Welcome:

If you are a new reader here, make sure you go to the archives (upper right hand corner) and click on July, to see the beginning of the trip.

You will have to click on each month to go through the trip. Unfortunately, that’s the way they have it set up here.

Thanks for dropping by – and Sala kahle,

~granny m

This will just be a list of the things I found useful and not.

My VASQUE BOOTS: I love them. Wonderful support, both on the footbed and on the ankle. They are so comfortable I’d like to wear them around the house like slippers.

I didn’t do serious climbing in them, but walked many miles in both sand forest and city pavement, and they were great for both places.

Only caveat – double knot the laces, as they come undone really easily.

KATADYN MICROFILTER WATER BOTTLE: Filter worked well, bottle was a bit stiff for my hands at first, but it loosened up. No tummy upsets during 3 months away.

BIG SERIOUS caveat: This bottle will develop some kind of problem if it’s on your pack or anywhere where the sun is shining on it. It starts to wick the water out and you can start with a full bottle, and when you go to get a drink (as I did) you will only have an inch of water left in the bottle. This could be dangerous!! I have written Katadyn about this, but so far have received no comment or acknowledgment.

TILLEY HAT AND CLOTHING – The hat was good, but I’m not really impressed by the clothing at all. First of all, it doesn’t dry overnight as promised, even in the area of South Africa that’s in drought conditions. Also, the sizes are wonky. If you try on a pair of long pants and they fit fine, you can’t just grab a pair of short pants of the same style and expect them to fit – they don’t. The rise is quite different in those two, and the shirt lengths are quite variable. I ended up with one shirt where the last button was above my belly button and the shirt ended shortly (no pun intended) thereafter. It looked ridiculous on me. BAH!! I’d already tried on 3 shirts where the length was fine, so figured I could just grab the 4th and I’d be OK.

South African Post Office: Don’t use it at all for anything other than post cards. NOTHING I mailed home got here, and nothing I’ve sent there since, eg: letters with photographs, Christmas cards, has reached the intended recipients. Enquiries to SAPS about my missing parcels that should have arrived here have received no reply.

*** One parcel I sent by SAPS just arrived now, it late January, though it was mailed in mid-October.  It was in reasonable shape, and better late than never.  I had sorely missed it, since it was the tin on composite board art work (the artists paint part of a street scene, then take pop cans and so on, and cut them up to make the buildings in the scene.  Since many of the buildings are actually tin, and more have tin roofs, the effect is very evocative).

DHL Freight: Most of what I sent home arrived, only the CDs stolen out of the package, but most everything else was smashed and broken. I was brokenhearted – all my souvenirs and gifts for my grandkids gone. Now, for their part, when I put in a claim, which had to be done directly with DHL-SA, they were efficient and reasonable with that. Unfortunately, that doesn’t get me my stuff, and as I’m likely to be unable to ever go again, that hurts.

AVIS Rental cars: Good cars, clean, not any problems. Friendly efficient service if you’re dealing with them in person. Dealing on the web for reservations and so on is useless. Used them more than once and was always happy with both the vehicle and the service.

Dealing with anyone, just about anywhere in SA on the web, with the exception of hotels and some B&Bs is pretty useless. You won’t get a response any sooner than if you’d sent a letter by Pony Express, if ever.

ENTERPRISE Car Rentals: Uh, no. Rented a car from them at Jozie airport to drive up to Louis Trichardt, and the car had a tire that had a nail in it and leaked, which I had to get fixed, and also had 200km on the meter and a partially empty gas tank, which I didn’t discover until I stopped for a bite to eat at a highway place. There again, they were fairly easy to deal with when I took the car back and showed them the bills, but the manager did some kind of trade-off on the bill for those costs and I was too tired to figure out who, exactly, benefited from that, and now I’ve lost the bills, so I’ll never know.

ROSE’S RADIO TAXI: In Johannesburg, this company is wonderful. Jozie is a huge spread out city and the drivers for other companies don’t seem to know it well. They want you to tell them where to go, which most tourists can’t do. Rose’s drivers either know where they’re going or find out before they set off.

I may add more things here as I think of them.

Anyone who wanders back here, I have posted my really  big video on Box net, but it is password protected because I don’t want the video of “my kids” being passed around the internet in the wrong places.

If you want to see them, and I haven’t sent the links to you, let me know and I’ll get them to you.

I was glad Bongani could drive backwards quickly when we got chased by a grouchy elephant:

http://www.livevideo.com/video/C0C7CCB1E4D14168A9D8033F07EBE05D/chased.aspx?m_tkc=8296530

This must be the most beautiful bird in the world:

http://www.livevideo.com/video/8845BC145913457A9DC3789D4073E0DB/lilac-crested-roller.aspx?m_tkc=8297052

http://www.livevideo.com/video/BB18B96FDAD74F9490E03387CB950250/lilac-crested-roller-2.aspx?m_tkc=8297140

A beautiful African sunset seen on an evening game drive when we stopped for tea:

http://www.livevideo.com/video/66A5EDD3C276472EBAEC152CFAD199B9/african-savannah-sunset.aspx?m_tkc=8299018

The handsomest lion in all of Africa:

http://www.livevideo.com/video/2478231215F243D6B0E5D98DA8D3E274/tembe-the-lion.aspx?m_tkc=8301198

This little girl would come and drink out of the tap at the foot of the stairs of the computer room if I left it running and I could stand right in the door a couple feet away and watch her.

http://www.livevideo.com/video/1EF6A1E20A2F4CBE8F3B0E74EE8AEB37/bambi.aspx?m_tkc=8206715

Zebra having lunch by the roadside:

http://www.livevideo.com/video/B553670C74FE49A6A5A54E9952174E5E/zebra.aspx?m_tkc=8206880

Cape buffalo in the road with their oxpecker hitch hikers:

http://www.livevideo.com/video/FA8F930F243649AFA68036B4E4CAF994/cape-buffalo.aspx?m_tkc=8207189

Vervet monkeys playing near my porch:

http://www.livevideo.com/video/80036F781DD440FE904C87ECCD6AE55B/vervet-monkies.aspx?m_tkc=8208903

but this will be a *long* on-going process, as even a little video takes half an hour or more to load.

Lions in Jozie:

http://www.livevideo.com/video/2BFEE60BC05247859A5B36DE0C4D913E/lions-in-jozie.aspx?m_tkc=8177994

Lions 2

http://www.livevideo.com/video/2F8898B9E2674B0BA8CFE9D19EACA7D6/lions-2.aspx?m_tkc=8178800

Lions 3

http://www.livevideo.com/video/204A28D2D1BD46CD878B80FC93DE9950/lions-3.aspx?m_tkc=8178976

Lions 4

http://www.livevideo.com/video/E302173592D1473884000F2A4F16522F/lions-4.aspx?m_tkc=8180194

Lions 5

http://www.livevideo.com/video/370A43E556B54A898CECB94FE887B41F/lions-5.aspx?m_tkc=8181377

Giraffe

http://www.livevideo.com/video/13C46F5BC6464454962F9AB80794D67E/giraffes.aspx?m_tkc=8183704 

None of the sites I can find for video will take any clip larger than 100MB, so I’ve had to edit these down.  Maybe I can figure out how to compress some future clips and leave them longer – but who knows.   Hope you enjoy what is here.  More soon . . .

I went to see the Gold Museum in Cape Town, and here are some pictures from that visit. It was fascinating, and sure let me know that I was very wrong in thinking that the huge jewellery some people wear these days was a fashion started by drug dealers and pimps. These styles go back about 200 years in Ghana and a few other countries.

Here are some pictures of the lovely tea plantation. The ride was hairy (See ‘Oh, my tired self’, Oct 18th), but the view was worth it. And the melktart was incredibly tasty.

The very sad thing about the tea plantation is that it is no longer working. There is apparently a land claim against it – I understand much like our native land claims here, so meanwhile it sits and goes to seed (or whatever tea plantations do) while I expect the government will take it’s own sweet time deciding who owns it.

There were many breathtaking views in S A, but this was one that you could never tire of looking at.

What really gets to me is how these guys can grin like this when they’ve just killed a beautiful living creature.

After I finally got on the right track in Polokwane and out to the highway, I had to pull over again since I didn’t know how to turn on the high beams for the headlights and knew I would need them once I got out of the urban area, and especially after I got onto the small roads to the lodge.

Several careful readings of the manual didn’t give me any enlightenment, nor did fiddling with all the knobs and dials, so I ended up driving over 100km home on low beams, only able to see 25 feet in front of me in the dark, on strange winding roads.  Let’s just say I was really late for dinner.  I was so exhausted that I didn’t care though.

I drove down to Jozie yesterday and am staying in the airport hotel.  Decided that the cost was worth it since staying at a B&B would involve very large taxi fares back and forth which would easily make up the difference.

Had a couple problems with the car.  The tank was down by a quarter when I took it out, and soon manifested a softening tire which I eventually had to take in and get fixed as it was losing air faster and faster.  I kept the receipts from the gas up, showing that I’d put in R200+ after only 65K of driving, and the receipt from the tire being fixed, and the rental company was very good about it.

The hotel had the TVs on in all the lounges, restaurants hallways and so on for the game last night, but I went to bed and still don’t know who won, though I think SA was ahead when I finished dinner.

I have learned to speak, or at least understand a bit of S African while I’m here though, so that’s nice.  When I got directions to the highway from a young chap at the tea garden, he told me “You go straight, en straight, en straight, en just now you’ll see a board that says . .  .” and I understood perfectly.

I’ve got a long day sitting around here waiting for my 7 p.m. flight, so I hope I can find a book store.  I’d stay on-line and write some more stuff, but internet at the hotels is really expensive.

I’ll be able to catch you up and finish loading pictures soon after I get home, but maybe a couple days lapse for the time lag, a good soak in the bathtub and getting acquainted with my own bed again.