My African Adventure Pt. 2

EnDeR_

Spain2944 Posts

August 25 2008 13:42 GMT

We left the story entering Sabie, a town very close to the Kruger National Park. This place was really nice, the rooms were spacious and you had everything you need. If there's one fault about the place though, is that the manager likes to talk. For hours. Seriously, the guy sat us down with a big map and 3 coloured markers and started organizing the trip for the following two days, with the times we should be at each point. Crazy. It turned out he was right though, those were the best times to watch the scenery, haha. When we told him we'd be spending 10 days in Cape Town he covered his face with his hands and said, "nooo, what are you doing? That is not Africa!", so he recommended we switched plans and go to Durban instead. It turned out he was right, again, haha.

After that, we went to spend the night in Johanesburg, but all the hotels were absolutely full, literally no space for anybody in any hotel in the whole fucking city. Amazing. Some dude in reception took some other guy's card that he had from some other and managed to get us 3 rooms in a guest house. We took the offer, we were desperate xD.

So... What's a guest house? It turns out it's some big house a family managed to build where they have some rooms available for guests, but they still live there as well. It's kind of an unofficial business, we had no choice though.

They came to pick us up, but we didn't know the drivers were also the owners of the house. We had to split up, since we still needed to return the rental car, so my dad went with one of them to the rental returns place and we went straight to their home. The lady driving the car was very nice but we misunderstood her. We thought she was just the driver and she did that as a sort of extra cash job. My mom was really getting stressed, she didn't know where we were going and my dad was nowhere to be found, we could've been kidnapped and we wouldn't even know it.

So we arrive at the place, it wasn't that bad, actually I quite liked it, but my mom was completely out of it, the hostess kept asking me if she was alright, but she was white as a sheet since my dad hadn't shown up yet and we'd been there for like 30 minutes. She was really getting stressed xD.

It was alright though, the woman had a younger brother and sister working at the place with them. The brother had a speech disorder and it was bloody murder just to try to understand him. We managed some small talk, but it really was hard.

This place was in the middle of nowhere so the hosts had to drive us to a place to have dinner. I've never felt weirder in my life. They drove an audi and another pretty nice car and basically set everything up with the restaurant staff to call them when we were done. Strange society.

Following morning we got driven again to the airport. It really weirded me out again, you don't really know if you're supposed to tip them, if it's included in the price... Just strange to have somebody drive you around who isn't a taxi driver.

Cape Town was everything Africa wasn't. Modern, with lots of white people and lots of "expensive" shops. It used to be the white capital of the country and it really showed. You could have easily been in any city from the USA and you wouldn't notice a big difference. Well, except that there are no taxies

We rented this amazing flat, 2 bedrooms, big kitchen, huge place to just sit down and relax. And the view... it was simply overwhelming. You could see the whole city from that 19th floor suite. Really, really impressive. It wasn't even that expensive ( a fifth of the price per day is what I'l be payin, more or less, in Oxford ). Same thing in New York would've been more than ten times the price.

My memory about what we did there is a little fuzzy now, but we went to the Cape of Good Hope (incredible), and we also went to Ermanus, to watch the gentle giants of the sea... the whales. There was this "gulf" where you could see whales from the seaside from about 50 m onwards. It's truly amazing, we even caught two of them jumping over the water. We had an amazing time, even if the pictures don't really show it, we were so far away they were just crap, but it was alright with binoculars.

Ostriches were all over the cape point

We also visited Robben Island, Nelson Mandela's prison, and had an ex-political prisoner show us around the place as a guide. It was really touching.

Mandela's cell

The other visitors of Robben Island

Next place we visited was Durban, even if we didn't really see it, we went straight to some summer town called St. Lucia. The beaches were absolutely sublime. Kilometers and kilometers of the finest white sand.

We didn't manage to see any crocodiles in the saffari so we went to this crocodile center which doubled as a hospital (for crocs). It reminded me of why I dislike caged animals, they were just lying there, completely apathetic. It wasn't much fun after seeing all the animals in the wild.

This fucker was 6 m long, if i recall correctly.

Some buffalo.

Talking about wild, we could've died there. It was our last day, and we went to the beach. Alright, next to the beach there's this nice pond. It was a really windy day there, the sand was getting picked off the ground and it actually hurt a bit on the legs, but this place had no flying sand whatsoever. My sister was about to take a swim there when we notice some dark shapes in the water.

So there we went closer to investigate (say, 50 m away). It loked just like rocks, but then all of a sudden a hippo head pops out of the water and yawns it's head off. WTF!

I don't know if you're aware of this, but hippos are the animal that kills more humans every year. They've got enormous fangs and they're insanely territorial.

We were of course shocked that there would be such dangerous animals right next to a common beach, but that's when we saw this big-ass sign that said "beware of hippos and crocodiles", haha. It was only visible from land, if you came from the beach, it was facing the other way xD.

Anyway, we were still curious about the hippos and we have balls of steel (you can call it stupidity if you like), so we tried to get closer. I mean, come on, when are you ever gonna get the chance of getting ripped apart by hippos ever again?

That's about the time this car of, I guess you can call them rangers, came along and kindly told us that if we got any closer we might scare off the crocodile that was lurking nearby, that they wanted to catch.

By this point we rethought our strategy and decided to live another day. We just went off to find my parents, who obviously wanted to see the hippos, so back we went again. I was seeing shadows in the water everywhere, flipping out by this point. The hippos didn't particularly give a shit about us, they continued their exciting activities of yawning and sitting their big fat asses on the sand, I mean, they could've at least feigned interest in us or something, fucking assholes xD.

Back at the appartment we wanted to have a barbecue so we set out this beautiful pyramid with logs we bought at the supermarket. My dad of course, being the expert that he is, only had 10 pages of a newspaper and said that was enough.

30 minutes and 2 magazines later, we were still trying to light up the fire with paper napkins and toilet paper. Yeah, you got that right, napkins and toilet paper xD.

We FINALLY managed to get it going with half a tablet of this ligher cubes I had to go buy in town. It was supposed to be 1 cube per fire, but we had to use 6 to get the thing going and it almost went out 15 minutes later. I was even considering getting gasoline from the car.

In the end we did manage to get the barbeque done, at the cost of my family's sanity and 10 € worth of toilet paper, but by god we did it. It wasn't my dad's fault though, it was the wood that wasn't dry, the only way you could have gotten wetter logs would've been if you dipped them in water first.

Anyway, we got back to Cape Town and from there back to London, then home. It was a nice trip

trancertt

Croatia37 Posts

August 25 2008 16:51 GMT

Amazing writeup, thumbs up

clazziquai

6685 Posts

August 25 2008 16:54 GMT

Dude great blog post.

Looks like you had a lot of fun! Thanks for sharing man

Xeofreestyler

Belgium6786 Posts

August 25 2008 16:57 GMT

Really nice!

The first pic looks like there's some sick energy beam flowing up from the person on the right

Mowse

South Africa56 Posts

August 25 2008 17:03 GMT

Cape Town is awesome

) We go there every year for xmas and stay with relatives, glad u enjoyed ure stay in S.A, i live in durban, nice warm weather

EnDeR_

Spain2944 Posts

August 25 2008 17:12 GMT

On August 26 2008 01:57 Xeofreestyler wrote:
Really nice!

The first pic looks like there's some sick energy beam flowing up from the person on the right

I know! i saw the thumbnail and thought, WTF, my sister's gone supersaiyan on me?

On August 26 2008 01:54 clazziquai wrote:
Dude great blog post.

Looks like you had a lot of fun! Thanks for sharing man

South Africa was amazing

. I haven't been to anywhere else in Africa, other than Moroco, but it looks like its the place to visit, at least that's what we were told. Namibia is supposed to be nice as well, we will probably check it out in a few years, when we start missing seeing big wild animals again

On August 26 2008 02:03 Mowse wrote:
Cape Town is awesome

) We go there every year for xmas and stay with relatives, glad u enjoyed ure stay in S.A, i live in durban, nice warm weather

Yeah, we were really warm in Durban, well, St. Monica or whatever the name of the town was, and it was winter there... It must be hell in summer xD.

Daigomi

South Africa4316 Posts

August 25 2008 17:13 GMT

Haha, glad to hear you enjoyed your journey. I remember trying to explain what Pretoria is like last time, but I just realised something. Even if you went to most of SA's predominantly "white" cities, like Johannesburg, you would have been in the city centre most of the time in any case, which is still mostly black. Johannesburg especially, is very similar to big US cities, much more so than Cape Town.

Cape Town's culture is famous for two things: It's the most laid back city in South Africa, and "capies" or coloured people (since Cape Town is the first city white settlers settled in, it's the city with the highest rate of coloured people) who speak with a very flat accent. It's also the most expensive city in South Africa (excluding perhaps areas like Sandton in Johannesburg). The beaches are nice at Cape Town, but it's so damn windy there that I never go to the beach. Also, the sea there is part of the Atlantic ocean, so the water is quite cold. Durban (and it's surrounding towns like St Lucia and Umhlanga) have stunning beaches, beautiful waves, and the sea is part of the Indian ocean, so the water is much nicer. However, the beaches are usually crowded (during our holiday season at least), so it's not always as fun.

Anyway, glad to hear you enjoyed the trip. I find it funny that your mother was terrified, and that you considered that you might get kidnapped though. Kidnappings are quite rare in South Africa, and especially from people that own a nice Audi. We have very few "pointless" crimes in South Africa. Most crimes are either things like hate crimes (racism [both white and black racism]), or armed robberies. We don't really get mad serial killers like in films.

Daigomi

South Africa4316 Posts

August 25 2008 17:16 GMT

Durban is hell in summer

It's not that it's hotter than the rest of South Africa (places like Uppington regularly go over 40 degrees celsius), but that it's humid as fuck. Seriously, I die every time we go to Durban. The humidity there is incredible, and very uncomfortable!

EnDeR_

Spain2944 Posts

August 25 2008 17:45 GMT

On August 26 2008 02:13 Daigomi wrote:
Haha, glad to hear you enjoyed your journey. I remember trying to explain what Pretoria is like last time, but I just realised something. Even if you went to most of SA's predominantly "white" cities, like Johannesburg, you would have been in the city centre most of the time in any case, which is still mostly black. Johannesburg especially, is very similar to big US cities, much more so than Cape Town.

Cape Town's culture is famous for two things: It's the most laid back city in South Africa, and "capies" or coloured people (since Cape Town is the first city white settlers settled in, it's the city with the highest rate of coloured people) who speak with a very flat accent. It's also the most expensive city in South Africa (excluding perhaps areas like Sandton in Johannesburg). The beaches are nice at Cape Town, but it's so damn windy there that I never go to the beach. Also, the sea there is part of the Atlantic ocean, so the water is quite cold. Durban (and it's surrounding towns like St Lucia and Umhlanga) have stunning beaches, beautiful waves, and the sea is part of the Indian ocean, so the water is much nicer. However, the beaches are usually crowded (during our holiday season at least), so it's not always as fun.

Anyway, glad to hear you enjoyed the trip. I find it funny that your mother was terrified, and that you considered that you might get kidnapped though. Kidnappings are quite rare in South Africa, and especially from people that own a nice Audi. We have very few "pointless" crimes in South Africa. Most crimes are either things like hate crimes (racism [both white and black racism]), or armed robberies. We don't really get mad serial killers like in films.

St. Lucia! that was the name of the town we were at, i wasn't sure if it was Monica or another girl's name, haha

, thanks!

We were warned against going into Johannesburg because of the violence going on, so I can't say much about it, we basically just saw the roads around the airport when we were looking for a hotel to stay.

I'm used to the Atlantic ocean, people say exactly the same thing about the place where I live (that the water is cold, it's windy and they don't like it). My mom was scared of the currents so she more or less talked us out of swimming farther away than 10 m into the water, haha, but yeah, the waves were quite big in St Lucia. It was windy as hell the 3 times we tried going to the beach so it wasn't very pleasant. It was quite deserted though, I think there were about 1 person per 100 m^2.

Well, about the kidnapping, we came from being lost at night driving around the airport looking for a hotel, a little stressed, and then we got separated. It was obvious we weren't being kidnapped, but my mom flipped out, and it affected the rest of us, we're just not used to that sort of thing. Anyway, we had a nice time there =).

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