"...until someone comes to visit."

With Laura's family visiting us in Mauritius over the past few weeks, we've done of a lot of the tourist stuff we wouldn't normally normally do (except the beach visits,we would normally do that!)

The botanic garden in Pamplemousses worth seeing for anyone that comes here, especially if you get the guide to take you round. It seemed like almost everything growing there was either medicine for something or a seasoning to cook with. I also saw the tortoises there. I'm never quite as interested to see animals out of a natural habitat but it was interesting all the same. 

The snorkelling was definitely a highlight, we did it almost every day. The family gave us an action cam as an early Christmas present so we managed to get plenty of footage and photos of all the underwater life. If you ever do it, take bread... the fish will swarm to you to feed (don't hold me responsible for anything else the jumps up to feed, mind you!) the best place was Coin de Mire: we took a cruise around there and Ilot Gabrielle, and at one point we stopped and all jumped off the boat around the shore of Coin de Mire. Genuinely some of the best snorkelling you could imagine. The rest of the cruise was fairly spectacular too; good food, great views, a new beach... A grand day out.

Lizards not allowed

One of my favourite things about Mauritius is the reptiles (which I recently discovered no longer exist, evolutionarily speaking). Most of them don't belong here; they got carried on boats over the past few hundred years or so from various corners of the Earth, but have established some substantial populations here. A nocturnal house gecko is the one you'd see the most. See and hear, they are damned noisy little things. ("What's that bird sound?" "It's a gecko." "No way, they don't make noises!" "Yes they do." I've had that conversation many times, with the same person.) I couldn't help but laugh when I saw this one trying to get into the bank. Apparently he wasn't welcome, though he remained determined. I think it's an agamid lizard, which was introduced around 100 years ago from Asia. They do change colour for specific seasons, but are most commonly this brown/olive and sometimes grey colour. 

We went for an exploration through a small forest area not far from home. Small forest areas represent what was once the majority of the island, but now relegated to a few small patches, another example of the human impact here, something which is always very, very apparent. Anyway, it was the first time I saw the Mauritius ornate day gecko. It's a distinctly colourful little thing as you can see, and apparently quite common. It's also endemic, Mauritius is the only place in the world you can see it.

The whole trip was part of a weekend exploration down to the South of the island, and we ended up in Blue Bay. It's a nice place, but quite a loud, obnoxious tourist hub on the beach. Fortunately, the guest house we stayed at gave us access to another patch of beach around the corner, which had almost no-one on it. I spent a LONG time in the evening reading, and after a sound sleep woke up looking out of the window at this coconut palm, a worthy cliche icon of life on a tropical island. 

The weekend wouldn't have been complete with a walk along the beach at Grand Bay after getting home, and another photo looking out to the boats and the great beyond.

Ornaments on the Beach

When you go to the beach here there are 3 things you are guaranteed to see: water, sand and Hindu ornaments. There are a lot of small prayer spots cemented into place along the coast, in amongst rocks at times, which are evidently a common place to go and pray. There are also lots of these small loose ornaments (pictured) here and there. It relates to the story of how the God Ganesh got his elephants head (an unfortunate incident in which his Father tried to kill him), which happened next to the water (I don't really know the story well enough to be any more specific than that). This proximity of this event to water, coupled with a rule that these ornaments cannot be thrown away as rubbish when they're finished with, means people tend to throw them into the ocean or a river. Apparently, it seems someone decided this beach spot would be best for this one.

Marooned on Ile Maurice

It's about two months now since arriving on Mauritius. Marooned is a poor choice of words, I admit. It suggests there's some attempt to leave, but so far I've found no reason to. The humidity and sunburn doesn't warrant complaining, I don't think, though I assure you they're both very much apparent at times!

I'm writing this with a view of Grand Bay to my right. Very much immediately to my right; the sand is one metre away, and the turquoise water only a further two metres away. It's 26 degrees C, with a perfect breeze to make it comfortable, and a pint of the local beer, Phoenix, topping it off to a nice afternoon.

Beaches and cycling have been the main priorities since we arrived here. Going to the beach is like going for a pint back home; when you've finished work and you want to go somewhere to talk about work (for some reason) the beach is where you go. We've spent a few Friday nights watching the sun set on Mon Choisy beach with people from work, and spent a few (but not enough) daytime hours soaking up the sun and getting tanned (burned, in my case. Sun cream doesn't work). As for cycling goes, we bought mountain bikes and take them around the island a lot. We don't get far, around 50km at a time, but enough to explore the North. The rides are a mix of roads and sugar cane field rocky paths, which our mountain bikes were perfectly designed for.

We managed to explore as far down as port Louis, the capital. I was suprised to find that there's not much there apart from government offices, cheap import shops, and a slightly run-down looking waterfront. Nonetheless, we did have a fun few hours exploring the area under some very colourful umbrellas.

The bird life makes for interesting viewing. In the garden everyday you see the Indian mynah, mauritius fody and red whiskered bulbul, and it's common to see (village?) weavers and waxbills in the right place. The other day I saw parakeets, which is a world first for me. I still haven't seen the famous pink pigeon, though they are rare to see, I'm told.

More to tell, but I need to get my eyes off the screen and into my book. And onto the bay from time to time, of course.

The final days in SA

In Mauritius, our new home, now but won't get into all that until I've recounted the rest of the South Africa trip. We stayed in Laura's family home in Polokwane and when we weren't doing all those little obnoxious errands that have to be done before you move countries, we were definitely making the most of it. We took a casual trip to Polokwane nature reserve and had an epic bike ride. It's quite symbolic of the culture here, get a few hours free in the afternoon and all you have to do is take a 10 minute drive into the nearest "safari park" (you'll get hell if you call it that here, and laughed at), and you'll see species of animal you've never even heard of before. 

We took a visit to see Laura's family's domestic worker ("maid" is not politically correct, apparently) in Laatstehoop (sp?), a township around 30 minutes drive from the house. Her name's Maria and she's clearly quite the matriarch in the community. A terrific lady who knows anything and everything about who's who and who's doing what. We met a young lad called Miko (sp?), who didn't have any parents and was living with Maria. She makes sure he's fed, does his homework etc., while he takes care of her when she's not well. He wasn't the only one she looked after, and apparently she always has taken care of various kids over the years, in addition to having her own kids. 

The other member of the household was her mother-in-law, who was terrifically old, and could not stop smiling. She seemed quite excited at having her photo taken.

A thoroughly great 6 weeks, I can't wait to go back. Now... To the beach!

Cape Town - Penguins and Prison

African Penguin

Cape Town was the last leg of the Journey before we headed back to Polokwane. After several weeks of small seaside towns, it was weird being back in a  big city. While the Waterfront was great, and there was plenty to do around Cape Town, there was a weird feel about the place. Nonetheless, we had a good time and made three days' worth of fun out of it. The first day, we strolled from the backpackers to the V & A Waterfront, had some coffee by the water, looked around the shops and all that tourist stuff. The second day we took the train down to Simon's Town, and walked along to Boulders Beach, a famous nesting ground for African Penguins. Watching them on TV doesn't give much impression of how comical those things are. Watching them work up the momentum to take just one step forward was enough to make it worth going to see them.

Mandela's prison garden

The final day of the trip we went to Robben Island, sight of the prison in which Nelson Mandela spent most of his sentence, now more of a historical monument. Some of the stories written by ex-prisoners were enough to make your stomach turn. It was interesting to stand in Mandela's own garden, where he apparently hid his papers for A Long Walk to Freedom, which he'd apparently been working on for many, many years. When the prison decided to build up the concrete wall as you see it here in the photo, they dug up the ground and discovered the papers, which earned Mandela an extra four years on his sentence.

Nelson Mandela's prison cell

When you see what his cell looks like, the idea of even four days in it would be a struggle for most of us.

South Africa (Part 2)

The next part of the trip was one of the highlights; Knysna. A great little town with a crackin' waterfront. We tried the oysters, which Knysna's famous for, but they didn't compare to the Kudu we put on the Braai the following night!

We also took a township tour, something that was recommended by some magazine article I read before we headed out on the trip. It turned out the be a good recommendation; great to see a whole side of the nation that you'd be excluded from under normal circumstances. A group of kids latched onto us at one part of the tour, clearly intrigued by us. One girl was very enthusiastic to pose for us, and proceeded to organise the other kids into place ready for more photos. One boy in particular stood out, he stood still holding his little toy train in his hand, his expression never changing from that sad look, barely moving at all from his pose the whole time. I wish I could know what he was thinking.

Next stop was Oudtshoorn. We got off the bus at George and had to catch a shuttle up to the hostel. The town (a very Afrikaans type place, apparently) was famous for ostrich, which we tried immediately, and, being a town in the mountains, it was a great place for bike riding. We didn't cycle upwards but instead got a car ride up to Swartberg pass, a high-point in the strip of mountains near the town. We spent the next 50-odd kilometres riding downwards back to the hostel. Needless to say, we saw some fantastic views on the way down, not least of all being the stop at Cango Caves we did on the way down. The caves were formed by acidic water obliterating the rock several hundred million years ago, and later, when the water dried up, made a perfect home for a group of Khoisan people; an indigenous group of people of Southern Africa (and later the rest of Africa, and then the world, though physiologically very different by then). After seeing some great stalagmites, stalagtites and pre-historic cave paintings, we carried on free wheeling down the road.

Hermanus was where we went shark cage diving. I can't advise you enough to strike that one off your bucket list, huge disappointment. The coastal walk and whale watching, however, made Hermanus another fantastic stop. You would struggle not to see whales on the coastline there, and, as always along the garden route, there were plenty of nice restaurants and cafes to chose from, little of which we sampled but instead chose to eat picnics with red wine next to the water. What else could you want?!

South Africa so far

It's been a lot of fun travelling since leaving China. To summarise, we started at Laura's house in Polokwane, in Limpopo province (in the north east of the country), headed to Marakele nature reserve where we camped and saw lots of very African animals, then took a two day drive south to the coast where we stayed at the beach house, visited Grahamstown for the festival ("Fest" as the cool kids call it), went to Addo elephant park, visited Laura's Grandpa in East London, and then embarked on a journey along the garden route towards Cape Town. We're currently in Plettenbuerg Bay.

I've managed to see 4 of 'the big 5'; I've seen elephants, buffalo, rhino and lion (leopards being the one that as of yet has not come to greet me). I had a close encounter with the white rhino you see in the picture, though not due to my own reckless curiosity, but rather it decided the grass under my feet in particular was the best to be had. It approached, I photographed, it growled, I stepped back slowly, attempting to keep my bladder under control.

The aptly named Addo Elephant park did not dissapoint, we saw more elephant than I could count and at one point ended up accidentally driving through (yes, "through") a herd of them. We accelerated. The elephant park was also home to predators including lions. We saw two of them munching on their kill, some kind of buck I presume, and before flopping down to sleep. 

The accomodation in Addo was a large safari tent with a veranda, on which lay a dinner table we shared with many tame birds (hence the close up photo, one of many) and if it hadn't been for the fence 1 metre in front of us we might also have been sharing it with the hyena that decided our barbecued steak smelled good one evening (I get in trouble for saying "barbecue" here).

We're on the garden route right now, making our way to Cape Town. In Plettenberg bay we experimented with geocaching. Geocaching is like a worldwide treasure hunt; people hide random things and put the GPS coordinates of their cache on the geocache website. In this case he cache was a box containing a notepad and pencil, which we signed and dated as many people before us had, and there were also some  random exchanges in there (sea shells, a key ring etc) which you could take and replace with somthing of your own. It was good fun, gives an added bit of fun to a long hike.

Plenty more to see as we ramble on down the road over the next week and a bit, more to come.

Helping the foreigners eat duck

The best thing about being in China is definitely the food culture. It's not just because I'm leaving soon that I'm starting to think about all the dishes I'm going to miss, you can't help but always be aware of how good it is. With so many choices, you never get bored of any of it, and never really find yourself taking it for granted. It's just about the food, it's the way you're supposed to have fun with it; eating is rarely about eating and running.

Beijing duck is the perfect example, they bring you a whole duck and make a whole song and dance about carving it up and serving all the various cuts on specific plates in front of you. After this particular carving session the waitress even took the time to make our first pancake for us. I'm still not sure if it's part of the service, or if she just assumed the foreigners would get it wrong so we needed help!

A (peaceful?) evening walk

An evening stroll always seems like a good idea. You go out, get some fresh air, and clear your head. No and no. There is no fresh air, this is Shanghai. And you will not clear your head, you will fill it with the sounds of racing traffic and blaring horns.

Nonetheless, a good wander works miracles, regardless of air and noise pollution, and I will, no doubt, look back on this and miss these big city scenes. This photo may like some huge mega-junction, though it's actually pretty average-sized by comparison. And this is quiet time, usually the scene would be hellishly busy.

Breakfast Dumplings

Small soup dumplings are one the best foods in Shanghai. They're like a little bread/pastry type ball with seasoned pork inside. The word "soup" isn't particularly apt; they have some watery stuff from the meat in there, which does taste good, but not exactly something you could sip from a spoon.

Mind you, there is enough in their to cause accident and injury; on one occasion I bit into them and this soup stuff, which was boiling had, I might add, spayed out onto my cheeks. I was in immense pain. On a different occasion the soup took a more upward trajectory and shot up my nose. Fortunately the temperature was a little less extreme and suffered nothing more than the smell of soup dumplings for the rest of the day.

The photo was taken on a weekend morning after a wander around Zhongshan Park. A wonder for me. A run for Laura. Right before this guy served these up he went out for a smoke then came in and spat on the floor of the kitchen. It wasn't enough to put us off our dumplings.

The Podcast

I'm working on the school podcast, the Extra-Curricular Activity I'm teaching this term. I've finished the artwork (pictured), though it may change, and I'm working on the theme music this afternoon. In the first meeting we had I got the students to record a few sound bites to go at the start and end of each episode; they went crazy for the whole recording process. I used my condenser microphone, something they've obviously never seen for real before, and gave them a script and said, "go".

It was funny to hear how nervous some of them got. I remember when I first tried to record myself, for some reason you can't help but talk different. Normally you just talk, not at something. As soon as you're aware your have to talk into something, everything you know about speech just goes out the window and you convince yourself you need to do something special. Nevertheless, they managed it, and it's sounding pretty good. We should have our first episode made in  about 2 weeks.

Scrap Paper

So we were co-teaching a class and it came time to group the students. We decided that it would be good to randomize the groups so the co-teacher found some scrap paper, tore it into small pieces and gave a piece to each student to write their names on, fold it up, and put it into the hat.

It wasn't long before a perplexed student, having closely examined her scrap of paper, raised her hand, "Teacher, this is my Chinese homework!"

The photo shows an attempt at fitting it back together.

Valentines Day Dinner

This is what our dinner looked like on Friday night:

Cheese fondue with steak, sausages, chicken and veg, followed by chocolate with strawberries and blueberries. What more could you want?

I had to use night mode on the camera, which uses a super, mega, high ISO (or something) so it can get the photo with very little lighting. I thought it came out looking good. She wasn't impressed.

That was the start of the weekend; it's Sunday evening now and I'm ready to go to bed. This weekend went by way too fast. A hard 6 weeks of teaching prac is ahead of me so I guess I'd best get an early night tonight.

Fresh Air

"Winter's OK, you can always put more layers on." Bollocks! It's cold here, and the apartments have the most insignificant heating systems so you're permanently "a bit cold". That doesn't sound too bad, but it is when it's in your home, where you watch TV, and and make your dinner, and write you blog.

I'm not complaining, the cold spell lasted for about 3 days, and it's warm enough to be comfortable now. This winter's been pretty good in truth. Mind, it's still weird to me to be in a place where people might go their entire work day without taking off their coat.

 Regardless of the outdoor temperature there is an odd obsession in this country with "cleaning the air". It's the idea that you need to open the window, or keep them open all day whatever the weather, so you have fresh air. Fresh, Shanghai air.

Chinese Parks

China's different from England. Obviously. But not in the ways you'd expect. If you want to see Chinese culture first hand you just need to go to a park early in the morning. You'll be surrounded by people hitting trees, clapping their hands, shouting at random, and, as you can see here, dancing. This pair were amongst a a whole group of people, some of them dancing alone, to music blasted from someone's loudspeaker. I always want to know how this stuff gets arranged; does one person just decide to bring his amplifier and mp3 player on the off chance a group of formal dancers want to come along and have a little shuffle around?! He wouldn't be the only one. Sometimes, more often than not, you get audibly assaulted by more than one song spewing out from different dancing groups on the scene. The thing that surprised me most in Shanghai, and still continues to amaze me, is the absence of being self-conscious. If you suggested to your friends that they go to the park and have a dance they'd probably cringe at the thought. "In front of everyone? Nee chance!!" Not here, do what you want. Everyone's watching, nobody cares. Just in case I forget for a split second that I'm in China, there's always people doing Tai Chi:

Cooking at home

Laura decided to cook some bread the other day. I decided it was a good time to get the camera out. When photography's your hpbby it's sometimes hard to find ways to do it at home so this gave me the excuse I was looking for.
She made a traditional plaited bread, but added a some pesto, garlic and cheese, then more garlic, and then finally a touch extra garlic. After she'd finished plaiting it the raw product looked like this:
I set up a couple of lamps on the other side of the kitchen which gave it that sparkle. It was too dark otherwise and I point blank refuse to use the flash. I don't think I've once ever taken a photo with a flash that I thought came out looking nice. Anyway, after some time in the oven the finished cooked bread came out like this:

I can tell you it tasted even better than it looked.

Endless Shanghai

It never ceases to amaze me just how big Shanghai is. The photo shows what is actually the tiniest most minute fraction of this city. They say that, in China, anything less than a million people is a "village"; Shanghai has over 20 million people in it.

Getting around is always a trial; most journeys take around 7 metro stops plus a transfer, or a cheap taxi ride with the risk of serious traffic delays. Walking never feels like an option; for public transport I usually opt for the metro and stay underground, so I never know how to get from A to B by foot even though I've been to A and B a hundred times. This being said, of the entire 6,340 square km this city takes up (yes, six thousand, it's not a type-o) you only tend to stick to your 4 or 5 square kilometres. Yes, I should walk places more, I'd probably get more photos.

And sorry for the kilometres, I've been away from Blighty far too long!