just driving on the wrong side (I try tomorrow) and a lot more black people! ;)
It has already seemed like a month out here and hard to believe we have done all this in two weeks. stimulus overload!
