Jessie and Ryan's Africa Trip

2007-10-17T08:10:00.001-07:00

capetown

rural and rural and then in the middle of NOWHERE.

2007-10-06T01:48:00.000-07:00

Again, sorry but the pictures and movies will have to wait, any computer I have sat down at here have been bombs. In fact today one be-otch computer uploaded a virus to my my 4gb card....no real damage, just a pain in the ass. If your ever planning a trip to South Africa, I am compiling a short list of things you might need to know that probably arn't covered in your companion lonely planet or lets go. I will post this later. The 4 gb card I bought before leaving Canada filled up yesterday after i video'd my very creepy solo (I did it against the recommendation of our tour guide) exploration trip on foot through an abandoned, burnt down, incredibly amazing, hotel/castle grounds at the foot of the Drakensberg Mountain Range, while being pursed by a Troop of Baboons. (and yes, you guessed it, Drakensberg means Place of the Dragons).

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Day 1 of tour.
Wine tasting at Spier Winery-- After the last post we had just left Capetown, and we were on the way to winery tasting. Not enough to get hammered on, (grand total of 5 1 ounce shots of wine) but good wine still. This winery also had a 'save the cheetas' campaign. From what I understood, they started by saving a couple of would-be-doomed runts, studied them, worked with them, and breeded them, all in the name of saving the cheetah.... which is currently in a lot of trouble as a species cause they are like the extremely fast, nimble, agile running back on the football team---> one hit and they are toast. They kill, and a very high percentage of these kills are taken away from them by a larger predator (lions/hyenas(which arn't really bigger but a lot tougher), leapoards), which is pretty much anything in Africa. (Things are BIG here. Even the grasshoppers are 6 times larger than the ones I am used to at our summer camp in North West Ontario.) In the wild, 90% of their cubs die (mainly due to not enough food, cause it's taken away from their mother) before 3 months old. More on the Cheetah here.

From here, we drove in-land to what is called the "breadbasket" of South Africa, and in a lot of ways, it looked like parts of Alberta at home in Canada. Over the lunch stop we encountered our first set of baboons, where were not shy, and I do have some interesting Video and Photos on this one! We camped on a river here. The campground we stayed at, was very new, but also very clean, and very rugged. A good combonation. It got to about 4 degrees C at night on the banks of the biereede river, and it was surrounded by Aloe Vera plantations. Jessie cut one open and put the Aloe on a scratch. This stop on the trip was pretty useless in my opinion. It was cool to see the breadbasket, but not worth the long driving to get there.

Day 2 of tour.
From there, we drove to a place made famous originally for it's ostrich feathers (there was a 'hey-day' of ostrich feathers back just before the 1st WW. More interesting than the Ostrich farm (though the Ostrich Riding (LOL) and the Ostrich Shoulder Massage did provide me some sweet videos, which I will post later) was the Cango Caves we explored. While staying here in Oudtshoorn, we met some locals who were camped in our campground and were competing in a 3 day mountain bike race from Oudtshoorn southwards through the mountains (really descending from the great escarpment, to sea level) to the coastline.

Day 3 of tour.
Next we went to Knysna, pronounced Nice-nah, and I chose to do a kayak trip up this sort of creepy African meandering stream that looked like it definitely had Crocs in it. It didn't, unfortunately, that would have made from some great video. Jessie chose to do the 'cultural tour', which was basically a walk through the "townships" (what we in Canada would call "reservations"). I think she met a full-on Rasta Chief! You'll have to ask her more about it. I enjoyed the trip to Knysna, it is characterized as a summer home type of place, where people go to get away from the city, and the crime here is not as bad as the other places we have been too. Check out this close up map of the lagoon that people use for water sports at Knysna. It also shows where I did the kayak trip. The water turned from saline ocean water, to freshwater about 1 hr upstream into the kayak trip.

Day 4 and 5 of tour.
From here, our trip took us to Storms River, where we stayed for 2 days (nice to not have get up at 5 am to take down tents and get on the road). This was basically a staging point for the Otter Trail Head, in Tsitsikamma National Park.

OK, I have to run, we are currently in Durban. We started taking our malaria pills today. I'll write more when I can. Thanks for the Happy B-days to you all!

left capetown

2007-09-24T01:18:00.000-07:00

We arrived into the nomad tour group headquarters by the greenmarket square in capetown this morning, met the other 9 people on our tour, which were from germany, austria, france, australia. Very cool. The feeling of not knowing what people are saying is very good to have again.

OK, so Nomad Tours appears very very organized. The 'truck' were on is a big ass diesal cross between what we'd call a school bus, and a cargo truck. They must have big animals on the road here, the 'bushguard' goes up to 6 feet high.

Got to run, this was a short stop for some groceries! On to test the wine!

Ryan. --- I'll get photos up at my first opportunity.

in capetown for one more day.

2007-09-22T23:18:00.000-07:00

Jessie had us leaving a day early. so we rechecked into a hotel in a market square closer to where we are leaving from. Going to top of Table Mountain, and then to southern tip. l8tr.

Capetown....is very nice...during the day

2007-09-22T11:38:00.000-07:00

We arrived hassle free to Capetown, and had a nice cab ride to the ambassador hotel. It's nice, our room does have a nice view. It a 5 Km walk to the "water front" which is where most tourists end up going. We did the big red topless bus tour today. This is a great way to be a tourist with not a whole lot of effort. You get up on this topless bus, (i thought it meant a different kind of topless so I was really excited) and a guide talks the whole time about the part of the city your in and how it's relevant to the big picture of South African and Capetown history.

Pictures will have to wait, they don't work from this connection.

So for the big takeaways from Capetown are:
1. The people, in the day time, are very very nice.
2. A night, people get nervous, it's weird. I feel like I need to look over my shoulder. The doorman wouldn't let us walk down to the Internet portal.
3. The blacks got really screwed over here.
4. Nelson Mandela is a champion. 27 years locked away, on and Island within site of his homeland, and when released he still brought the Country out of Apartide (sp?)
5. If we think we have things to complain about in Canada....just come to a place like this!
6. It must be booming here bigtime. They have the 2010 World Cup of soccer here, and there is at least 8 cranes deployed for the new stadium, and another 20 or so around Capetown we saw on the red topless bus tour.
7. The city is not as 'techno-savvy' as the average place in Canada. Computers like the one I am on is about 10 bucks for a half hour...and it's too slow to upload photos to the blog.
8. The city is really spending big bucks to re-vitalize the area, the 'water front' is amazing, and business is thriving down there. It is re-claimed shipping yards, yard-staff parking lots, and garbage sites.
9. Where we might use a hedge to finish our beautiful landscaping, they use razor wire here.
10. Sunsets off the rock and beaches are truuuuuly breathtaking. Our hotel over looks the "bantry bay" a couple bays down from the world famous "camps bay".

Worth communicating also is how hard it has been for moi to live without constant communicaton to my friends, family, and business contacts. I am truly in Blackberry withdrawl!

I've considered buying a cell phone here but the international rates are so huge.

I'll just have to get used to it!

Heading to Africa

2007-09-19T14:04:00.000-07:00

OK, Jessie (my wife) says that before she's ready to start a family, she needs to get a good gallavant through the African Safari Wilderness (with pit stops at the boutiques of Capetown!). We are going to land in Capetown, and end in Jo-burg. We've signed up with nomadtours for the 2007 South African Explorer series. Now that I'm all tech-savvy, I'll post a review of the tour ...probably in real time if we get the chance to hook up to the web.

Somehow I am both nervous about this crazy 4 week long camping/hiking/range roving tour....as well as excited! As it gets closer, the excitement is stronger, and the fear of being outside the Almighty comfort zone is subsiding. The feeling of not knowing where your going to be exactly in 24 hours time is causing the heebie jeebies, yet also a sort of child-like giddiness!

When we see movies like this one how could we not be excited about going to the African Safari with nothing between my snoring arse and the lions and hyenas but a small piece of nylon tent material. Check that last video out. I hope I get to see a male lion pull out a can of freaking whoopass like that. (towards the end)

Plane leaves in 4 hours, time to go double check my packing list.