8-29 Driving and the Big Hole

An uneventful day of driving to Kimberly where we are staying at the old jail house which has been converted into a hostel. A self-guided tour of the diamond mine in Kimberly was interesting. No great photos to share. We are getting better at driving on the left side of the road but don’t yet have the blinker signaling down – we have very clean windows though! It seems 95% of the vehicles here are white – ours included. The 8 passenger van we bought has been good to us so far. The sunroof came in handy when we were viewing animals on safari. The roads are narrow here and lots of people walk along the side of the road hitchhiking. It is not uncommon to see pickups (they call them bakkies) with 10 people standing in the back or vans stuffed with as many people as can fit.

Deb

8-28 Robben Island and winery

We were very disappointed to have to wait 3 days for a spot on a tour of Robben Island and then have the tour cancelled due to poor weather and rough seas. Robben Island is where Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners were held during the apartheid years. We did enjoy the museum on the mainland as we learned about how soccer became an important part of the social lives of prisoners.

We went to Simonvlei, a winery just outside Capetown. We were disappointed it was not more of a tour as we wanted to learn about the process of wine making and grape growing. It turned out to be more of a wine tasting event.

Deb

8-27 hiking Table Mountain and Green Point stadium

We got some first-hand experience with vuvuzelas at the kick off to the 2010 ABSA Premier Soccer League. It was a double header at Green Point stadium with Orlando Pirates beating Vasco De Gama 2-1 and Ajax Capetown beating Bloemfontein Celtics 2-0. We all enjoyed being in the stadium and YES the vuvuzelas are loud!

We hiked up Table Mountain – a major landmark in Capetown- on a hike called Plattklip. It was an intensely vertical hike through a pretty gorge. We were disappointed when at the top we learned the cable car down the mountain was closed for maintenance. Two days later our calves are still sore.

Deb

Tsitsikamma National Park, Canopy Tour by zipline, Monkey Land

Camping on the Storms River and enjoying some family bonding time in the tent…..as if 18 days in a van driving throughout South Africa isn’t enough.

We traversed the canopy of the Tsitsikamma Forest on zipline this morning. There were 10 lines which took about 1.5 hours. We were 20m in the air. If we get better internet connection sometime we will post some video. Annika proclaimed it awesome. We appreciated that 57% of our “tourist money” went to support a local community initiative of feeding school children 4 meals a week, HIV education and afterschool programming for kids.

Monkeys roam freely and we walked amongst them! A white gibbon put on a good show and the capuchin and spider monkeys were all over the trees, ground and nearly over people’s feet. I was fascinated and didn’t want to leave. Obviously a tourist place but very educational and a local guide answered every one of my questions.

On the way to Oudtshoorn we stop and meet Peter and Julie Middleton (brother to Mike, the new men’s soccer coach at GAC). We enjoy beverages with them at the Yacht Club right on the water while learning about shantie towns, water shortages and the municipality strike.

Ostriches are farmed in this microclimate between two mountain ranges in Oudtshoorn. Seventy percent of the world’s ostrich production is here. The meat and leather are of greatest value while the eggs and feathers are less valuable. An ostrich egg is equivalent to 24 chicken eggs by volume and 36 chicken eggs by nutritional value.

At the hostel tonight Mark chats with a 22 year old from Scotland who has traveled all over the world and a 60-something man South African politician. Also at supper we chatted with a family from Belgium now living in South Africa. It is interesting to get the local perspective on the shanty towns, social progress since apartheid and answers to our many questions as foreigners. Hans and Mark eat kudu, crocodile, springbok and ostrich meat for dinner. Mark gives rave reviews to the crocodile and Hans likes the ostrich.

Deb

8-25 Green Market, Hout Bay, Cape Point

While shopping is not one of our grandest intentions we spent part of the morning strolling through Green Market Square in downtown Cape Town. My favorite part of the morning was getting help from a parking attendant who snuck us into a parking spot I would not have chosen myself. The owner of the two mopeds he moved to get us squeezed in didn’t seem impressed, but we weren’t privy to the actual words used in their conversation.

Hans found a couple good soccer jerseys, but most of the time was spent letting vendors down as nicely as possible.

We headed to Hout Bay for the afternoon and a tour of the township from a resident tour guide named Afrika. We walked through several streets of varying degrees of decay and were surrounded by squatter shacks that amazingly housed five people or more. It was an interesting opportunity to ask questions about the abject poverty that surrounded us, but to also see a vital community of friends and neighbors, pool players, and a group of dancing teenagers.

We, unfortunately needed to leave in a hurry, though the impressions will last forever, so we could get back into the National Park where our cottage was. With about an hour and a half of sun left we headed down to the very tip of the cape with some remarkable views of the coastline and the spots that commemorate Bartholameiu Diaz and Vasco DeGama's rounding the Cape and finding a water route to India.

Mark

Penguins

6302 penguins

We went to Boulders Beach in Simons Town south of Capetown and there was a large colony of African penguins living there. We had lunch overlooking a bay with a small beach and many large boulders. We walked along the board walk and saw many penguins nesting along the way. They are cute but a bit stinky. Tonight we are in a cottage on the Cape of Good Hope on the tip of Africa. Annika

Baboons

While traveling along the road to the nature reserve this afternoon we came across a troop of baboons lying in the road. I wanted a picture of the adorable babies so I asked Mark to stop. I rolled the window down to get a good shot and a HUGE male baboon jumped onto my window. He was three inches from my hand and baring his teeth. I screamed and threw my camera at him without even thinking. Thankfully he let go of the window and my camera bounced off his chin and into the car. All the road signs indicate that baboons are dangerous and will open car doors or even bust windows looking for food. This guy hit the jackpot when I opened the window for him and was distracted by the cute babies…..Mark and talk about what would have happened if he had crawled all the way in the window. I’ve learned my lesson. Deb

photo coming