africa

February 22, my first day in Johannesburg.



Here are Alex and Karen; I was lucky enough to arrive on ladies night and enjoy this fire - the fire burned for three days by the way. Thanks for picking me up at the airport and extending your hospitality guys. Johannesburg is a large sprawled out city, not at all what I expected. The city has a large number of Western style shopping malls, and appears overrun with corporate interests. There are quite a few McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chickens, Wimpys, Shells, Spars, and other foreign conglomerates. The malls appear to be brand new, or at least very clean. After the 'liberation' or 'democracy' or 'the new government' - depending on who you talk to - there is a big 'security' problem. There is a lot of violent crime, and people flock to safe areas (the shopping malls) where there is tight security. Most of the houses have walls with barb wire on top of them, and there really are an alarming number of people you talk to here that have experienced violent crime first hand. Unlike say New Orleans though most of them do survive being robbed or hijacked. There always was a lot of violent crime here, but the apartheid government sheltered the white citizens from it. Now that protection has gone, so you move from one fortified area to the next, feeling pretty paranoid.
Before leaving Jo'burg Tanya and I paid a visit to the lion park around the corner from their house. There are no wild lions roaming the streets here in South Africa. All large animals are fenced in in game reserves or rehabilitation camps. The fences are actually more to keep the people out than to keep the animals in. If it wasn't for these fences there probably wouldn't be any 'game' left. Even with the fences people are still poaching animals; Rhino horns fetch a ton of money on the Asian market as an aphrodisiac for example. So here are some lion pictures:

This guy looked dead serious. The white lions are not albinos; just as we have red haired people the lions have white coated relatives. The expressed gene is apparently very similar.



Don't mess with this kitty!



The lion park has four prides with one male, five or six females, and a bunch of pups. This lioness really liked her guy...

While Alex was on a business trip to London Tanya and I drove from Jo'burg to the coast. The N2 starts in Jo'berg, in the province of Gauteng, and winds through Mpumalanga, just South of Swaziland, to Kwazulu Natal. As both Tanya and I are late night people we got a late start and drove until dark when we found ourselves in Piet Retief. The first available campground was loaded with loud white South African rugby fans as the national playoffs were in full swing. I will have to address the race issue as race is unfortunately as important here as it is in the US. South Africa reminds me a lot of New Orleans, and not just because of the similar latitudes; the extreme segregation that you find there is present here as well. The derogatory term for the white Afrikaner is 'crunchies' - a rather fitting term when you imagine a sunburnt crusty white person. You can find them in Piet Retief; we sampled the nightlife and found a white bar with fat white chicks swaying to some sort of religious rock song - it wasn't pretty. The local blacks were hanging out outside by the gas station blasting the gettho blaster. There was very little interaction between the two groups, and it became very clear from talking to a little white girl in the camping bathroom that racist indoctrination is still alive and well in this country. Luckily not all people are the same - we just found a pocket of unabashed white racism in Piet Retief. As far as black racism goes - I have found the black population here friendlier than the black population in New Orleans. People here smile! Try that in NO and see how far you get. Here in South Africa though both black and white people are very upbeat about their country and the peaceful transition from an apartheid regime to one that includes all people living here. Nelson Mandela is a hero to most everyone who likely singlehandedly avoided a race war. There really is an air of conciliation here that is inspiring. Compared to the US where racism is institutionalized and kept as a tool to control people this country is actually trying to rise above it, and appears to manage quite nicely.

What a relief to get on the road again the next morning. South African country side is fairly arid, without a lot of big trees - we're in the bush!



Scrubby vegetation and rolling grassy hills. There is quite a lot of industrial activity; pine plantations for paper production, oil & gas refineries, even a nuclear power plant that sports the world's smallest, longest lasting fuel rods. Then there are the gold mines - go see 'Soldier of the Rock' by Makea Maake if you get a chance. This is a regular industrial nation! You can even drink the tap water. We got to St Lucia in time to make the gate into The Greater St Lucia Wetland Park, a world heritage site.

An electric fence, and an anti animal grid on the road way. This is just a stunning area of the country, and there are plenty of wild animals in the park.



From the gate it is about an hour's drive to get to the beach, through the above landscape. This is a white Rhino.



White Rhinos were named wijde rhinos (broad rhino) in Afrikaans because of their wide snout used for grazing. The English bastardized the word into white rhino as opposed to the black rhino that eats leaves from small trees. There are many types of deer in the park (bokken in Afrikaans) - this year there is a large number of kudos in the park.



You can recognize the Kudos by the white stripes on their hip quarter. Here is a foggy picture of a warthog. They travel in family units and have pretty cute young ones. Unfortunately the wild animals don't pose so well; no use trying to call them - here kitty kitty just won't cut it.

We arrived in paradise an hour later.



Between the Indian Ocean and Lake Bangazi lies a thin strip of land, protected by the game fence. I happily stayed in the Cape Vidal campground for about a week. Here I met Kobus and Celia van Oosthuizen who introduced me to real Afrikaner hospitality and provided endless knowledge of their country. They also let me use their caravan to store my cooler box which the monkeys managed to raid as soon as I turned my back:



The Vervet monkeys are a problem here. This guy tried to be really low key, but had I not been there he would have tried to break into the cooler box, and he would have succeeded too. Food must be locked up in a car or building or the monkeys will get it. Then there are the bush pigs, one of whom had his nose in our cooler box one late evening. I did a dance with this animal, who mock charged me a couple of times before deciding better of it, but not before I had woken up almost all my neighbors.

Lake Bangazi:



This is an estuary that used to be shrouded by mangroves. Unfortunately they cut them all down to make way for Eucalyptus plantations with the result that the mouth of the estuary is now closed, and shell fish and other fish populations dramatically declining or disappearing. The 19th century was disastrous for South Africa. It is named the century of the great slaughter when the white man came in and decimated most all wildlife. The crocodile museum near the game fence in St Lucia shows some of this slaughter where people boasted to have killed 23 seekoei (hippos) before 10 o'clock in the morning. I just can't see why it is fun to power slaughter that many animals - you can probably feed your family an entire winter on one hippo, so without refrigeration why kill 23? I don't even know if they are edible or not, but this is our history. Mass slaughter of people, animals and trees. Makes me real proud of my race. Luckily the greater St. Lucia area has been protected since the late 1800's, making it the first game reserve in the country. It now has world heritage site status, which prevented mining of the beach which has titanium ore in it, a rare victory for conservationists. And there are hippos left in the estuary:



These guys are really big - the picture does not do justice to their size. Out of all big animals in SA hippos are responsible for most human fatalities because of their fiercely territorial nature. They can bite a crocodile in half with one bite. The commonly found croc here is the Nile Crocodile. They are the same size as our Alligators, but have a wider snout, and they have glands to deal with salt water unlike the alligators that are fresh water only.



I look a lot braver than I felt here. This is part of the game drive around the estuary and I did question getting out of the car, let alone walking on the beach with crocodiles and hippos roaming the lake. Of course in the end you have a better chance of getting killed in a car accident or getting robbed or raped by members of our own species, but still.

All good things must come to an end, and I got a ride out of the park with the van Oosthuizens, who dropped me off in St Lucia at the Bloo House, my first backpacker. I wish I had pictures of the place and the people. Bernita, her brother Dean, husband Kevin, and baby boykie Jalen run the place and I must say that those people can PARTY! We had a great bonfire on the beach, zoomed through the reserve in the back of a bakkie (pick up) for an impromptu night drive. Why anyone would want to leave St Lucia I don't know. This is truly a magical place. But leave I did, on the Baz bus to Durban. I spent about 15 hours in Durban, perhaps 30 minutes of that asleep. I was happy to miss the bus the next morning, but the helpful staff at Nomads made the bus turn around and collect me. Aw shucks. I'll be back in Durban one day though - it is a pretty intriguing city very much like New Orleans. Onward to Port St. Johns in the Transkei, now named the Wild Coast. Here I finally felt that I was in Africa. There are practically no white people in town; it is pretty hard to blend in with your white skin. It is a funny feeling to be a minority! People here are of the Xhosha tribe, an offshoot of the Zulu tribe. Nelson Mandela is Xhosha, as are many other ruling political figures in the country. The people here speak surprisingly good English though, a mandatory subject in school. I stayed at Amapondo; what a fantastic place.



Tim is holding it all together with his wife Annie. They are actively involved in the local community. The people here are very poor; many are hungry. It is very hard to get ahead; people work for 10 dollars a day - barely enough to feed yourself. Aids is rampant - 30% of the pregnant South African women are infected. You never know whether someone is skinny because they have aids, or not enough food. Still, in the face of all this adversity you find the most wonderful people. I was sitting on the rocks here one day when a little local boy no more than 10 or 11 walked up to me with his catch of the day. When I grinned at him his face almost lit up in a big smile. He wanted to know whether I was stressed. I told him I was trying to destress. He then gave me the most beautiful smile and said: "You will get stressed if you think too much" and off he went. Out of the mouth of the babes! That is probably the best advice I got in awhile. I met Vortani (Vortex) the first day in Amapondo - Sakumzi (JJ) a few days later. Thanks for your hospitality guys. They took exceptional care of me and showed me around their area.



We went on a canoetrip to the Sulphur Springs. We were dumb enough to try and canoe upstream on the Mzimvubu river; I especially should have known better. The Mzimvubu river is the third largest river in South Africa, and the current is really rolling through there. It was also very windy, and so our canoes got swamped, and everything got soaking wet. If it wasn't for JJ's unwavering conviction that we had to keep going I would have quit right then and there. We didn't though, and stopped underneath a bridge and built a fire. We dried our clothes and made a braai. All the city slickers crashed very early; no loud music or alcohol to keep them awake! We pushed on the next day and made it to the springs around mid day.



Clinton, JJ, and myself after taking a mud bath. Yeah, I am having fun yet. Vortex and JJ took me to the Green House. Too bad I don't have pictures of this very local bar. No mind I don't speak Xosha - dancing is a universal language a lot of us understand. Way too much fun here. The bartender was a white Afrikaner, and spoke Afrikaans - I understood him well enough. It is a weird feeling to hear black and white people speak Afrikaans and to realize that my Dutch ancestors left a major major footprint in this country. I partied on here for awhile.



You guessed it - ganja is in abundant supply here. People smoke it everywhere, outside on the street, in most all backpackers. It is extremely cheap - especially when you have friends like Vortex and JJ who took me on a special trip one night into the village where I was welcomed with some Xhosha beer and a big spliff. Makes one wonder why it is so illegal in the US. Probably because you will have peaceful loving thoughts after smoking. We can't have that in the US now can we.

As I mentioned, the Amapondo community spirit is big; big enough to take in a variety of stray dogs:



Anandi, Amandala, Willie and Kapoefi - only four out of the seven that were there.



Aww - how sweet.

Once again though I found myself having to leave. Vortani and JJ decided we needed to celebrate, so we put on a big braai my last night. There is a big orphanage in town - aids orphans abound here, and a few of them showed up. I've always taken for granted that I can eat. Not these kids though. Wide eyed, gracious and very thankful for some food, one of them obviously sick with an aids related respiratory infection. They still manage to laugh, dance and play though. We Westerners could learn a lot from their spirit. I am writing all this in Wilderness, a small village near Cape Town with this fantastic view of the Indian Ocean from my balcony:



Here I was nursing a cold and my culture shock of getting out of the Transkei away from my buddies. I watched dolphins play here in the surf - they seemed to enjoy playing in the waves as much as I do. I am in Capetown now - I will post more pictures when I will find another high speed internet connection down the road. Cheers!