Johannesburg

We ended up with a couple of spare days left in Johannesburg. With a 40% unemployment rate it is no surprise that crime and violence is rife in this city. We elected to stay in one of the safer suburbs, Sandton.

During our stay we did a tour of Soweto, one of the townships. The townships are the communities where Africans were forcefully relocated under apartheid. There are a few middle class houses in Soweto like those of Winnie Mandela and Desmond Tutu but an even greater number live in poverty in shacks constructed of scrap material. We visited a shantytown which was home to 25,000 people who had no electricity, shared 40 water faucets, and 1500 outhouses. The daycare facility constructed of scraps of sheet metal and painted in cheerful red displayed a “this is a gun free zone” sign at the gate. We visited one of the homes, a sparsely furnished two room (no not 2 bedroom – 2 room) shack that was home to one woman and her five children. In spite of the modest conditions it was evident that the owners had a sense of pride and ownership with their neatly kept yards, the odd potted plant, cleanly swept floors and brightly painted doors and window frames.

We also visited the apartheid museum which definitely earned its place as our favourite museum on our trip thus far. The exhibits were interactive and really moving and the architecture correlated with the journey through the history of apartheid. Even four hours wasn’t quite enough to take it all in.

Amidst all the heavy stuff we also managed to fill the social calendar with a great couple that we had met in Kruger that were staying at the same hotel as us. The first night the four of us were too nervous to venture out into the notoriously dangerous streets so we ordered dinner in. By the third night we were getting a bit of cabin fever so we braved the streets (which really weren’t that bad) and walked up to the nearby square for a great evening of dinner, drinks, laughs, and somehow managed to avoid getting mugged. The next evening we were “out of Africa” and on to the last and perhaps most exciting part of our journey… meeting up with Nat and Martin!!!!!

Kruger Park

Unfortunately it was time to part with our newfound family for the past 12 days. Admittedly, walking into this 16 day excursion we were a little worried about who we might have to put up for such a big chunk of time. I must say we were REALLY lucky. We were blessed with a great group of open-minded, considerate, and interesting people. They made evenings around the campfire with a few bottles of wine reminiscent of hanging out at home with friends. We exchanged hugs and contacts and the next day we were off to Kruger Park to meet up with a new group and hopefully some more wildlife. We were excited to be trading in our tent and arthritis-inducing sleeping mats for our own little rondavel (traditional-style African house).
Our new traveling companions were fantastic with the exception of one couple who collectively had less personality than a brick, the I.Q. of a potato, and a complete inability to stop talking. Somehow, the wildlife wasn’t frightened away by their endless banter and we got to see several different animals. We were all very excited to see a young male lion on our last day. Our driver pursued him down a steep dirt trail before we discovered his truck wasn’t 4 wheel-drive. Nobody was jumping out to push with the lion only 15 feet away, so we all had to clamber over the seats to put weight on the rear axle in order to reverse up the hill. Click here to see some of the wildlife pictures that we captured.

Congratulations Natalie & Martin!

We’d like to wish Natalie and Martin congratulations on their wedding this weekend. We are looking forward to celebrating when we meet up with them in a couple of days!

Wildlife & Wild Water!

Our tour group only allowed time for one evening game drive in Chobe Park but it was a fantastic one. We got a close-up view of elephants, giraffes, antelope, baboons and a distant view of some hippos. The highlight was a “not-so-shy” leopard. She was initially napping in a branch of a tree but she ended up waking up, doing some stretches and running nimbly down the tree trunk to look for some dinner; she seemed completely un-phased by the small army of vehicles around the tree. As if that wasn’t enough, we were also lucky enough to see three lions as we exited the park.
The next day we crossed the border into Zimbabwe. I was a bit worried when I saw the massive visa stickers that they were issuing as I didn’t have any spaces that big in my passport. Fortunately I talked the officer into sticking it onto the endorsements page of my passport- phew!
Just inside Zimbabwe we were stopped by a group of officials for a bogus demand that our brand new Toyota truck should have better reflectors (inspite of the reflective strip running all the way around the van). Ncane tried to reason with them for 30 minutes and finally gave-in paying them off with $20 USD to avoid having the vehicle confiscated. The fine was supposed to be 175 billion dollars in the local currency which we obviously didn’t have, having just entered the country. The exchange rate fluctuates wildly jumping from 3 billion dollars to 7 billion dollars for one USD in the three days that we were there.
Our first night we took a cruise along the Zambezi river above the falls. The captain alleviated our fears early on by telling us that he was restricted from going within 2 km of the falls themselves, otherwise we would end up like the occasional hippo that gets carried over whilst attempting to cross the Zambezi. We did get a close up view of the hippos and even got to see a large male expressing all the typical aggression signs, the most disturbing of which was “dung-spraying”, we’ll spare you the details. We also saw several elephants and admired their swimming prowess as one made the 600 metre crossing using his trunk as a snorkel. Ncane had arranged for a visit to our campsite by a group of men that did some traditional songs and dancing for us.
We had the good fortune of arriving three days after the opening of rafting season. So the next day we found ourselves once again on the Zambezi, this time below the falls. The river was still a little too fast so we were restricted to 50% of the rapids. Even these ones were rough enough to flip one of our two rafts!
That evening Ncane took us on a trip through the nearby village. We walked through the market (the price of a tomato was $250,000), visited the beer hall, and saw what was probably an affluent community by Zimbabwean standards. Although, being in Victoria Falls we were largely insulated from the real Zimbabwe, even this community appeared to be very poor. People were constantly offering to trade us goods for the clothing off our backs. Ncane explained why the hospital looked so quiet; there is a lack of staff and medicine so the people don’t even bother with it.. If you get really sick in Zimbabwe you die, unless of course you are the likes of Mugabe who has his own hospital. We saw some of Mugabe’s campaign posters and a polling tent set up in the week preceding his sham election. In spite of the living conditions, the people were incredibly friendly and welcoming.
It was our last day in Victoria Falls and we had yet to see what had brought us here. We could hear the roar of the falls from our campsite which was about 1 km away. Our first glimpse was from a helicopter which gave us a great sense of the massive scale and the geography that has created the world’s largest waterfall. It was so much larger than we had ever imagined. The African’s name for the falls translates into “smoke that thunders”, as the mist from the falls can be seen from many kilometres away. We soon found ourselves in the middle of this mist as we visited the falls by foot next. After getting sufficiently drenched we crossed into no man’s land, the bridge that spans the Zambezi connecting Zimbabwe to Zambia and ogled at the falls some more before heading back to camp.
It is a shame that such a beautiful part of the world is tainted with such political turmoil.

Poo trivia and other things

Our next adventure saw us departing from Johannesburg on a 16 day camping trip. By day 12 we could finally pronounce our guide, Ncane’s name properly… it required clicking your tongue as though you were tisking somebody and then rolling the click into an N and then finishing off with “anay” A lot of the time he got referred to as “Eddie” for his Eddie Murphy smile. He didn’t mind as he had already given everyone else in the group nicknames… for some reason Adam was the Colonel and I was Miss Fergie. The first couple of days involved a lot of driving. In addition to vast expanses of pavement, we saw hundreds of termite mounds that were probably larger than most downtown Vancouver apartments, a few ostriches hanging out by the side of the road, and plenty of elephants. But the real excitement started on day three! We set out for our trip into the Okavango Delta, a 15,000 km2 stretch of wetlands most of which is inaccessible and rarely visited. We soon discovered how the locals traverse the delta when we were loaded into the traditional dugout canoes known as mokoros. These wobbly boats are pushed along through the shallow delta using a long pole, fortunately we had a skilled poler on board so we just got to sit back and enjoy the scenery. Unlike most of the campsites up to this point there were no barriers to keep the animals out it was just us in the wilderness. We were reminded of this one afternoon when we spotted an elephant grazing within 30 metres of our campsite. All of our wildlife viewing was done on foot, a little unnerving especially when we accidentally came a little too close to another elephant that was hidden by a bush one day. Fortunately we saw him before he saw us! We saw several more elephants, zebra, a python, small game, and several different birds. We encountered an incredible amount of elephant poo, which we discovered you don’t step in but trip over because each lump is at least the size of a football. Oh yes, a bit of poo trivia for you: we found some poo that was completely white…. any guesses which animal it was from?
We amused the polers one afternoon with our attempts to manoeuvre their mokoros- it is definitely harder than it looks! The grand finale was a flight over the delta where we saw even more wildlife, this time from a more comfortable distance.
Then it was time to hit the road again for more exciting adventures… stay tuned for the next instalment from the camping trip.

Cape Town Capers

36 hours and five flights from Phnom Penh found us in Cape Town. Although it is listed as one of the top five most beautiful cities in the world we wouldn’t find out if it met expectations until the next morning as we arrived under the cover of darkness and rain. Fortunately the weather cooperated and we awoke to a spectacular view of the massive Table Mountain basking in the sunshine. We were told that taking in the view from the top of this geologic wonder is the #1 thing to do in Cape Town so we looked forward to the experience. Day 1: The mountain was closed due to high winds so we got our bearings and a bit of history with a cruise around town on one of those double decker tour buses that every city seems to have. We hopped off for a stroll along Camps Bay beach and a great seafood lunch overlooking the Atlantic before picking up the next bus through the beachside suburbs and back to the waterfront.
Day 2: With the mountain still closed due to high winds we opted for the #2 thing to do in Cape Town: a trip to Robben Island detention center. This was where Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners were incarcerated for their involvement in the anti-apartheid movement. It was not uncommon for a prisoner to serve far more time than he was originally sentenced to thanks to special laws that were slipped through government allowing prisoners to be detained indefinitely without trial. Robben Island is now a UNESCO monument and tours are conducted by ex-prisoners who give their personal insight into life in the prison. It was fascinating to learn how the prison became known amongst Africans as the “University” because time served put you in direct contact with the most influential and revolutionary members of the anti-apartheid movement. Illegal communications between prison sections were smuggled inside food trays or put inside tennis balls and “accidentally” lobbed over section walls. Debate and learning also took place during breaks in the hard labour activity of quarrying limestone by hand and smashing rocks.
Day 3 started at the District Six museum commemorating the forced relocation of 60000 black and coloured people, (there was an official distinction between black and coloured people by the government at the time) in an attempt to make Cape Town completely white.
After the museum we rented a car to drive to the Cape Of Good Hope, the most south-western point in Africa. As we were leaving town we were surprised to see the cable car descending Table Mountain, the wind had stopped! We took a ride up the rotating cable car and took in the breathtaking views before continuing down the coast for fish and chips at the seaside and some hiking around the incredible cape cliffs and beaches.
We definitely would’ve spent more time in Cape Town but our next adventure was calling so we’ll have to add it to our growing wishlist of places that we’d like to revisit one day.

Phnom Penh

Phnom Penh became the center of world attention during the 70’s when the communist Khmer Rouge guerrillas took control, marching the people out the capital into what would become the darkest period of Cambodia’s history. Families were split apart and the entire population subjected to long days of forced labour under conditions of starvation. Those who had an education, had lived in the cities, or had worked for the overthrown government were instantly killed. Children were punished for missing their families. Other children were given guns and carte blanche to use them. Anything worth living for, the Khmer Rouge prohibited. In four years, they slaughtered a quarter of the population: men, women and children in unbelievably brutal ways. It seems that everyone over the age of 30 has a story to tell of this horrific time. These are people that have still not had the small grace of seeing the perpetrators of these horrors brought to justice. Unfortunately, time is running out and in some cases, as with the leader of this reign of terror Pol Pot, it already has.
We visited Tuol Sleng, a school that had been turned into a torture camp for those that were suspected of being opposed to the regime. The thousands of mug-shots of the victims that were tortured and killed here filled several rooms. The faces staring into the camera betrayed a range of emotions from fear to bewilderment, disgust, incomprehension, and defiance. To see some of these haunting images click here
We also visited the “Killing Fields” monument, one of many sites where 20,000 people were buried in mass graves. The bits of fabric, clothing of the dead, still litter the site serving as a reminder of what recent history this is. Meanwhile, a massive monument filled with the skulls of the victims is an unmistakable reminder of the magnitude of the atrocities.
Somehow, in spite of the horrors of the recent past, the city of Phnom Penh retains a great vibe. Locals flock to the immaculately kept green spaces in the evening to play badminton, soccer, or to flirt with one another. There are numerous markets selling beautiful hand loomed silk and rip offs of every imaginable Western label. There’s the flashy Royal Palace where the official Royal staff uniforms consist of ridiculous puffy trousers in vivid colours, one for each different day of the week (and I thought Dairy Queen polyesters were bad). There’s the Silver Pagoda named for its floors crafted entirely of silver. Oh yes, and of course no visit is complete without at least one round of drinks at the Foreign Correspondence Club which has become legendary on the traveller’s circuit. The FCC isn’t the only place in town to quench one’s thirst though; the large ex-pat population has spawned a plethora of great bars and restaurants. Of course, there is no shortage of hole-in-the-wall spots serving up the national specialty of delicious coconut curry in banana leaf known as Amok.