ivy’s page

My work-related week in India was very enjoyable! I’ve only been working at Wisdom for about a month, and already I’m joining a week of team-building in India. This week is full of hiking, camping, learning, reflecting, discussing, yoga and team-exercises, Yoga. This is a rare opportunity, but the best way ever to get to know my colleagues.

Our company supports an orphanage for homeless kids. Giving them a future. This is an impressive home some of us visit on our last day….

26-02-2006

I slept quite long, must be the time difference. Yesterday in the city, I picked up so many impressions, it makes me feel like I’ve been in India for a week… Anyway, I arranged an auto-rikshaw to take me all the way down the airport where I was about to fly the cheapest airline ever: Air-Deccan. I hoped they’d be a little safe though, but it seemed quite ok on Wikipedia. After landing, I intended to take the train to Varkkallai and skip Trivandrum mostly. But I wouldn’t have been supported by light for more than one-and-a-half hour…. and the cab charged me quite some money for going to the train station, but relatively not that much for driving me to Varkala directly (only 40 km). Ok… excuses. I am not as adventurous as I claim to be, and I was taken comfortably to my destination. No hassles at train stations and unknown co-passengers in my wagon; just a cab. Like all cabs, this was an ambassador of course

The trip was nice though, scenic views and we met a large dressed up crowd on the road. Celebrating something religious, like carnival although this is of India instead of South-America. Funny detail is that my driver doesn’t have enough fuel nor money to really get me there, so I end up paying for half the trip in order to finance the

fuel guy (1), can you imagine? I regularly find myself looking for words to describe the impressions I get these days. The countryside so very different, filled with people, little houses, temples, markets, cows on the road, horning traffic, and crazw smells. It won be captured by any picture I make. It’s just very different, a worthwhile experience…

In Varkkalla I was dropped of quite a walk from the hostel I picked. I like the strategy of picking one from a guide book (or advised by other travelers) in advance in order to be able to ignore the touts. It still works, although I have to carry my luggage for a mile across the

sandy beach (2), up some stairs, and keep on going north. I must have missed the place I wanted to go, and as the surrounding get to dark for my likings, I return and decide to take any good place I encounter… … except for the first one which tries to charge me 3000 rupies for a night! It looked nice although empty (wonder why), but I can stay two weeks in another place for that amount.

So I end up in Paradise Beach Resort. Nothing special (again), and there seem to be many other places on this beach worth checking out (price wise and based on quality), but it’s time for me to quit walking and get some real fresh sea-food in any of the restaurants further on, with a point-and-cook fish dish. Yummy!

27-02-2006

At home, I’m currently taking a photo course, and was taught some new ideas about portrait photography. The course teacher is a journalism photographer and he teaches an up-and-close wide-angle approach to people instead of the safe-and-distant telephotos. The contact between the photographer and the subject will show on the picture… Or so he claims. I’ve read about wide-angle distortion and the flattening effect of portrait lenses (say around 85mm), but I like to experiment and I’m willing to give this close approach a try. I even left my telephoto lens at home, saving 1.5 kilos of weight (I always bring the extender) and intend to experiment a little with my newly gathered knowledge…

This morning, I woke up early to spot some

fishermen (3) in action. Not a real challenge with a beach full of hard working men (4) fishers… At first, I had a hard time determining how their business operation worked. They all seemed to be pulling large ropes out of the sea, in groups of ten. But what and how I still had to figure out.

Sadly, some of the more interesting subjects opposed being photographed. I felt a bit useless anyway, carrying a camera while so much work had to be done… So I joined in. And this actually was so much fun! It took a while, but they taught me what they were doing; how their fishing operation worked. Some of them spoke a little English and I got to know the fishermen a little more. After an hour they thought it was good idea to be photographed by their tourist helper… This is quite a strategy!

So, when I just met him, I would have described a man called

Abdelkader (5) as an authoritive person: folded arms, looking down on me and saying strongly NO to being photographed. Maybe he was just shy . But an hour later we were joking around (6) and taking pictures. Ha!

But to get back to business… Fishing in India is hard work. After one and a half hour of pulling ropes, finally the net attached to it (

this is how it works (7)) came out of the sea. The net didn’t get in the sea by itself either… The lights I’d been seeing on sea last night, it had been the fishermen throwing in the big nets. So they’d been working for the whole night now, with the net-pulling as their final job. It was a sad thing to see only so few fish (8) come out of this labour… Their explanation was that after the big tsunami, lots of corpses (fish, people?) had been floating around in sea, and as the fish ate them, they became sick and died as well. So it’s only little fish for now .

Lying on the beach in this fishing-village being taken over by tourists didn’t really satisfy me, so I took the local train to Quilon. My hotel is neat but not really cosy, I tried to have dinner at a lonely planet adviced place, but they refuse… The people seem a bit unfriendly here, or maybe being watched constantly makes me feel uncomfortable, so I get back to my hotel to have dinner and drink something in the no-tourists, men-only no-fun bar. I end up at my room watching telly. Gee, great experierence… I’m glad to some sleep and away .

28-02-2006

As I approach the harbor in Quilon, I spot a hostel on the other side of the river, and it the seems a lot nicer! But as far as I’m concerned, I don’t mind getting away from here, into the so-called backwaters! The boat will take me a across the swamps, and it’s like a tour boat, taking a whole day to deliver me to Alleppey. Aboard, I meet the first Dutch tourists (this happens everywhere). One of them is a young woman running a internship for veterinarian. She’s working with monkeys, which must be quite cool… until I here she just had to take her seventh tetanus injection or so (monkeys bite)…

We were dropped of to have lunch in the most touristy place in the neighbourhood, which wasn’t very well, but ok, and I was traditionally expected to pay for the lady as well. And now comes the funny part, she insisted on paying me back! I told her it was like half a euro and I would laugh at her back home for insisting to pay me back, but she really wanted. Sure, fine with me, but it made me think… going Dutch (split the bill) can be regarded as honest, but it also is a cheap thing to do. So I always thought going Dutch would be for the cheapy men in our country (we seem to be known for it), but it might as well be the women which won’t let us pay!

I didn’t stay long in Alleppey, but boarded a bus to Cochin straight from the boat. It made me arrive late in Cochin, a bit late for diner after which it was time to get some sleep. But these are days like I like them

01-03-2006

I spent this day in Cochin, Fort Cochin to be exact. Just by walking around, seeing the fishermen, talking to locals, playing Santa Claus near a primary school with a load of pencils I brought from back home (kids swarming around me), had my future read by a so-called truth sayer (I should get married, but that’s what all people from conservative/traditional countries seem to insist on), talking to an American reporter (which insisted I should record my digital photographs in RAW), and watching a bit of Kathakali.

I ended up eating and drinking a bit with a guy from Friesland (The Netherlands). And I hardly ever speak Frisian in other occasions…

02-03-2006

As the whole country was on strike for some reason, I tried the beach. I ended up with a group of 5 people at a deserted beach. Burned a bit, but I was ok. When I returned in the evening, and went into a not-so-touristic area, I was confronted with an angry shouting and protesting mob. They were wearing Islamic robes, carrying signs with Bush on it (but not to celebrate him) and burning American flags. I stould aside as the people passed, and hoped not to be mistaken for an American. The country had been striking because some high placed US-officials (along which the president as I understood) were visiting India to rally support for the war against terror. Well, nothing really happened in my corner and I ended up eating with mr Frisian again .

03-03-2006

I chartered a riskjah driver to show me the final spot I hadn’t seen in Fort Kochi. I liked seeing the tourist area by daytime (and no demonstrations going here), but the “spice market” I was shown was a big commercial business. The ginger factory was interesting though. Later on, I was instructed not buy anything down the synagogue / jewish district (a big sign at the beginning at this street affirmed my driver in this instruction), so-called because of outrageous prices, but maybe jews aren’t treated fairly around here (I can’t tell). The part I liked best was the Jain temple. Altough it’s awkward to see the abundant usage of the swastika symbol, I liked the dove feeding (something ritually done) for loads of these birds.

The riksjah driver would take me to the airport, but had informed me wrongly (communication issue I guess), so it was (very) late when he brought me to the flightcenter. I arrived only 25 minutes before my plain would leave, but everybody seemed to help and step aside (is it because I’m a white guy?) and I accomplished what would have been impossible in Europe or the US: I was in time for my flight, this time arranged by KingFisher airlines.

It was still afternoon when I arrived, and instead of spending another whole day in Bangalore, a bus drove me to Mysore. I had a nice chat with the nice guy sitting next, and I agreed on letting him show me the city. So, at 10pm or so, we drove up the mountain to visit some temples (huge elephant statue) and see

Mysore by night (9). Superb day!

04-03-2006

I had a morning to visit the sites of Mysore. The palace was nice, but the guards will do and say literally anything to get an extra ruppie out of your pockets.

As my bus wouldn’t leave I took a cab back to Bangalore.

A flat tire (10) made me (and not my driver) worry for a while, but I still made it in time to have dinner with my collegue, his partner and a friend. Our other collegues would only arrive at 2pm, so in the meantime we visited a big student party (big fun).

A bit after 2pm, get to the planes to meet up with my collegues. The fun part was over, and ‘work’ had to be done…

04-11-2005

On a usual trip, I don’t fancy cities too much; I like to be out in the open and enjoy nature. But New York managed to make quite an impression. It’s not only a big city, it’s more then I realized filled with icons of the western world. I hadn’t thought of of this amount of familiar sights -possibly trickled trough in my brains by television, movies and photographs- that were cramped in a tiny area called Manhattan. Just some very short thoughts.

On Friday, I’d taken the early plain from Schiphol and through the six hours of time-bonus I arrived early in the afternoon in the USA. This way, I made it from JFK to my hostel and back again into Manhattan before four o’clock. I hoped to be able to pay a visit to the B&H Photo Video store (said to be one of the largest “photoshops”), but Jewish Sabath had already started earlier than I expected (at Friday noon) and I was confronted with a closed shop. Luckily

34th street (11) also boasts the Empire state building, so no need to worry about entertainment in New York. As the lines were quite long, it took me some time to get up to the 86th floor. By the time I was up there, dusk had already settled in and it was a nice opportunity to take some photographs.

05-11-2005

At Saturday I started walking around in Central park, passed by lots of joggers and other sporters; have a look at the

parent-fitness club (12) As the queues for getting to liberty island were too long for me, I decided to get a heli-ride (13) across Manhattan & the statue of liberty; definitely recommended!

I have to say that as a tourist, I just love the street-naming (or rather numbering) system. You never ever lose your way; by train, by bus or by walking around, you always know exactly how to reach your destination.

I visited Wall Street,

Times Square (14), Madison garden, SOHO, Ground Zero, Broad Way, Brooklyn bridge, Liberty Island (15) and many other places these days. Just in front of the very empty place originally occupied by the Twin Towers, I spotted some familiar faces (16).

06-11-2005

The idea was to leave for Pittsburgh today, but the American pilots seem to be real wussies. I’ve never had a flight cancelled due to weather, but today I had two of them. Delta only has two flights a day, and the early (8.20h) flight didn’t go because the plane couldn’t land through the fog (I have to agree, it was quite foggy). The really nice thing is that tried and managed to set us up for a flight from LaGuardia (an airport a few miles further on), but when I asked the obvious question whether planes would leave from there they decided to check and find out this option was a dead end; duh! Anyway, the 18.00h flight didn’t go because it was raining. Well, to be honest, some people got killed by the Huricane that stopped us from flying to Pittsburgh, so I guess they had a good reason for cancelling the flight.

So, on sunday I had two failed tries for deparure and ended up sleeping at a near the airport. Most of my luggage was checked in, so I had sunday for exploring the inside of the statue of liberty (no lines early in the morning), visiting the photoshop I wanted to go (although I not-so-smartly checked in my camera), and for having a look at the New York Marathon (I guess that was a lucky thing).

29-09-2005

We left early for the park we’d already visited. At 7.30 it was really quiet and we watched a load of springboks, a large

herd of Buffalo’s (17), many other animals but we still were in search for some elephants (18) we could quietly watch. And we were lucky! We were tipped for a “ large population of elephants (19) down at a waterhole; at least 60”. And indeed, what a crowd! I loved it. The whole bunch stood there, drinking and splashing, and I was pleasantly surprised by their social behavior (20). The little ones were playing and the real tiny ones were already showing off their potential might by chasing away bush pigs (21) from “their” waterhole. Also, one little guy got stuck and you could see him asking for help. Big daddy came by and pushed him up; an adorable sight!

After leaving Addo Elephant National Park, we went on our way to Graaff-Reinet. This town is a nice little place with a lot of historical buildings. We were out looking for accommodation, after having a quick look at the national monument karoo houses at Cambdeboo cottages (they were not as appealing as expected), we decided to have a try at the information center. Here, we were set up with a backpackers down the road in on town before we knew it, and as we didn’t really protest we arrived at the very nice Graaf-Reinet backpackers hostel. It’s located in an old, I would say Dutch-style although it’s been built by the British, building with high ceilings, right in front of the

Dutch Reformed church (22) you can’t miss in this town. Elmut and Chris are friendly and easy going people, and they advised us to have a look at the Karoo Nature Reserve at sunset.

We were a bit indecisive today, it seemed like we considered and changed our plans on each suggestion we got today. Anyway, we went up the mountain of the

Karoo Nature Reserve (23), and enjoyed the sunset at the point (called omnisphere or something) overlooking the little village and a large part of the Nature Reserve. Karoo is African for what they’d call outback in Australia: a veld consisting of a kind of desert, rock formations and plains (24), dry soil but filled with little bushes and trees. The sunset (25) was ok, but we didn’t linger around and wanted to get back to the hostel before things turned really dark. We put the car in an off-road parking area (‘this is much more secure’), we were told to keep the windows in our hostel-room closed because they’d had problems before. Given these remarks we still consider this a nice and cosy town, but we like to take security at least as serious as the locals do.

After some persuasion of Chris we swapped our dinner plans and joined the braai. This is a (as I’ve been told) typical South African style of cooking. It’s kind of a barbeque, but instead of using coals (as the we-can’t-wait Dutch people do), they start out with wood. So it definitely takes a long while before you’re able to put any meat on. This time has to be filled somehow, and as I’ve observed the South Africans do this with drinking lots of beer. We had some vegetables before our meat was thrown on, but the people joining us in the braai just consumed a lot of beer and a lot of meat.

An interesting guy we met in the hostel (sadly this was the single other visitor of this very nice hostel) was Steve Otter. He’d been living for a few years in the Netherlands, doing journalism work for the Amsterdam Times (never heard of it – but I don’t seem to be in their target group either), but he couldn’t really find his place between the everything-planned, living-crowded, hurrying Dutchies. I can only imagine as the African way of living is quite different from the European. Anyway, being back in South Africa and looking for a place to stay in Cape town, through a colleague he found a nice house – in the middle of a township!

Well, once you’ve seen one and heard the stories, I can’t imagine one is voluntarily moving to a place like that. But being an interested journalist, he did move their, adapted and lived a poor live like most inhabitants do (although he’d be the single white guy between millions of blacks in poverty), and is currently in the process of writing a book about it. He told some stories about the social systems in the townships; very hospitable people helping each other out, about meeting the gangsters that rule the place and shoot people while jacking their car. He claimed Africans have always known a hard life and will probably outlive most white people there. He considered the blacks a far superior race. Actually, I think he only claimed this to piss of Chris, but it did make me think. Having a society, although technologically nitwit, functioning in a primitive way; living together like tribes, killing members of the same species like animals, having people starving, not requiring advanced non-sustainable resources (like oil); such a society seems like a lot more sustainable way of living than having economies and populations that have to keep growing, and having an ever-growing consumption…

Ah well, that’s when we had another beer…

30-09-2005

This morning we had a walk around in the lovely town. I hadn’t noticed before in South-Africa, but all the shops here are fenced during the day-time. You’re let in manually (the owner pushes a button), and this creates a bit unsafe atmosphere. Anyway, we didn’t buy a lot (altough I really like the big wooden Giraffe’s; too big), and we took of for another walk in hte park. We had a nice walk in the Karoo park again; towards the Valley of Desolation. Later during this day, we visited the game reserve just next door, full of

small (26) (or at least not as big in what people tend to call big-5) game like antelopes (27).

We headed out towards Mountain Zebra National Park, where we had a nice chat with a Frenchman traveling throughout Africa by himself for the 16th time or so; some people really love this continent. At six we were unsuccessful in trying to spot the promised rhino of this park, but we did see some of the very rare mountain zebra’s.

1-10-2005

When we woke up, monkeys already took over the camp site. Badly enough, some locals were already feeding these animals. This does look

very cute indeed (28) (just for the photo-minded: this 100% crop shows the natural sharpness of the 70-200L, 1.4 extended. It comes out great on the hairy animals down here ), but it teaches them the completely wrong habits.

We drove around took loop through the park, which was said to be accessible for a simple 2WD car. But the times we told ourselves we were glad it wasn’t our own car (just a rental) were countless. This wasn’t a great road (understatement here) and a 4WD or at least some of its clearance would have been a great help.

The hike through the park was a lot better, and I had a chance to shoot some

pictures (29) and relax in the parks -for the moment private- swimming pool.

We planned to go and sleep somewhere around Queenstown and on our way we did some groceries at a little village somewhere in between. It was such an astonishing South African view… Many, kind of pour but happy people shouting, playing, moving, talking, laughing completely disorganized around the marketplace and shops. Carrying around big bags with flour or something, like I know them from television (aid to Africa). Being watched as a single white guy staying at his car, it made me feel kind of unconfortable flashing my expensive camera in front of these people feeding on poor mans food. It did make me feel like we’re getting into Africa

At four o’clock we arrived in Queenstown and started looking for a place. We had quite some trouble locating the Lonely Planet preselected Bed & Breakfast, as the city structure is a bit complex; the roads are hard to track without a map, and if you misunderstand one junction of the directions you got, you end up wrong! Anyway, when we did find it, we found it completely booked (due to some agricultural festival, there’s always something!), but luckiliy we were set up with a colleague B&B with space. There was no camping around this place, which -as we discovered driving through the town- was filled with B&Bs, and the Wagon Inn turned out to be a real good alternative. Situated in a rich neighborhood, a beautiful house, although decorated a bit kitschy (made me think of the Jordaan neighborhood in Amsterdam), it was a nice place. We had a very private room, and the owner really made us feel welcome. It eventually had taken us about one and a half hour to get booked in in this town, so in order to be accommodated before dark, we intended to start looking early for accommodation the following days.

Here, I’ll describe my first week in Africa

23-09-2005

Today is the big day for flying! I got up at 04.20h to catch the early train, and it was quite a long flight (just a bit over eleven hours) but everything went smooth. The adjacent passengers were from South Africa, so after some hours of talking I’d got a small update of the country’s status quo; still large differences in wealth but no official apartheid anymore. Also, HIV knowledge, security and employment are a big thing, or rather the huge lack of all of these. I was still only about to find out how true this actually is.

As we arrived over Cape Town, I was a bit surprised by the sheer size of the city; a 5 million people town, depending on how you count (the magic word being townships). Janneke picked me up at the airport; we arranged our rental car and took of. It was already night and we had to drive at the wrong side of the road (as we Europeans drive on the right side). Luckily within half an hour we arrived at our beach-overlooking hotel in Strand; a pleasant suburb of Cape Town.

24-09-2005

This morning we tried to get up the table mountain. But as we arrived at the base of the mountain, already we were covered in clouds. You ascent the mountain, by either walking up, or have a cable car take you to the top. However, the cable dissolved in thick clouds within meters, and walking in this thick mist would’ve been quite an interesting undertaking So, going up was of no use for us today. Instead we headed towards Simonstown, just South of Cape Town in the direction of the Cape of Good Hope.

As we passed Chapman’s bay, we had a quick look at the view. As we were just getting into the car again, some tourists enthusiastically pointed out the

whales (30); only about 30 meters from the coast. We frantically paced down to get some good shots (no harpoons here), although the big friendly mammals were in no hurry to go anywhere

About an hour and some lunch in Simonstown later, we arrived at Boulders beach. Man, this is a load of

African penguins (31), viewable from a big tourist-filled boardwalk. Although this is their natural habitat, it still feels a bit like an arranged and non-wild setting (like a zoo). Anyway, I always enjoy these clumsy-walking birds; they’re so completely opposite to their gracious swimming abilities. There was quite some traffic of birds (32) coming ashore and taking of for a swim.

After some hanging around with the

penguins (33), we did the Good Hope Nature walk, all the way down the Cape of Good Hope. By surprise Janneke was welcomed by a big baboon with an obnoxious obsession for her backpack (34). These human-like creatures can be quite dangerous, biting and clawing. Luckily, I was not hindered by the knowledge of its potential threat, so I happily photographed the scene of a baboon showing off experienced backpack-unzip skills while Janneke kicked his ass! There were actually quite a lot of baboons; beautiful animals (35). By that time we were unaware that our most exiting adventure if this day was still to come…

Dusk was already setting in when we drove back to our hotel. Looking at the map we decided to take the most direct route heading toward the N2 motorway. As we progressed, the neighborhoods around us started slowly to detoriate; every crossing we passed brought us worse “houses”. The number of white people surrounding us (on street or by care) had already dropped to zero for over at least a quarter of an hour, and even with locked doors we really didn’t feel safe. Now, for the uninformed people; Cape Town is a city surrounded by townships. I would describe them as large disorganized areas, crowded with junkyard shags occupied by too many, poor, black people. I’ve been told gangs rather than the police or any governmental institution rule the places and walking is a tourist is an open invitation to get robbed, raped and killed. Crime rates are unbelievably high (but not recorded because of aforementioned reasons, so no statistics here) and murder is a daily happening. It’s hard for me to assess the realistic threat of these areas, but lots of local people talk about it and we’ve been warned over and over to take good precautions to avoid getting mugged. Anyway, we felt a bit like most white South-Africans do; even though you take try to take precautions, you still don’t really feel safe between the blacks. In our case we locked the doors, watched for people coming up the car, tried to avoid attention and watched our escape routes. Many white people here have a fenced house, in a security patrolled or even fenced neighborhood, equipped with an alarm system with armed response, keep dogs, and guns, have fences for their shop-doors the whole day, reserve the right to deny admission, so you can tell security is a big issue. Anyway, nothing happened of course, and we safely reached or hotel. Quite an interesting day today.

25-09-2005

We checked out and shopped in the Waterfront Mall. A luxurious shopping centre, so you’re assured not to run into the homeless and hungry while you spend lots of money on stuff you don’t need (to impress people you don’t like ). With South Africa, I hoped to visit a cheap, ‘shop till you drop’ paradise. Although things like food, petrol and (black ) labour come for a little bit less money, (outdoor) clothing and luxuries are price wise not must-buy items. We only got some additional camping gear and food, and headed off for the big central mountain that for one day managed to shake off its clouds.

We took the cable car; climbing would’ve been great but we though it would take too much time. We planned to continue our iternary today and wanted to avoid the hassle of last night by making sure to arrive at Hermanus before dusk. The table mountain turned out to be quite nice; a beautiful view but nothing special on top. Ah well, maybe I would’ve been much more enthusiastic about it after hours of hard work climbing the mountain…

We arrived at Hermanus on time, and the Hermanus Backpackers looked like a very warm & cozy hostel. The hostel owners (like all) introduce themselves by their first name and make you feel welcome. We arrived in a relaxed living-room atmosphere; a small fire and some happy dogs greeting me. However, there was no place for us in the hostel so we turned to Moby’s; ok but nothing special (you enter the premises through the bar filled with drinking regulars, nice people though). Nick took care of us and set us up for a canoe-with-the-whales trip for the next day. We strolled around the little village which was said to boast a huge whale festival (as the first backpackers explained their full bookings). Probably the festival had arrived in its after-party phase.

We had a nice meal of sea-food in a fishing gear decorated restaurant called the Ocean Basket. Noticeable differences with The Netherlands are a waitress introducing herself (first name) that makes you feel welcome (assisting people to sit down and take coats), have a lot of time quickly serving you (they’ll ask at least three times if everything’s ok), and plates and glasses are removed from the table removed from sight the minute they’re empty. This is realized through a high amount of staff, and still the dinners are really cheap.

26-09-2005

So, at 9.30 we were supposed to meet Ivan somewhere on the peer. Six other people turned up and we were distributed among 4 double canoes, with our guide taking the lead in a single-person canoe. Meanwhile he’d keep radio contact with his partner Vanessa on the shore, staying informed on recent whaled sightings. Canoeing the sea was quite an experience, with the waves coming on, and the possibility of being flaked by a whale. The bad news was that we were supposed to stay at least 300 meters away from these largest mammals on earth. The good new is one can be a little creative, by canoeing to places where unexpectedly a whale pops up next to you (so you couldn’t have avoided it, could you?). We definitely saw a lot of whales this trip, some quite close (30m); wonderful. It’s an adventure to “hunt” them by their v-shaped spraying fountains. We could see them jumping and splashing, although this activity was reserved for the deep waters further off shore.

Meanwhile I surprised by a curious visitor, popping up only a few meters from the canoe; a seal! Although canoeing is good, for having a good look at in-sea creatures (seeing more than just the upper part), I think SCUBA diving still is the way to go.

After we’ve seen enough whales and had gotten really cold, we disembarked and took a hot shower in our hostel (great service of the hostel to offer this after checkout ). Then we took of for the Hoop Nature Reserve. Somewhere along the 90 kilometers of unpaved road we had to cross we had quite an interesting meeting with some

feathered friends (36). These road-running ‘volstruis’es compensate their non-flying capabilities with their running abilities. They are really curious (37), so we had no lack of attention once we parked our car down the road.

Down at the Hoop Nature Reserve we were able to find a beautiful camp site, down the water shore in a field crowded with

Bonteboks (38). We managed to do this even though the camp site was fully booked due to school holidays; luckiliy there is plenty of space in this park.

27-09-2005

After a cold night (a bit too cold I guess) we hiked a trail trough the reserve. I always enjoy a good hike, this was nothing special however. Somehow the lens got stuck on my camera (I couldn’t unmount it anymore), quite irritating. Later on the day however, after some pulling and twitching, I succeeded and as it turned out, a tiny scrap of plastic (-source still unknown- broken of my kit-lens) managed to block the (un)screwing mechanism. We headed of for Knysna, and collected a huge pile of mud on the rainy gravel-roads.

We arrived at a fine hostel called Highfield backpackers. After getting some groceries in a seemingly all-black neighborhood, we prepared a meal in the communal kitchen.
After dinner, I had an interesting discussion in the living room. I started a small-talk conversation with the guy next to me. It turned out he came from South-Africa so we talked a bit about the country. Victor, as he’s named, also talked quite negatively about the blacks. This is not necessarily special for a South-African, but the strange thing was that, to me, Victor was black himself. And this was where I had it wrong; there three main types of people to distinguish in this country: the whites, the blacks, and the coloreds. Well, I never heard of this classification, but here these groups have a hard time getting along. And the subgroups don’t mix well either; the Boers and English have fought for many years, and the Zulus still kill the Khosian and the Xhosa if they get the chance, probably like the Hutus kill the Tutsis, or the Ethnic-Kosovaran-muslims kill the Albanic Bosnian-Serbians (I lost track of that last conflict long ago). Blacks and coloreds live in different townships, have opposing gangs, hate each others guts, and are treated differently under (current) discriminating laws. To say that last one simple; Victor isn’t black enough to get a government job, or to be pushed up by the black empowerment rules. One explanation of these unfair laws was given to me by the guy I met in the plane; in the current situation whites rule the country, and if you don’t push it for a while, things will never change.

Meanwhile a Zimbabwean guy had joined the conversation. Even though he kind-of was chased out of his country five years ago, he had lots of positive opinions about the blacks, the poor, and the original African bushman way of life.

28-09-2005

We had a look at some craft work in the local shops & markets, decided it wasn’t much and continued our trip. Somewhere along the Garden Route (much hyped, but I think it’s nothing special), along the Tsitsikamma coast, we had our lunch with a nice sea view. When I’d parked the car and walked towards the sea, I discovered a small swimming paradise; marvelous waves, great to jump in and to let them take you away. I roused back to get my swimming shorts and discovered why surfers love this area (Jeffrey’s Bay, a bit further on is a popular surfing spot). The waves were big, able to pick me up and throw me down 30 meters further. Just a little bit cold, but nothing that the shining sun couldn’t fix…
We’d parked our car just behind a single rowed dune. In South Africa, when parking your car near a super market, shopping center, beach or anywhere else, always you’ll find people managing and watching the parking lots. They might help you reverse into the parking spot, direct traffic, walk around with a bat or simply stand around; the idea is that they’ll protect your property while you’re gone. Or realistically; the idea is that you give them money because you should. To parking lot guys can be kids or elderly, white or black (mostly black though, or coloured, man, I’m not getting happy with all this confusing extra knowledge). On this parking space, James managed to keep our Rental car safe during my swim. I gave him the two (or one) rands that seem to be a fitting reward around here…

From the Garden route, we skipped Port Elizabeth and drove through its sister town Uitenhage (which is surrounded by townships) and we headed of to the place we wanted to see: Addo Elephant National Park. Our destination is a large park, unsurprisingly near Addo, and as it name also gives away; filled with Elephants.
At around 4pm we arrived, but the campsite was fully booked (again). We still wanted to have a look around, even though the park closed at six. Well, actually we kind of hoped to still acquire a camp spot after 6 pm. The lady that helped us didn’t promise anything, but had told us we could take any unoccupied site after that time. Unfortunately, the campsite turned ou to be really small, and every spot was indeed taken. This actually has never ever happened to us before, and we’ve visited quite a bunch of NPs in our life (and never booked of course). Well, the pain was a bit less when we found out the site were not “overlooking a waterhole where game feeds day and night”. I doubt if that brochure creator has seen the (current) state of the campsites
At 4pm, we had a quick loop trough the park (by car). We were pleasantly held up by a big

elephant on the road (39) (this big one had a natural right of way). We discovered that parking the car and observing for at least ten minutes reveals the presence of many animals (40) seem to be able to blend in. Nice!

Anyway, after six o’clock we arranged ourselves in a nice “backpackers” cottage at the Orange Elephant. Very nice and quiet. Lané served us food at the accompanying restaurant. My game steak (Kudu) was really tender (this really good food!), and the Mitchel’s from the tap were refreshing, so we slept well. At night we were guarded by a sweet dog in front of our cottage. I notice that lots of people have lots of dogs around here…