Days 500-513: Southern South Africa and Swaziland
South Africa: Stellenbosch, Hermanus, Drakensburg Range
Swaziland: Ezulwini, Mbabane
Wine, whales, and wives.
Our first stop after Cape Town was the pleasant university town of Stellenbosch. But we didn’t go there to learn anything other than how to appreciate their many wines. We stayed at the appropriately named ‘Stumble Inn’. Kelly drove Marc around the area (and up the wall) for two days and we visited ten wineries. These wineries are terrific! Not only is the wine great, but for $1-2 (if anything is charged at all) you get to try five to seven wines. And the bottles usually cost less than $10. For a mere $50, we tried a ton of wines and walked away with eight bottles of great wine.
Marc eyes the big guns at a Stellenbosch winery.
Since we were from California, the vinters assumed we knew a lot about wine (which we didn’t). We were told all sorts of stuff about the wines, like how long it was kept in “American oak”. One place gave us an ‘Odor Wheel’ with helpful suggestions on how to describe the smells of a wine. Some of the more amusing odors were: pencil shavings, horsey, skunk, and cat piss. We also discovered a fantastic dessert wine called Noble Late Harvest. It tastes great as long as you’re not looking at a picture of the fungus-infected, shrivelled fruit used to make it. Like drinking honey.
We wanted to see some whales, and the scenic town of Hermanus overlooking Walker Bay was great for that. From the cliff-tops we were able to see Southern Right Whales doing body rolls, spy hopping, and breaching. They were awesome, but tough to get a picture of with our tiny camera. So we settled for pictures of some of the easier local wildlife: rock dassies.
Who doesn’t love the smell of coffee in the morning?
Okay. We managed to find the real southern-most point in Africa at Cape Agulhas, where the Atlantic and Indian oceans mix. There was a cool lighthouse at Cape Agulhas.
There is a stretch of road near the coast in South Africa called the Garden Route. It’s heavily promoted in their travel literature and hotels are a bit pricey. Unfortunately for us, it was completely foggy and rainy the whole time we were driving through it. So we didn’t get to see squat.
However, we did see some of the most dangerous driving we’ve encountered in South Africa. There didn’t seem to be much regard for self preservation. Most of the roads are one lane in each direction. People coming up behind you expect you to pull over into the emergency lane to let them pass rather than waiting until it is clear for them to pass you. This can be tricky when the emergency lane is also used by pedestrians and animals. What’s even worse is that on-coming drivers that are in the process of overtaking a vehicle expect you to pull over into the emergency lane to let them complete their pass. Absolute lunacy!
We hit Durban with its huge beaches and large Indian population (good chow on offer). The beaches were California style with the exception that all the swimmers were crammed into tiny areas about 50m wide. We saw only two of these areas on the entire beach and they were jam packed. We’re guessing these are the only places where there are shark nets set up. While we were in Cape Town, a life guard got his leg bit off by a great white during a life guard training exercize. We decided not to go for a swim.
Neat geometric pattern on a protea flower.
Our favorite state was KwaZulu Natal, and only half of the reason was because of its cool name. The Zulu had to be some of the friendliest folks in SA. It is also home to the Drankensberg Range, where we managed to get some exercize by going on a few day hikes. We stayed on the Sani Pass, which is the easiest way to get into the mountain top kingdom of Lesotho. Despite it being the easiest way to get there, it still required a 4×4 to navigate the pass and our tiny rental didn’t stand a chance.
We normally have a rule about not taking pictures of ‘boring’ insects like grasshoppers. This guy was worth an exception.
…and so was this fuzzy nectar-sucking fly.
Running out of time before our flight to Brazil, we made a quick trip to the kingdom of Swaziland. This trip was a long drive from the Drakensburg, over some nasty roads, and through a fire and a crime scene. We arrived in Swaziland at night and it was pretty hair raising driving on roads with no street lights but loads of people, animals (alive and dead), and huge ditches.
Swaziland was a welcome relief from the tension in South Africa. Everyone seemed more relaxed and friendly. Our first stop in Swaziland was the Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary. This place was neat because you could get out of your car and ‘commune with nature’. One of the first animals we saw was the huge crocodile pictured below. We were sure it had to be fake – why else would they let us walk around the park? A while later, we suggested the croc was fake to a staff member and she just laughed. When we returned to the lake, the croc had moved off to an island and we saw it snap its jaws. Glad we didn’t go ‘commune’ with it.
A huge crocodile (‘flatdog’ in Afrikans) poses near a warning sign.
There was a group of six hippos that hung out in a pool near the main camp. They had erected a tiny wall to keep the hippos from storming the camp, but it was incomplete and there was nothing to stop them from just walking around it (like the warthogs did). Unfortunately, the have come to expect to be fed at the daily 3pm snack. One of the hippos named Lucia was a bit of a beggar hippo (see below); it was 3:15 after all. He had to be distracted with a chair to keep him from storming the truck delivering a bale of hay.
A hungry, hungry hippo.
Chow time!
By pure luck, we ended up in Swaziland during one of its major festivals called the Reed Dance. During this many-day event, the eligible ‘maidens’ gather reeds and offer them as tribute to the queen mother. They then sing and dance for the king, who then can choose one of them as another wife (he has something like ten already). It’s good to be the king. Coming back from the wildlife park, we got stopped by a huge procession of thousands carrying reeds back to the palace. It looked and sounded like everyone was having a great time.
The maidens bringing back reeds for the Queen Mother’s fence.
On our last day before we had to head back to Jo’burg, we decided to go to the palace and see what was going on. This was supposed to be the dancing day, and the only day the palace is open to the public. Well, the festivities didn’t start until the afternoon and we had to sweet talk our way past the guard to get inside. He even checked that Kelly was wearing the requisite skirt. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much at all to see because “the maidens are eating,” as we were told. It wasn’t too long before a guard realized we were in an area we weren’t supposed to be and, in the most polite way possible, kicked us out. We haven’t had much luck with kingdoms on this trip.
Tags: coffee, South Africa, Swaziland, wine
Kelly & Marcus
October 5th, 2006 at 9:52 am
Is this new fancy blog comment thing working?
October 5th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
Seems to be Bud!
October 5th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
This is not working for me – the new blog did not show up on the link, and so far I’ve tried the code thing 6 times and it won’t go through!
October 7th, 2006 at 6:49 am
K&M Please tell people about the O / zero issue with the code – you can’t leave a message if you put a zero for an O etc. and it’s very hard to tell in that code image which is which!
October 11th, 2006 at 10:25 am
Its always great to see your latest adventures. I really like that picture of the little varmint sniffing whts to drink. And the second picture of the rock dassie is cute too.
Praying for you,
– Bob –
January 7th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Hey
I just have to comment on your exquisite photos of South Africa and Swaziland. Brought back so many fond memories. I am ex South African (ex Zululand) now living in California.
August 14th, 2010 at 9:26 am
Recently I have visited South Africa, j. burg and Cape town, also cape point and cape of god hope but not the cape Aghalus. what I have seen I think really the paradise in this word.
Mahmuda Hassan
Bangladesh