January 2005 Archives
We've landed safely on the beautiful island of Mauritius. It's absolutely stunning here - blue-green ocean waters and long stretches of white sandy beaches along the coast and lush green tropical plants and trees inland. It's the quintessential island paradise.
We'll do a proper update from India but so far we've had a great time. Our Servas host family took us to a Hindu ceremony last night in honor of Hanuman, the "monkey deity reknown for his courage, power and faithful, selfless service." The ceremony focused for 2 hours around the bathing of a 10 foot tall statue of Hanuman in milk curds, honey, coconut milk and water. The temple was filled with plenty of music, singing and sweet-smelling incense. It was fascinating and we have photos and sound clips from the ceremony that we'll post soon.
Finally, we'd like to share an article with everyone about our dear, dear friend Mr. Dave Silver who is saving the environment...one mile at a time. Go Dave!
We've been hogging the computer here at our hostel to put up all of our past photos. We've posted ones from Ghana, Uganda and South Africa, so check them out.
Our last days here in S.A. have been spent running erands: shopping, applying for our China visa, getting our last round of vaccinations, phone calls home, etc. Yesterday we made time to visit Soweto and the Apartheid Museum - intense experiences which we wish we had had more time for.
Tomorrow we have our flight for Mauritius and then, 4 days later, we fly to India, arriving in Mumbai (Bombay). On the island of Mauritius we'll be staying with an Indian family that we've contacted through the cultural-exchange organization Servas. It'll be our first Servas experience and we're looking forward to it.
We'll do one more quick update before we leave tomorrow. See you then!
We found a fast internet connection here in Grahamstown and were able to upload a bunch of photos. Unfortunately, we don't have any dolphin shots, and we were too slow to catch the baboons that we saw at the edge of the road. The monkeys are pretty cute though!
I've done a fairly lengthy update today because we're trying to get caught up with all our updates from Africa before we head to India. We've uploaded a few photos from Rawsonville but the rest from our Garden Route trip will be up in a few days (internet access permitting).
Sunday, January 16th, 2005
With great reluctance and heavy hearts we left Kyle and Victor and their beautiful guest house in Rawsonville (thanks again guys!) and caught a Translux bus for the coastal town of Knysna (pronounced nize-na). We booked bunk beds at a backpacker's lodge and went out to have dinner on the waterfront. Later that evening we sat around a campfire talking with British, Swedish, French and German travellers who were staying at the lodge.
Monday, January 17th, 2005
We rented a little VW Citi Golf called "Chico" from Avis and hit the road to make our way up the Garden Route along the eastern coast of South Africa. After almost two weeks of drinking, eating and lounging at Kyle and Victor's we were feeling a bit sluggish so we decided to do some hiking in the Knysna National Park. As we drove into the park we saw signs warning us that we were now in an area where wild elephants and baboons roamed freely. Unfortunately, we didn't see anything more dangerous than a poisonous centipede. We recorded a few sounds from the forest - click here to hear them. We finished our 10km hike and left the park a bit before sunset.
Feeling energized from our hike, we drove an hour up to Plettenberg Bay where we'd be staying the night. We arrived at the Abalone Beach House and were welcomed by Grant and Elbi. Moments after arriving Grant told us that we should go see the dolphins swimming and playing in the ocean. We walked 2 minutes from the guesthouse and sat on the beach to watch a pod of about 50 dolphins. As the waves formed near the shore they'd surf along and occasionally leap out of the water, do a flip and splash back down. It was amazing - we'd never seen anything like it.
Tuesday, January 18th, 2005
We woke up at 7AM to go for a walk on the beach and watch the sun coming up. We didn't see a single person during the two hours we were out because 80 percent of the people who have houses in the area are only there during the holidays in December and early January. It was as if we had our own private beach.
Returning to the guesthouse, we packed up our things and headed for a place we'd heard about called Monkeyland. We thought that with a name like Monkeyland it had to be fun - we were right! The sanctuary is now home to over 130 monkeys from 13 different species. The monkeys were previously living in cages in laboratories or were kept as personal "pets" until they could no longer be cared for. Now they live in a safe, natural environment where they are able to walk (and swing) freely.
We signed up for an hour-long guided tour through their habitat and saw Ringtailed Lemurs, Spider, Brown Capuchin, Squirrel and Vervet monkeys. They were all within an arm's length away. Because the monkeys are free to go wherever they want, it can sometimes lead to problems. For instance, Monkeyland has a nice outdoor restaurant at the edge of the sanctuary. Each table is given a spray bottle full of water to squirt any monkey that gets too close (it doesn't hurt them but monkeys like water as much as cats do). However, we saw a Spider Monkey drop from the roof, slide down a support beam, and before anyone could squirt it, it grabbed a lady's sandwich off her plate. The monkey then ran into the forest, whooping and hollering, being pursued by its fellow primates who wanted a piece of the booty.
A small coastal town called Nature's Valley was the next stop on our trip through the Garden Route. We checked into the 15-person dorm room at Hiker's Haven and went out for a walk to explore the area. We found a peaceful saltwater lagoon only a few minutes from the lodge and sat talking as the sun went down.
Wednesday, January 19th, 2005
Again we woke up early, packed up the VW, and drove a few kilometers back to where we were on Tuesday (Plettenberg Bay) where we had reservations to go dolphin and whale watching in sea kayaks. Sadly, a thick fog and stormy weather had rolled in during the night and the trip was cancelled. Undeterred, we hopped back in "Chico" and set off for our next stop: Jeffrey's Bay.
Thursday, January 20th, 2005
Last night we stayed at Island Vibe Backpacker's in Jefferson's Bay (they call it "J Bay" here). J Bay is a big surfer hangout because of its world-famous waves and vast sandy beaches. We talked late into the evening with some of the South Africans who worked at the lodge and a group of French travelers.
This morning we got up at 6:30AM to meet with Tom and Etienne, two sea kayaking guides from Island Vibe that we hired to take us out. It was an overcast morning again, but we hit the open (Indian) ocean regardless. We were on the water for about 30 minutes when Tom spotted a pod of bottlenose dolphins heading our way. We paddled a bit more to get the best view and sat in amazement as about 20 of them swam around and under us. Neither of us had ever been so close to them. A few minutes later we spotted a pod of 3-4 humpback dolphins and paddled out to see them closer as well. By the end of our two hour trip we'd seen about 30 dolphins. Tired, but satisfied, we returned to the shore, put our kayaks back on the truck and headed back to the lodge.
We're in downtown J Bay getting ready to head up to Grahamstown to visit with Kyle's mom, Pat and sister, Leigh. We'll be there for a day or so and then we'll go back up to Pretoria where we'll submit our visa applications for China. We hope they don't have a problem with our visa or passport photos looking nothing like us now that we don't have any hair!
We hope everyone is enjoying the new year. Thanks again for taking the time to read our updates!
We dropped our camera off at Cameraland in Cape Town last Monday, hoping that we'd finally found a place that could repair it. One week and $200 later we got it back, good as new! It was definitely worth it, it's great to have it back. Appartently we got sand in it which messed up the whole lens alignment--it's all Michael's fault actually!! We promise to get some pictures up soon.
But let me go back a bit now to our 26 hour 3rd class train ride from Pretoria to Worcester...
We thought we might be stuck on wooden benches with chickens and goats, so we were pleasantly surprised to find regular, decent seats and no animals in sight. Once we hit Jo'burg though (only about 2 hours in) the crowds appeared. People were passing their stuff through the windows in order to claim seats, they seemed to know that there would not be enough for everyone. Sure enough, people spent the day and into the night sitting and sleeping on the ground between train cars, in the toilets, and one guy even climbed into the luggage rack above us to get some sleep. There were no trash recepticles anywhere, and with all the empty beer and soda bottles lying around (not to mention hot smelly bodies, including ours!) the place quickly became a smelly pit. We had some interesting conversations though and sat across from a cute little baby. We didn't really start to mind until about hour 8 when we realized we still had 18 more hours to go!
We did manage to get some sleep though and made it to Worcester around noon the next day. My cousin Kyle picked us up and drove us to his and Victor's guesthouse in Rawsonville. They've done an amazing job renovating the place--it's absolutely beautiful and it became our little paradise for a week. For seven straight days we basically did nothing but gorge ourselves on food and alcohol, stay up late, sleep late and lounge around the pool. We celebrated a fun and rather quiet New Year's with Kyle, Victor, their friends Caroline, Roger, and Max, as well as Max's family visiting from Switzerland (Oh, and I can't forget Kyle and Victor's 5 cute dogs: Nemo, Muffin, Scruffy, Skipper, and Cosmos!).
On Friday Caroline drove us to Franschhoek, where we stayed with Sally, Alex and Flossy, friends of June's (from Monfreville in France, our first stop of the trip). It's so amazing to meet people who are actually complete strangers, but be welcomed into their home and feel like family within minutes! We had a lovely dinner with them that evening, saw the beautiful new home that they are building, and played a few competitive rounds of UNO. The next day we borrowed their bikes and toured around the cute little town, stopping at 2 vineyards to do some wine tasting. We cycled back a little tipsy after having tasted every single wine at the second place.
That night "friends" of Alex and Sally stopped by at around 10:30. Turns out the only reason they came by was that they were hoping to use Sally as a way to meet Margaret Thatcher. Sally didn't want anything to do with them and wanted Alex to tell them that she was very ill. She had me dress up in some of her clothes to pretend to be a buddhist monk there to take care of her... Some how this all made a lot more sense and seemed a bit more normal that night...
Alex drove us to Cape Town the next morning, where we've been staying at the Cat & Moose hostel on lively Long Street. We'll have to write a bit more about Cape Town another time, as I'm now getting internet overload.
Today we're headed back to Rawsonville, partly because we just couldn't leave the place for good yet, and partly to finally get some pictures. Hopefully we'll also be able to get some good ones of the landscape around there, it's so beautiful--gorgeous mountains and vineyards.
That's all for now--bye!
P.S. Be sure to check out the one new picture Michael just put up--it explains how I could pass as a monk!
