Some great waterfalls and some beautiful flowers. 
Sorry, I don't have a clue what these are called! My friend Marj Gibney, who directs the women's choir at church, challenged me to post a picture of my favourite flower on Facebook, which has sharpened my perception of the beauty that surrounds us every day. 
Overall, we felt very safe in South Africa. We never planned to rent a car, but we were glad that Cape Town was totally booked, because renting a car meant that we ended up seeing a lot more of the country- and we probably saved a lot of money on accommodation, which is more expensive in the big city.
One thing that I have to say about South Africa - it is pretty good value! I feel like most things are 25-50% less than home for items of comparable value. For example, in the photo below, the wine looks expensive, until you realize that the prices are in South African Rand, which are 10:1 to the Canadian Dollar! It's not a cheap country, but it is excellent value. A couple of nights ago we went for a bit of a gourmet blow out. We ate at the best restaurant in town, we both had excellent fresh seafood entrées, we shared a top notch bottle of sparkling wine, we had desert, we shared a cheese plate and we both had after dinner drinks. Total damage, including tip: C$90. Not cheap, but a pretty good deal for what you are getting. The restaurant was called "The Big Easy". I expected that it was a New Orleans style place; turns out it is owned by Ernie Els, a South African golfer and the big easy is his nickname ( clearly we are not spending enough time with Dwaine Korsbrek!).
We did have a couple of interesting driving experiences. We never could find a decent map, so we were doing a bit of dead reckoning navigation. Hey, we're on vacation- what could happen? At one point, we turned off the main N2 highway onto a major road that was heading towards a rich seaside resort that was supposed to have whale watching. Pretty quickly we found ourselves in the middle of a township - a very poor squatters' settlement. It was Saturday afternoon, and there were tons of kids playing on the streets, people visiting and families having barbecues. The average dwelling was probably 4 m X 6 m and was built of corrugated metal with scraps of wood, cardboard and old tires. If the dwellings had a yard, they would be about the same size as the dwelling. About one home in 20 had a vehicle parked on the yard. We felt safe driving through the township, but we were super careful, drove slow and got back on the highway fairly promptly. One thing that was strange was that Steve would stop the car for people who looked like they were going to cross the street, particularly kids. This confused people totally, as it was unexpected behaviour from a driver.
Later at the Joburg airport, we had a long and interesting discussion with a university professor while we were waiting to board our flight. She was a specialist in urban poverty and at risk children. She told us that we were safe driving through the township, but that conditions could change in an instant. She also provided us with a very depressing view on the lack of progress in South Africa - in her words, apartheid still exists, but now it is class based (I.e rich versus poor) instead of race based.
We got VERY lucky with our flights to South America. Because our around the world flights are on points, some of the timing is less than ideal. We were supposed to leave Joburg at midnight and then have a 16 hour layover in Sao Paolo before our flight to Buenos Airies. Instead, the first flight was delayed 9 hours, and South African airlines put us up at a nice hotel. After a relaxing sleep in a real bed ( instead of sleeping on the plane!) and a comfortable 11 hour flight, we had only a 6 hour layover in Sao Paolo.
Today's big adventure: finding our camping gear! Here is one last shot of Africa - this was the guy slicing the neck off a bottle of champagne with a sword - you can just about see the cork flying off!
No comments:
Post a Comment