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.