Pratting Around the World

Johannesburg

We had heard a few stories prior to arriving in Johannesburg, but we thought they had been grossly exaggerated. one of my favourites (from a random dutch guy who had heard it from one of his friend’s cousins was that carjackings were so rife that you shouldn’s stop at red lights. To combat this the car companies had designed flamethrowers on the side of their cars to fry any would-be thieves. Hertz didnt have any at the time of writing,

As soon as we got to Johannesburg, we went for a walk to the shops and were immediately told to go back to our hostel by some people in the shops as there was a serious danger in us getting mugged at gunpoint. Needless to say, we went back. We had been keen on taking a tour through Soweto (south Africa’s biggest township being home to approximately one million people), but we had been told that this wasnt a good idea.

we cant really give a fair interpretation of Johannnesburg as we didnt explore very much, but from our limited knowledge it did indeed seem like a shithole.

South African money – we were scared to leave the hostel with any

Whale trail

The whale trail is a 5 day, 45 mile hike on the south coast of Africa. The added incentive being that we were guaranteed to see whales.

The trip involved Mark and some of his friends: chilli farmer, photographer, handyman, vegan, author, professional frisbee champion, toothpaste tester and an ex dog clothes maker. (some jobs may be innacurate)

When kelly and i woke up we realised that some people take their hiking quite serious. Everyone was kitted out in big hiking boots, walking sticks, backpacks full of survival packs, dried fruit and snake bite kits.  Compared to our trainers and granola bars, we felt a little under-equipped. After a few motivational speeches and faceslaps we set off. 

kelly: through a crazy mix up, the trail was double booked which turned out to be the best thing ever as we stayed in luxury tents and had our own chef pals to cook gourmet camp meals. anyways… we stayed on this beach the first and fourth nights. since it’s  on govt property, we knew no one else was around. the beach was unbelievably beautiful and isolated without feeling desolate.

kelly: bagged wine, the perfect camping companion.

I wanted a free willy experience, but seeing the whales breach was pretty cool.

Difficult to get good photos

We saw loads of whales. They came so close to the shore that it seemed feasible to swim out to them - don’t know what they’d have done.

Dolphins swimming off the shore (kelly: they were playing and splashing about, having a great time)

Kelly and i with mark.

Part of the journey was spent walking with Mark. This proved to be really insightful as he used to be a bush guide. At one point, Mark stopped us all and shouted to stay back as there was a puff adder (really dangerous snake with flesh rotting venom) on the path. Now, having been to mark’s house and counted 5 rubber snakes and 8 rubber spiders, we thought there was a severe case of Johnny bullshit going on. In fact, he was telling the truth and an amazing coloured snake slithered past us. Mark and i were both gutted that we weren’t fast enough to get a picture. Mark told us that he should have picked up the snake with a stick and put it on a rock to pose for shots – would have been funny to see that.

amazing water hole where we had a lovely evening float.

A 7 mile hike on the beach was a killer

Our house on one of the nights was the former summer house of Frederik Willem De Klerk (tha last apartheid president)
kelly: we got to stay here because of the double booking and it was amazing. we had an inside braii and oil lamps everywhere. it was a strange but cool feeling to be staying in the only beach house on a 30 mile stretch.

originally i hadn’t been all that excited about whale trail, but huddy was right and i really liked it. a lot of schlepping around hiking, but it’s been one of my favorite experiences so far. and now i can say i’ve been proper camping and survived.

Addo elephant park

We couldn’t visit South Africa without seeing some animals so an 8 hour drive across the southern coast culminated with us visiting one of South Africa’s national parks. There were plenty of private game reserves closer, but they sounded like glorified zoos where the animals are tracked and tagged(and poked and harrassed into running out of hiding spots). We both wanted a more authentic feel even if it meant seeing no animals.

Our accommodation was something different: a tent on stilts with a balcony overlooking the park. There was a lot of howling going on, a few roars and some random elephant noises to help with our sleep.
kelly: i tried to do some howling back, which didn’t seem to fool the animals. our permanent tent was actually really nice and had the awesome view of being able to see the animals as if the reserve was our private backyard.

Lions were difficult to spot, but their victims weren’t.
kelly: i was ill (again, i guess my immune system is shit when traveling) and had just been sick out the car in front of an elephant when hudson pulled over and forced me to take a pic of this rotting carcass. lovely. we also found some zebra carcasses which were strangely beautiful and i was seriously tempted to snag a spiral antler of a kudu’s skull.

 water buffalo – south africa’s official animal

Leopard tortoise

Good old dung beetle”
kelly: these beetles liked to hang out on the dirt roads (because that’s where the elephants liked to poo) and there were signs everywhere saying that beetles had the right of way. we had to slam on the brakes for this little guy.

Kudu – not bad when made into a sausage, with a bit of brown sauce
kelly: agreed, but look at the pretty pretty antlers.

kelly: elephants and other critters loved to walk on the roads (i guess it’s easier than bumbling through the bush?). i thought one elephant was going to stick his trunk through our window. we turned one corner and saw an ostrich out for a jog right in front of us – he looked so goofy.

vervet monkies – these guys live off fruit and were constantly snacking although I couldn’t see any fruit so they must be very crafty.

Robben Island

Robben Island is just off the water front of Cape Town and has a pretty nasty history. Although at times it was used as an inbetween stop for ships coming and going from Cape Town, the island’s main purpose was to contain the unwanteds from society.Way back in the day, the island was a leper colony; husbands and wives were kept apart because the idea of lepers procreating was not tolerated. Eventually Robben Island became a jail where many political prisoners were held, including nelson mandela.
All of the guides are ex-convicts, which made the tour much better.  our guide had outrageous stories – most of them light-hearted (considering) about outwitting the guards and suffering through nasty food like fish head stew.

I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to work at a terrible ex-prison where they were once a prisoner. sounds miserable. I asked our guide and he admited that the government forced him into it. they promised it would only be for a month because they were short-staffed; he’s been there a couple years. he said for the first two weeks he couldn’t get through a tour without freaking out and having flashbacks about torture, getting shoved in ditches and electrocuted. horrible. he claims that he learned to like it and now thinks of it as therapy in a way. he was guilty of high treason (whatever that means? he didn’t elaborate).

my favorite story was about the political prisoner’s courtyard. Political prisoners were separated from the rest, which as our guide pointed out was pretty dumb because all these crazy, smart political prisoners had to do all day was debate and talk amongst themselves. anway, there was a walled-in courtyard with a craptastic tennis  court. the political prisoners would pass messages to the other prisoners by putting notes into tennis balls and “accidently” hitting them over the courtyard walls. the normal prisoners would then send notes back by returning the balls. In the courtyard there was a small, horrible garden patch with a tree. Allegedly, Mandela hid his manuscript, a long walk to freedom, in the garden patch.

The political prisoners were sent to work in the limestone quarry every day. 1000 of these prisoners returned in 1995 and each placed a stone by the quarry in memorial of their years of struggle and hardship.

kloofing in knysna

kloofing is a crazy adventure sport that involving going down a ravine or set of waterfalls; in afrikaans “kloof” means ravine or gorge. as wikipedia says, you have to “walk, scramble, climb, swim, plunge, jump, bumslide and abseil” to make your way down the ravine. We had never heard about kloofing before, but mark told us about it and how he had done the famous suicide gorge. suicide gorge was closed to the season (the water current are too strong in the winter/spring) and I was so bummed that we weren’t going to be able to go. Then in knysna we met this crazy guy, donnovan, who had been surfing and kloofing all his life.

you’ll have to look closely for our heads and feet popping out of the water.

he offered to take us and we had a blast. after a 40 minute trek through the woods, we reached the ravine. it was beautiful and the water was absolutely black – like oil. this made it super scary to jump into waterfalls and scramble over rocks. I had seen ravines before and never contemplated swimming in and out and through them. I wondered how we were going to do it.

my feet?

well, donnovan showed us that you basically make your way any way you can. the wetsuits made is easier (and less nasty) to slip over moldy rocks and to climb up steep cliffs – plus the water was shockingly cold so I was glad to have the suits.

kloofing was amazing and just as fun and scary as it sounds. i was glad to have the expert kloofer, donnovan, around, especially when he grabbed me when i was about to fall off the side of a cliff. thanks don! he was also really crazy and dove off rocks and waterfalls, but only after testing the water for depth and rocks.

One of the most beautiful bits was when we swam through a ravine – the passageway was so narrow and the rock walls were about 40 meters high on either side. it was very peaceful there in an eery way because of the black water. the water was so clean you could drink it, which we did – kloofing was hard work.

Knysna

I really liked Knysna; it’s a small beach town with a cool little harbor area. We stayed at this amazing b&b, Inyathi. The first night we got there, we sat around in the garden and heard the owner, Rheon, talked some crazy shit. Our room was geat and included an awesome freestanding bath as well as a weird area that seemed like a lizard’s den (minus lizard). It also included an African chair put awkwardly in the corner: the naughty boy’s chair.

nice garden

the knysna beach was really nice. would have been better if the water wasn’t quite so cold though.
hudson: I challenged kelly to do something awkward: she had no problems and then spent the next hour talking about her glory days as a junior gymnast champion and also told me that she beat keri strug in a competition once.
kelly: a blatant lie. except the bit about being awkward.

Braii: How South African’s grill. The owners of the b&b we stayed at had a big braii one night. Besides other guests, the owners had invited some local pals over. After getting some hair advice from one girl, I found out this other guy is a chef at one of the super posh restaurants on nearby Thesen Island. As everyone had brought a load of interesting and delicious meat, this was really good news. Earlier in the day we had picked up some ostrich, springbok kebabs and kudu (kind of like african wild deer, but with more impressive antlers) from a local butchery. the butchery was fun, but convincing this chef to cook our meat was even more fun. he got really into it and prepared a total feast.

It was a total meat-a-palooza. I honestly felt drunk on meat (but it could have been the wine I drank during the 3 hours of hanging out around the fire pit, waiting for it to become cool enough to cook on). With braiing, the food is cooked over a wood fire and part of the fun is gathering around the fire.

The Heads is an area that leads into the lagoon. There are some good walks and vantage points of the crashing water and nature reserve.

Wine tasting in Constantia

kelly, being a wine connoisseur (actually she doesn’t really care as long as it’s alcoholic), wanted to try some south african wine so we travelled to Constantia valley to do some winetasting. Due to our mean machine being manual transmission i had to be des for the day. (kelly told me she was unable to drive a stick car – ummmm)

Wasted

kelly: I wasn’t wasted, but due to a bad cold, I do admit to mixing medicine and wine. We tried a variety of wine from different vinyards. comments: south african wine is delicious overall. The real wine connoisseur (the wine pourer) at one of these vinyards claimed that Constantia produces some of the best wine in the world. I’ll agree.

Cape Point

We decided to hire a car and take a trip to Cape point. Our car was a classic Volkswagen Citi otherwise known as a big pile of turd. These cars are all over the place. They are a really really old model of the golf, and are only produced in south africa.

kelly: We (I) named the car Penpal and Penpal was a total champ. The speaker (there wasn’t actually a sound system) on the shotgun side conveniently popped out to create a clever hiding place for valuables. Penpal also came with her own “club” (remember those infomercials?); sadly the club didn’t actually work and was more for intimidation/steering wheel odornment.

Looked like a happening place so thought we’d stop.

kelly: this bar was happening. wtf was it not written up in lonely planet?

Cape point

ostrich rides seemed fun but they didn’t seem keen

Always a danger on south african roads.

kelly: seeing those big old ostriches up close was pretty amazing. I still had a terrible cold, but felt much better after seeing the ostriches. good enough to climb a bunch of rocks and crazy paths. the views were so good. we also saw some crazy little animals (see pic below) that we later figured out are bush pigs. they were stuffing their greedy faces.

Shark dive – Gansbaai

The southern coast of South Africa is a hub for the Great White Shark. We had already received numerous warnings about swimming in the ocean. So after I hummed the tune to Jaws for an hour or two, Kelly agreed to go on a shark cage dive. hudson took great pics – check them out – especially the ones under water when we were getting bashed around in the cage.

We set off to Gansbaai at 4:15 a.m, this is the closest point to Dyer Island which is famous for ‘shark alley’. We had been warned that the waters might be quite rough, but that was an understatement. After being anchored for 5 minutes, the puking began. Kelly is definitely not set out for a career in the navy. I think i counted 15 pukes by the first hour.

After about 90 minutes, the aroma of mashed up tuna guts attracted our first shark. It was then time to get into the cage. Five of us were crammed into a cage and we were given instructions not to put our hands through the cage to pet the shark, this was good advice.

kelly: luring the sharks with giant chunks of tuna seemed a bit contrived, but seeing the sharks was well worth all the seasickness and freezing water (you were right huddy). Seeing the sharks swim towards you from the murky background was eerie. Their eyes are so cold and their mouths are so big.

To see the shark swimming around from an underwater perspective, coming towards the cage, mouth wide open was a cool highlight.

kelly: At one point, a shark swam straight for the cage and jostled the bars with it’s huge jaws. That was my favorite part. Another highlight was throwing up on a really big sting ray. If I hadn’t been flinging myself over the boat to get sick, I would have never glimsed the ginormous ray. I also think I should mention that others became seasick, including Hudson who puked on four germans.

Proud memorabilia.

Cape town

Cape town is a pretty crazy city with a lot going on. Every time we go in we catch a mini bus taxi (sketchy minibuses that are crammed full of people. First day, kelly was unfortunate enough to sit right next to a woman eating stinking fried chicken; i had the pleasure of being sat on by a fat lady). (kelly: i was dying laughing, but if I had been hungover, the expereince would have been hell.)

random pics from around capetown:

Cape town castle

Bo Kaap area