We're back after ten days in South Africa, a pretest of sorts before we hit the road for a few months. There were ups and downs, most of which I hope to go into, but all in all it was a fantastic trip. We purposely left the computer behind, and while it was nice to unplug, we also missed having connections with people and the outside world. Easy internet access is possible just about anywhere here in Africa, something we have not always found in recent journeys abroad.
In a way, we were almost re-creating part of a journey we did together in December 1999. On that trip, we went into Mozambique searching for warm water and white beaches. We found it, and those memories will not be easily duplicated when we do return in the future. Then we caught a bus to Kruger National Park, rented a car and drove around before heading west through the Blyde River Canyon and back to Joburg before parting to go to Massachusetts and California, each for a short Christmas visit. That was then.
This is now. Eleven years down the road, one thing that's different now is that we have our own car. We love this Rav4, so much so that we may even defect to Toyota when we get back the the U.S. (Subaru sacrilege!) We had the car all packed up. Russ took out the back seats and created a shelf so that our camping gear would fit in more easily. We filled it, not just with what we needed for the ten day trip, but what we would take for four months, just to see how it would work. The reality is that whether you pack for two weeks or two months, it's all the same stuff, and as we would come to realize, it was too much stuff.
Having our visas properly in order, we breezed through the Tklokwane borderpost a few days after Christmas. Being back in South Africa was an all-too-familiar reminder of the racial inequality that we do not have in Botswana. Driving past townships and locations with the smell of burning trash and seeing floodlights for the main source of nighttime light and houses constructed of tin and cardboard is still shocking, even though I have seen it a thousand times before.
We entered the Northwest Province and another reminder is that this is boer country. Large commercial farms reminding us of the American Midwest joined towns together with Afrikaans-named towns. There is a movement to change to the names; on maps we found names of Xhosa and Zulu towns replacing the Afrikaans ones. Not without some resistance as you might imagine when we saw signs advertising a farm festival or when people gave us directions using the previous name. Yet it is a step in the right direction.
Driving down the N-4, the country's main east-west artery, we also saw three nuclear power plants, a platinum mine, and two coal mines, all within 200 kilometers. Without a doubt, South Africa has resources, not to mention the gold and diamond digging that goes largely unseen. The N-4 is a toll road, and an outrageously expensive one at that. However, most of the road is not even a divided highway, leaving us to wonder where the money is going.
Our first night of this big camping expedition was spent inside at the Pretoria backpacker's lodge. We needed to do a few things and there is understandably not much camping in the city. It was one of the nicest backpacker's places we had ever been in and in a particularly pleasant neighborhood. Just one block from Loftus stadium (where World Cup soccer and regional rugby matches are played),a few more from the University of Pretoria, and a thirty-minute walk from the Union Buildings (Parliament), this part of the city was an architectural delight. Old houses (built with old money)and wide, shady, jacaranda-lined streets made for a relaxing walk after a day of driving.
It is inevitable when traveling that we meet Peace Corps volunteers, and it was no different here. One guy was from Kenya, here in Pretoria on medical leave. Peace Corps really spares no expense when it comes to the health of its volunteers. It was definitely the best medical care I had ever had. Anyway, we enjoyed sharing stories with him. Also glad that we went to Kenya when we did ten years ago, because it sounds like a scarily dangerous place now, and when a volunteer tells you that, it's serious.
We needed to go to the Menlyn Park shopping centre nearby to take care of some AAA business (AA here). Without a doubt, this was the nicest, biggest mall I have ever seen and we were both completely overwhelmed. The thing of it is, this is not an anomaly. South Africa is full of these megamalls, for better or worse. Anyway, we took care of the car insurance, had an ice cream in the massive upscale food park, and then spent over twenty minutes just getting out of the parking lot.
On that note, we found that oddly enough, items in South Africa cost a lot more than in Botswana, which we thought was expensive. Except the beer. The beer was significantly cheaper. We've had to recalculate a bit. To top it off, the dollar is suffering something fierce.
We set out early the next day, and the constant drizzle should have been a foreshadowing of things to come. Our destination was the northern range of the Drakensburg Mountains, near the Blyde River Canyon. Driving northeast and getting off of the N-4, we were greeted with the largest man-made forest in the world. It is really spectacular. Stretching hundreds of square kilometres, thousands of pine trees cover the landscape. It seemed to be a well-managed operation. Of course, closeby was the largest paper mill either of us had ever seen either.
We landed on the top of a hill in the town of Graskop which has a view of the surrounding mountains that took our breath away. We stayed outside of town at another backpackers's place, this time pitching our tent on their back lawn. Clean, quiet, and the view made it an amazing place to stay for the next three nights. There were plenty of opportunities to walk and the next day we hiked through the forest to the aptly named Forest Falls. It felt like we were in the Rocky Mountains as we swam and sunned ourselves on the boulders overlooking the valley.
It was good to get some sun because that night it rained torrentially. For an area that receives over 2000mm of rainfall annually, it's to be expected, except that it was not something we thought would happen while we camped. Oh, the naivety. If you are in the same place for a week and it rains with a good tent, you are fine. The problem is when you have to move a wet tent in the rain and set it up again which I will talk more about later. In this instance, we were able to dry out the tent and then move it under a canopy for our last night, seeing as though we wanted to leave pre-dawn to get into Kruger for an early game drive.
On the drying-out day, we took a drive on the panoramic route to some of the most beautiful mountain vistas I have ever seen. The Pinnacle, Three Rondavels, and God's Window were more spectacular than I remembered and more than our camera could capture. as the mist lifted and sun poured in. If I ever find out how to post photos to this blog, these will certainly make the cut.
New Year's Eve was quiet. We made dinner, got on the internet briefly using another volunteer's computer, and then talked for awhile with another couple we met who are from Holland. They were recently married and have been traveling in Africa for the past few months, so we got some good information on some places we might go. Really nice people who we unexpectedly met up with later in Kruger!
The new year started with Kruger National Park and I will save that part of our trip for another blog. Must do another load of camping laundry!
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