Days 476-480 & 493-499: South Africa
Jo’burg, Kalahari Transfrontier NP, Namaqualand, Cape Town
Crime, critters, capes, and an especially charming penguin.
Despite our best efforts, we ended up in Johannesburg four times. This is not a fun place to spend any amount of time. Lots of high anxiety due to its horrendous crime rate. Residents of Jo’burg leave a significant gap between them and the car in front of them at stoplights so they can drive off in the event of a car-jacking. And no one shows a cell phone while driving lest it be removed from them. That being said, they have good malls with almost anything we could have wanted.
Jo’burg’s backpacker accomodation is fairly pricey and tends not to be near anyplace of interest. Every house and business has either hideous barbed fences or frightening electric fenses (or both!). One of the hotels had a bunch of resident crazies and we made wagers on how much of our pizza in the fridge would be stolen by morning (Marc won with a bet of a quarter of the pizza). This is the same hotel that one of the owners let us use his laptop to burn CDs at the cost of sitting through a frightening video of his cellulite removal machine and PowerPoint presentation with dozens of nekkid before-and-after pictures. No he wasn’t trying to sell it to us: this was the beginning of our car trip, so we were still reasonably thin at the time.
Yeah, it’s really that bad in Jo’burg. Sadly, it’s crime capitol of southern Africa. The 2010 World Cup should be interesting.
Thanks to our safari-mate James from San Diego for sending this picture of the white rhino we saw in Kruger National Park. More importantly, we need to thank James for introducing us to the drink Amarula. This stuff if made from the marula fruit that elephants are rather fond of. There might be some elephants going hungry after our visit.
In the far north of the country, extending into Botswana, lies the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. The park is great and barely had any visitors. On the way to the park, almost all of the powerline poles had a huge tuft of woven grass on top. We took a close look and found out they were enormous bird nests. The birds are called “social weavers”, and boy were they social. There were lots of cool birds in the park.
I didn’t want to join your group anyway! Swallow-tailed bee eaters huddled in a tree.
Wait up ladies!!! A black feathered male ostrich chases down a gaggle of brown feathered gals.
Meerkat’s keeping an eye out for trouble.
Big ol’ wildebeest having a snack. Despite their appearance, these guys are more closely related to antelope than buffalo.
The oryx is an incredibly beautiful antelope and one of the highlights of visiting the park. They are known to kill lions with those horns. Some countries like Namibia have them on their royal crest.
We left South Africa for a couple weeks in Namibia and came back through Namaqualand just in time for wildflower season.
We got a couple photos off before the rain poured in. Perhaps in the southern hemisphere it’s “August showers bring September flowers”?
We didn’t expect to eat well in SA but found it to have loads of veggie chow. This didn’t help our waistlines since we were spending all our time in a car rather than getting exercise. Our favorite chain restaurant was a burger place called Steers that served remarkably good veggie burgers and calorie-ladden carmel-dip cones. In the grocery stores there is a brand of fake meat products called Fry’s that rivals anything in American grocery stores. But perhaps our favorite grocery store item is “Cape Fruit Chutney”. This stuff goes on absolutely anything and is so good it would make cardboard taste great. We carried bottles of the stuff around with us.
Love the stylish striped eyes on this grasshopper.
The foothills on the way to Cape Town are covered with yellow mustard fields.
Cape Town is a pretty city – a bit like San Francisco, but with a lot more crime. There is even the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront that is a lot like Pier 39, complete with lazing seals. While we were checking into our hotel, some dude was breaking into one of the rooms of the hotel through a window. We were warned not to leave ANYTHING visible in our car and to leave the glovebox open and remove the trunk partition. Yikes. At least nothing got stolen from us, but by this point we were trying to figure out why people choose to live in South Africa.
We lucked out one day and the clouds parted at Table Mountain. We had been told ahead of time to sieze any clear day and head straight for the mountain. So we did, along with every other tourist on the cape. The cable car was an ultra-modern, rotating contraption that appeared to ascend almost vertically up the mountain at the end. There were great views of Cape Town and the Atlantic coast from up on top.
Table Mountain looms over an unsuspecting Cape Town, at least when you can see it. We swear it has it’s own weather system.
Red-hot pokers up on Table Mountain.
There are only six floral kingdoms in the entire world, and one of them lies entirely in the southern tip of South Africa. We’re not sure what makes up a floral kingdom, but the fynbos (“fine bush”) of the Cape were incredible. We also found out that Birds of Paradise are originally from South Africa.
A couple examples of the phenomenal proteas of the Cape Floral Kingdom.
These helmet-headed guinea fowl are like the pigeons of southern Africa. They’re skittish as hell if you try to approach them on foot but are happy to sit in the road as you come at them at 120 kph.
On a not-so-good weather day, we headed to the Cape. There are actually two capes down there: the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point. We were surprised to find that neither of these is actually the southern-most point in Africa – although they point out that Cape Point is the “most south-westerly point in Africa”.
Americans aren’t known for their geographic knowledge. Here’s the Cape of Good Hope. We felt optimistic after our visit.
We love rock dassies! They are everywhere, incredibly cute, about the size of a small dog, and – believe it or not – the closest living relative to the African elephant. They are apparently mentioned as an unclean meat in Leviticus 11:5, but who could eat something that cute?
Bad ass lizard catching some rays on the Cape.
Who needs elbow room anyway. Do caterpillars even have elbows?
We went to Boulders Beach on the eastern side of the Cape to see the cute African penguins. And boy were they cute!
Is that the worst graphic ever? Yes, that is supposed to be a squished penquin under a car.
We got to see the penguins cleaning themselves, building nests, swimming, crapping, fighting, and walking. While taking a break on a bench next to some snuggling penguin pairs, one of them walked under the bench and proceeded to bite Marc in the bum (twice!). Guess he thought Marc might make a move on his lady friend. We found out that the African penguin is also called the Jackass penguin, and now we know why.
Marc’s bum and the culprit.
Tags: South Africa
Kelly & Marcus
September 23rd, 2006 at 6:06 pm
Those rock daisies look tasty to me. See you in April.
September 23rd, 2006 at 7:11 pm
Wonderful as always – I still think it had to be a female Jackass penguin!
Hugs xoxox
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