Kruger

For two days, we wandered around Kruger National Park, saw a lot of wildlife, and took terrible, terrible photographs. "wildlife photographer" is not listed on either of our cv.

Although it is the most touristed site in South Africa, (with the possible exception of Sun City), and is the backbone of the local economy for dozens of Cities stretched along it's border, the emphasis in Kruger is still on Conservation of the animals. When driving around the park, you are not allowed to step out of your vehicle. In fact, you can get in trouble if any part of your body protrudes out of the car window. So the photographic constraints are real. We spent more time watching and enjoying than trying to photograph. If you Google any of the animals we mention, you will get better pictures than we have.

Our first day was slowed as a couple of hundred buffalo decided to block our access to the deeper parts of the park

But the back road brought us across the path of a couple of Black Rhino,

a notably 5-legged zebra,

And the elephants and hippos were all dots in the distance, although there was ample evidence of their passing.

Mostly, it is the Impalas that rule Kruger.

Remember, click all terrible wildlife photos to make them bigger: and even more terrible.

Heading inland

After a couple of days at the Indian Ocean, It was time to head inland, so we spent most of my Father's 70th (the 27th... you can check out his current antipodal travels at peterandmarilyn.blogspot.com) driving northwest. Ends up insurance, vehicle levy, and timing issues will keep us out of Swaziland. So we skirted the border for a few hours, while driving through several million square kilometres of eucalyptus tree farms. Which, much to our excitement 4 hours in, turned into Pine tree farms.

Yep, it was dull. The landscape was nice, there were some cool hills and stuff, but mostly it was hot, hilly, tree-farmy, and we were concentrating mostly on keeping from getting killed by various things on the road.






All this to get to the vicinity of Kruger Park. This is the biggest, oldest, and most famous preserved area in South Africa. If that sounds great, remember that this makes it similar to Banff and Yellowstone: crowded, expensive, and commercialized. Just seeing the sudden increase in prosperity in the towns as we approach Kruger tells you how important the park is to the tourism industry.

We spend our first day not in Kruger, but at the Blyde River Canyon. This is, apparently, the "third largest canyon in the world", which triggers my natural skepticism about anything

that is represented with "triperbole". That is a special type of hyperbole limited to tourism, that is defensibly non-specific, but seems plausible. If anyone ever tell you something is the third ____-est of anything, be skeptical. Here, let me give you an example. The Capilano Suspension Bridge is the third-highest pedestrian suspension bridge in the Western Hemisphere. Go ahead, prove me wrong.

Ok, back to the Blyde River Canyon. It is big, and it is scenic. No need for hyperbole. The rocks are generally flat-lying quartzites, but many of the original sedimentary structures are well preserved. Note planar cross beds under Tig... Oh, and nice canyon view behind.

We went for a long (4 hour+) hike to a beautiful set of waterfalls down in the Canyon. It was a nice walk, where we did the typical tourist thing of not having a map, and not having enough water, and Tig got a little heat-stroked, but it was a nice blast of the exercise we had been missing for a little while.

And the views were great.

After a long walk, we ended up back at the parking lot, where the Banff-Yellowstone factor came out. The parking lot and adjacent viewpoints were crowded, full of people, too packed for comfort. Be there before 9:00am, or go 500m from the parking, the place is empty.

After a bit of crowded sight-seeing, we returned to our accommodations: a rather nice rondeval on a macadamia nut and lime farm. We walked along the adjacent Sabie River (fresh hippo tracks!), and had a nice Braai.

We ate outside with a cacophony of insects, amphibians, birds and whatever. Red wine helped. Oh, and the local pub brewed their own Pale Ale. Tomorrow, Kruger.

Driving

More than two weeks into our trip, and I am still trying to figure out South Africans. It is a complex society, sometimes very familiar to Canadians, sometimes completely incomprehensible.

The road safety statistics are horrific. Much of the radio news this time of the year is about the death toll on the nation's roads during the Summer holiday travel season. By province, the daily numbers are in the dozens. Annually, more than 10,000 people are killed in road accidents in a country with less than 50 Million people (the vast majority of which are impoverished and do not own a car).

Driving on the highways, it is easy to see why. The roads are generally in great shape and wide, which of course encourages fast driving. There is no visible enforcement of speed limits, drinking drivers, or seatbelt laws (which end in the front seat anyway). The speed limits are largely ignored.

Therefore, driving down the 120km/h limited two-lane main highways, there are rat-trap old pick-ups with the beds stuffed full of people doing 80km/h, and shiny German Bahn-burners doing 200km/h.

The system developed to manage this seems to be that anyone doing the speed limit or less drives on the shoulder, giving cars who would like to overtake about 3/4 of a lane to do so. Passing zone or not, oncoming traffic or not, South Africans take advantage of this

3/4 lane, and flash their 4-ways as a thank-you gesture to the guy blasting down the shoulder at 100km/h for getting the hell out of the way. This is made more exciting by hitch-hikers and fruit stand hawkers standing on the shoulder, and random wildlife and domestic animal crossings. Throw in slow, lumbering transport trucks and speed-frantic minibus taxis, and it is surprising the death toll isn't higher.

In South Africa, people pass in construction zones, by speeding through the closed lane where construction is currently taking place.

A complete free-for-all.

The minibus taxis are their own phenomenon. They are the dominant form of "public transportation" in both rural and urban areas. They are usually Toyota 15-passenger vans, commonly stuffed with 19 or 20 people (not counting babes-in-arms). They are everywhere, and operate without clear routes or schedules.

Sometimes they hang out at taxi stands adjacent to town centres, markets, or major crossroads. Here, they have a destination in mind, and wait until they have a full enough load, then go. Alternately, you can stand on the side of the road or the freeway and wave them down. If they are going your way and have room, they might stop. The way they know your destination as they fly by at 120km/h is in your wave. There are both standard and local wave codes, but generally, a finger pointing up means to the town centre, down means a shorter distance towards town, tracing a circle means bypass the next town centre and (in Durban at least), making waves with all four fingers means "to the beach".

The business is competitive, with the driver requiring to pay a flat daily fee to the van owner, and pay for his own gas, so he needs to collect a lot of fares in a day to get paid, which means the drivers are amongst the most aggressive on the roads. They usually don't require 3/4 of a lane to pass around a blind corner.

It's crazy out there.

out of sequence

A few days behind posting, and a little out of sequence now, for technical reasons, but I never talked about the trip to Cape Vidal on the 25th. Our festivus was a little rainy at times, but sunny enough to get a little burned at the beach, and full of animal encounters.

After leaving Hans and Franz, we travelled through the Southern part of iSimangaliso Wetland Park, and saw some ugly-pigs (or "warthog" as they call them here), twirley-horn deer (or "kudu" as they call them here), and meany-cows (or "Cape Buffallo" as they call them here), along with other various ungulates.

(zoom to enjoy)

We spent some rainy time on a rocky beach, and some sunny time on a sandy beach.

And the highlight of the evening was a surprise drive-by by a Pointy-pig (or "white rhinocerous" as they call them here). I know, he loooks black in the photo, zoom way in, he is being back-lit a bit, and he had the two characteristics that differentiate him from a black rhino: he had a flat muzzle (not beaked), and he was eating grass (not leaves).

Both the black and white varieties are making combacks after nearly hitting extinction a few decades back. Still, several hundred of the few thousand remaining were are poached every year. It is sad that the worst thing for an African animal's suvival potential is to be accused of giving rich Asian men erections.

pause

Today is Boxing Day.


We spent it on a beach, rising only occasionally to take dips in the Indian Ocean. I have nothing further to report at this time. Some cool strange animal photos from yesterday, but they can wait.

Uber Alles

We spent much of Festivus morning waiting in line to enter a part of iSimangaliso Wetland Park called Cape Vidal. Only a few vehicles a day are permitted, so it is show up at 5am or wait in line.


Not that we weren't entertained. Hans and Franz were in line behind us: a couple of brush-cut muscle heads in a Mercedes SUV cranking German Techno music at 100db and subtly bobbing their heads, oblivious to, or aggressively avoiding, the laughter of everyone in line around them.

I don't know much about Techno (Bill Maher: "You can't continue to call it 'house music' if it isn't music and no-one ever listens to it in a house"), but if one needed a 160 bpm soundtrack to invade Poland to, this would be it. You would think these guys were in a club, looking for girls to slip a rupie to, not in a UNESCO World Heritage Site going to see wildlife.

But no travel journal would be complete without an encounter with Germans acting inappropriately. Thanks Hans, thanks Franz. Hope the lifestyle comes together before permanent shift of hearing.

on beer

Have a beery, cheery Festivus.
Today is Fetivus, and my Festivus coffee is actually pretty good (flavour 6, strength 7). I noticed from the comments that I have mistakenly given the impression that the beer here is good.

For a Commonwealth country with a history of Dutch colonization, it is shocking to see the state of beer culture here.

There are still several blue laws regarding alcohol sales, with no sales on Sunday, and only wine available in grocery stores. The bottle stores sell beer, wine, and spirits, and usually the beer is in a walk-in cooler maintained at about 3 degrees below the outside air (that is, about 4 degrees below boiling point of water). Inside the cooler, stacked to the ceiling are, best I can tell, 6 types of beer, all bottom fermented: Amstel Lager, Carling Black Label, Castle Lager, Castle Pilsner, Hansa Pilsner, and Castle Milk Stout. The first three are made with corn (much like Busch Beer in the States) and the last is the only beer with any colour, containing actual milk sugars to boost the sweetness. Yes, I am lactose intolerant.

Next to this are 300 varieties of ciders. Cider. The Horror...

I have not found an ale of any type, be it pale, dark, cream or IPA. I have not yet tasted a hop, although the Hansa label has a drawing of one... or is that a corn stalk?

There is one other beer seen occasionally: Miller Genuine Draft, in the clear bottle, and rarely in the cooler. Skunkiness ensues. Guinness is not mentioned. Apparently, the micro-brew phenomenon has not reached South Africa yet.

They make up for it with the wine. The variety and quality of $5 bottles of reds is substantial. If you step up to $7, the quality is phenomenal.

Still, it is hard to quaff red wine on the beach when it is 153,000 degrees out. So watery corn beer it will be.

For Festivus dinner, a special treat: Stella Artios on tap. Not bad for a lager.

St. Lucia

St.Lucia is located aside a broad estuary, called Lake St. Lucia. The lake itself is salty, about 200 square kilometres, and home to hundreds of snappy-fish (or "crocodiles" as they call them here), and bubble-cows (or "hippopotamus", as they call them here). There are stories of bubble-cows wandering through town at night, but we only ran into some random ungulates.

To see the actual bubble-cows, we went on a boat trip up the lake. There were several breeding pods floating about. A pod generally involves one bad-ass male and as many females as he could handle. Young males are kept away, or the dominant male will see him as a threat, so there are some solitary males and females with male calves.

This pod was a couple of females with nursing young.

We also saw a rare example of snappy-fish and bubble-cow interacting. In this case, the young croc

was taking advantage of the general slovency of the hippo, by hanging out on his back, taking the occasional nip, and sucking up any blood it could free. What a jerk The bubble-cow seemed bored.

But still, hard to feel sorry for a 2000-lb animal who cannot be bothered to scratch his own back. Not to mention "hippos" are the only marine vertebrates that can't actually swim. If they get into water above their heads, they take a big breath, sink to the bottom and walk to shallower water.
Seems like a marginal lifestyle.

Not a cool as a stretchy-bird (or "Goliath Heron" as they call them here). These guys are 1.5m tall, and put the Great Blue Heron to shame, both for greatness, and for blueness. Here the dude was suffering from the

heat a bit (as was I), so he was huffing his cheeks and slowly wafting his wings to lose heat. Notably, he was not standing in the shade a few feet away.

 

Amatigulu

We drove North out of Durban, past the beaches and sugar cane fields of KwaZulu-Natal, up to the Matigula River and the Amatigulu Nature Preserve.
We are staying in a tent on a platform in the middle of a preservation area, on a small hill overlooking the Matigula Estuary. There are snappy-fish (or "crocodiles" as they call them here) in the water, so swimming is strongly discouraged.

It finally turned "African Hot". I think it was about a million degrees out, and the humidity was about a thousand. Perfect.

Now, it is time to talk about animals. For the next two weeks we will be popping from one nature reserve to another, from the Elephant Coast through Kruger Park, the Limpopo, and up to the Kalahari. I am going to try not to go on about every freaking stripey-horse (or "zebra" as they call them here) we see, and get all pokemon on you. Pictures of animals will be limited to one per species, unless, of course, we subsequently see the same species eating another species, getting eaten, or gettin' it on. I know my audience.

Today we had our first close encounter with a herd of stretchy-horses (or "giraffe" as they call them here). They were remarkably timid, considering they had about 30 feet on me. To watch them gallop... all Manute Bol slow-motion like, was incredible.

(click and zoom in for full effect)
We bought some rump steak from the white butcher at the adjacent town. I only point out his colour (of lack of) because as we stepped into his shop, he was quick to mention that the meat on display was for the Blacks, and that he kept the good meat in the back. So we ordered our steaks, not realizing that African beef was a "white meat". Yikes.

Back at the park, I cooked the steaks over an open fire, with a little help from Mr.Carling, while Tig made potatoes and beans, and we had a real camp meal. The $6 bottle of beautiful South African red made everything taste great. The thunder storm respectfully waited until we were in bed before opening up.

Amatigulu 2

Our second day at Amatigulu we woke up early to get a hike in before the heat of the day. Not that we could sleep in with every bird, reptile, and invertebrate in Africa chirping, croaking, ticking, or squeeking in the jungle surrounding us. We also failed to miss the heat of the day, as it was a zillion degrees by 9:00 when we finished our hike.

We were slightly delayed by about a dozen stretchy-horses (or "giraffe" as the call them here) that were standing on the road we were hiking along. Remembering how timid they were yesterday, we just cautiously approached, giving them a lot of time to lope off into the long grass. The biggest one did just that, but a couple of smaller ones (a matter of scale) stood their ground watching us. When we got as close as I was comfortable, one of them gently stomped a front leg a couple of times. That seemed like fair warning to us, and we backed away giving them the road, and bush-whacked our around the herd. They didn't have to be jerks about it.

We then took a canoe down the estuary to the Ocean. It was the world's oldest (and shittiest) fiberglass canoe, but the Parks dude assured us it was safe from snappy-fish (or "crocodile" as they call them here) attack. .

Look at the form: Not sure how the inside of my knees got burned.

The beach was broad, the surf was high, and we were the only people visible over the three miles of beach we could see. There weren't even boats visible

That means no shark nets.











Our third day started at 5 am, as a troop or young brainy-rats (or "vervet monkeys" as they call them here), decided to hold repeated sprinting races across the roof of our tent.

We packed up and drove through a couple of hundred kilometres of tree farms (eucalyptus?) to the little tourist enclave of St. Lucia, where we got our first decent coffee in weeks (flavour 8, strength 7).

And it was a happy Festivas for all...

Durban

There comes a time in every vacation when we hit the beach. This time, Durban is the place. On the Indian Ocean, far enough from the Cape that the water is warm, but not so far north that crocodiles rule the shores. There are sharks, both friendly and hungry, so the best beaches are protected by a system of shark nets. So the beaches are more or less safe.

Durban is a City of contrasting fortunes. We are staying in a leafy northern suburb where the houses are tens of thousands of square feet and surrounded by high walls, electric fences, razor wire, and automatic gates. Guard dogs and security company signs promising "armed response units". There are notices not to flash your valuables about, yet people blasting about in Lamborghinis. The tourist guides tell tourists to "avoid" public transit. Clearly the gap between the haves and the have-nots here is an uncomfortable one. As we walked the couple of blocks to the local shops, we noted the distinct paucity of sidewalks.

We have been here for a couple of days, I have drunk a few Carling Black Labels, visited a bicycle shop / Indian restaurant, a good Thai restaurant, finally found some good coffee, dropped by a (horrible mockery of Art Deco) Casino, generally did the tourist schtick.

There was a Cricket Test between India and South Africa going on, and we thought about going, but they were only three days in, and we only have a month vacation. Apparently India has 243 over 7 with 9 and South Africa has 301 over 13 facing 23, or something like that... I heard them discuss numbers on the TV for 2 minutes, and I have no idea who was leading. There were pictures of one team celebrating, but both teams were all in white. I have no clue what in the hell is going on.

Instead, we went to the Kwa Muhle Museum, located in the building that formerly housed the Department of Native Affairs, and where the "Durban System" of racial segregation was first developed, a system that was the precursor of Apartheid.

We then dove into the wild and crowded old city centre to visit the Victoria Market, where you can buy everything from a watch to a sheep's head. There is a large South Asian population in Durban, and the market is full of spices, from Madras to peri-peri, to "KFC Spice" (the colonel' secret is out!).

We also visited Moses Mabhida Stadium, the big multi-use facility built for the World Cup. We did a tour that included an "Adventure Walk " up the spine-arch that supports the suspended fabric roof (as opposed to taking the tilting cable car thingamajiggy). They were a little crazy with the safety, but the view up top was great.

This stadium will hold up to 80,000 odd people, and will be the jewel in Durban's bid for the 2020 Olympics (you heard it here first!).

We are now off to places north, where there shall be animals.

Separation from Reality.

We are in Durban, on the tropical coast of the Indian Ocean. Palatial mansions, and electric fences. Swimming pools and armed guards. A change of pace from the Lesotho Highlands, but the sun and a place with a warm shower is nice.

To get here, we had to come down the South Africa side of the Sani Pass. If the Lesotho side was driving across the roof of Southern Africa, the SA side is like plummeting off the evestrough.

After passing the Lesotho border post (which is located on the actual border), one drives 8km to the South African border post. The no-mans-land between is just not worth South Africa's time and money to control, although there are stories of sheep and the occasional cattle rustling. Part of the reason for the disinterest is that the 8km stretch of road loses more than 1000m in elevation heading south. Which means switchbacks.

The view up:

The view down:

And the view to the side:

And the Daihatsu handled it with aplomb. Hear that, Europcar? No problems at all.

With the elevation drop we were back into sandstones, which, by the law of superposition, means that the volcanics are younger.

A couple of hours later, we were another 2000m lower, on the Indian Ocean shore.