More Winelands

February 19, 2010 Franshhoek, South Africa

The winelands are amazing; I only wish we were staying longer! Here are a few more pictures. Here I am at La Petite Ferme, a wine farm with great views over the valley. Do you like the preppy cashmere sweater tied around the neck look? It's very, like, Princeton, isn't it?


Some of you will remember the wedding cup from our wedding. We purchased it at Warwick wine estate, and it's a bit of a theme at Warwick. They LOVED the fact that we used it at our wedding, and they asked for pictures of us drinking from the wedding cup for their blog.

Here we are at the place that makes our favorite port, Muratie. Muratie's Cape Vintage Port is impossible to find anywhere outside of the wine farm, but we have learned that they will soon begin distribution in the US. We've got dibs on an entire case of Cape Vintage Port! As it is, we bought 6 bottles, which should keep our goblets filled until distribution begins.

And here's another shot of a picturesque wine farm.

Wonderful Winelands

February 18, 2010
Franschhoek, Western Cape
South Africa

Glad you guys enjoyed the latest turn of events on my overland trip! Now, I've said adieu to the overlanders, and I am in one of my favorite places on earth, the winelands of South Africa. I picked J. up at the Cape Town airport on Monday and we drove straight to Franschhoek, where we rented a little cottage. If Cape Town is the whipped cream on top of the ice cream sundae of my trip, the winelands are the cherry that tops the whipped cream that tops the ice cream sundae! J. is fresh from La Scala in Milan, and he is full of plans for weekend trips to La Scala to catch an opera!

Here we are at a wine farm, sampling the local goods.


Because oysters are only R15 (2 USD) each here, J. has decided that he has to have them every day! Although he won't admit it, I think he's happy to be here.

Today, we have more wine farms to visit, massage appointments, and reservations at the oyster & champagne bar. Wonderful! Tomorrow, we hop on a night bus to Upington, in the Northern Cape, where we will pick up our big 4WD truck to take into the Kalahari.

The Plot Thickens

February 9th and 10th, 2010 Sesreim, Namibia
In Swakopmund I noticed a distinct chill in the air from my fellow overlanders; no one would look me in the eye. Did someone, a public figure like the queen, or maybe a rock star, die? I wondered. Then it became clear: they had discovered my blog. A few girls confronted me--they were furious. Their feelings had been hurt. Possibly, tears had been shed. (Why is it that I'm always making silly girls cry? It's the same old story since high school. Jenny, do you know?) They had recognized themselves in my characterizations. Certain comments, including the characterization of one of them as a "tart," another as "doughy" and adjectives describing the group as "disheveled" with "jaundiced livers" from excessive drinking were particularly offensive. They were insulted that I was not thrilled to see them every time I met up with the group. "You have spoilt the trip!" exclaimed one tall Kiwi, nicknamed The Giraffe. I didn't apologize. I started my blog with a commitment to speaking freely. While I will not use friends' names or post pictures of them if they don't want me to, and I won't blog about work, of course (never a good idea, see Armstrong, Heather) I decided from the start not to censor my blog.

I was curious about how they found my blog. Blogs can be difficult to find and this one has a tricky name--I even occasionally screw up the name when I try to give it to someone--and it's not posted on facebook. One girl--let's call her Chubbs, because she is fond of wearing grandmotherly muumuus, which have the unfortunate effect of making her look squatter than she is--claimed she found it by looking up my Setswana name, which sounds implausible, to say the least (how many people can spell Kutlwano, pronounced KUKE-wano?). It became clear that this claim was a lie. In fact, I had sent the link to a fellow overlander before the trip (I met her online) and promptly forgot about it. Silly me! She was crushed when she found an unflattering description she surmised described her, and passed it on to everyone to read.

So what are they going to do, kick me off the island? "We've decided," said The Giraffe, "that we won't hang around you anymore. You can be around us, but we won't speak to you." I love it! It's a version of the elementary school chestnut "You can't be our friend anymore." It's a fifth grade shunning! And I couldn't have planned it better myself! I get to spend the last 5 days of the tour with the best of both worlds: I'm on the truck down to Cape Town, with transportation, accommodation and meals planned, yet I don't have to be a part of the silly group! No one to pester me to drink more, or to harass me to jump into the pool naked with everyone else!

It has been wonderful! I am totally free. We spent a night at Sesreim camp, near the famous red sand dunes. In the evening, I dropped by the camp bar for a Savanna Dry. The overlanders were clustered in an unhappy circle at a table. I settled at the bar and struck up a lively conversation with a group of Namibian guides from a nearby lodge. That's a part of independent travel that I miss; when you are with a group, you don't get to interact with locals--you chat mostly with your group. Clearly, I didn't come to Africa to talk with a bunch of silly soused Brits about who's shagging who! I've also met some warm, wonderful Canadians on an orange Geckos truck (who are not, admittedly, locals) that will parallel our route down to Cape Town.

So now, I'm shunned by the overlanders, unrepentant, and having a blast! I'm thrilled to be in Namibia, the desert is incredible, the sky is vast and the temperature is scorching! I'm probably the happiest person on the truck, except for the two dudes, who seem pretty satisfied. The girls seem unhappy & bitter. Their jokes are shopworn--even those telling them seem sick of them--and their laughter is shrill. There is a psychic burden that accompanies being a hater, I think.

Here is the incredible Sossusvlie near Sesreim.


Here I am watching sunset at Fish River Canyon, looking for all intents and purposes like a cat full of cream.

To My Faithful Readers

Now that I'm in Swakopmund, a weird German seaside town in Namibia, I have great internet access. Wonderful! I've blogged about Botswana and Namibia and I've even put up pictures of Vic Falls. Enjoy! I'd love to hear your comments and I'd also love to hear any scary stories you'd care to share that I can tell around the campfire (and frighten the pants off the overlanders).

Bush Camping at Spitzkoppe

February 6, 2010

Spitzkoppe, Namibia

I sadly left my beautiful chalet at Etosha and headed to Spitzkoppe, where we would be bush camping: a drop toilet, no showers. It was very hot and dusty when we arrived, and our campsite, pictured below, was almost unearthly.

The rocks glowed red and pink and orange as the sun set. Absolutely magnificent! I was also happy to hear that there was a rock pool, of rainwater trapped by the rocks, an easy climb up from our campsite. I walked to see some rock paintings which were, disappointingly, only 200 - 4,000 years old. (I want to see the paintings that are 50,000 years old!) After the rock art, I hopped in the somewhat dirty rock pool. There could have been bilharzia in that pool and it's possible that I'll pay for it later, but for now, it's water!

We ate "cottage pie" (mashed potatoes and veggies) and toasted marshmallows around the campfire. I opened a bottle of rose that was the same colour as the rocks around us. Bush camping or not, it was a perfectly lovely evening! And the food was great. I haven't mentioned it yet, but the food on tour has been delicious and the leaders are very good at catering for vegetarians. We eat stir fry, burritos, beef (tofu) stroganoff, salads and lots of other delicious foods. Everything is fresh and made from scratch by us, the intrepid overlanders. under the guidance of our leaders.

For an inexplicable reason, everyone that night was dressed up in crazy costumes (lingerie, leopard skin camisoles, dive suits) from secondhand shops that they had acquired in Malawi. (I can't explain why. It's simply inexplicable.)

That night in Spitzkoppe I'm such a diva that I actually pitched my tent while everyone else slept outside on the rocks.

A Note about the Tour: I've gotten a few questions about why I stayed on the tour for the southern Africa when it has been clear that I was less than totally happy on tour in East Africa. It's simply because southern Africa (Botswana, Namibia) are really difficult to travel through independently. You can't get to the central Kalahari, Etosha, or Spitzkoppe, for instance, via public transportation. You could hire a car, but if so, it would probably need to be 4WD and it would be totally expensive. Also, my instincts were right: the tour from Livingstone to Cape Town has been totally different from East Africa (no mud) and absolutely amazing so far! Silly overlanders aside, I'm having a blast!

Books read: The best book I've read so far this year has been The Magicians, by Lev Grossman. It's an existential book of fantasty about a kid in Brooklyn who is a magician. As it turns out, finding other worlds (which would seem to fulfill your heart's desire) do not make you happy if you're a miserable person to begin with. I liked it so much that when I finished it, I started it all over again. How many books can you say that about?

Ditau (Lions) in Etosha

February4 and 5, 2010

Etosha National Park

Namibia

Here at Etosha National Park in Namibia, I have found the very best chalet in the entire country. In some mysterious way that has to do with the thatched roof, stone tiles and drapes, it is totally cool in the 100+ degree heat even with the air conditioning (air conditioning!) turned off. This lovely chalet is also, at 640 Namibian dollars (85 USD) the most expensive place I have stayed so far here in Africa. But it's so, so much better than a hot tent with the jackals sniffing around. My fellow overlanders were a little green with envy, so I tried not to boast overly much. But it's wonderful! Here is a picture of my beautiful bed with crisp white linens and fluffy towels. Unbeknownst to me, the chalet even came with pets. I was brushing my teeth late one night when into the bathroom sauntered a little mouse with bright black eyes, totally unafraid of me. In the morning I extracted a promise from reception that they would round it up and let it go (and not kill it!)

The campsite also has a nice restaurant, a swimming pool, a post office, and best of all, a floodlit waterhole where you can sit quietly with a bottle of wine and see who appears for a drink. During our time here, I saw a rhino, lots of zebra and even a lion come down for a sip of water.

At Etosha, we went on morning, afternoon and evening game drives. On one morning drive I saw a small pride of lions (one male, two females) seemingly deliberate whether or not it was worth the effort to chase a zebra. One lioness divided the zebra group into two, and drove one half of the herd towards the other lioness, who was lying in wait, but halfway through she seemed to lose interest and sauntered off. There was a dead zebra nearby, so maybe she just wasn't hungry enough for a chase.

And here is sunset at the waterhole. You know how I love sunset pictures!Books read: A Good Fall: Stories by Ha Jin

Camping in the Kalahari

February 2 and 3, 2010

Ghanzi, Botswana
Central Kalahari

Our camp here at Ghanzi is the coolest so far. The huts looks like wigs of thatched hair, and there is Kalahari desert all around.

The temperature is 100.4 degrees in the sun, 95 in the shade. Because it was so crazy hot, we hopped into a pickup truck to drive to a nearby natural quarry, pictured at the top of this post. The quarry was amazing--the water was blue and cold and little fish nibbled on my toes when I hung on the rocks at the edge. It also must have been crazy deep--I couldn't see the bottom. It would be a great place to scuba dive! (Maybe I'll come around to this diving thing.)

When we returned from the quarry, some Bushmen escorted us on a walk. They showed us which roots and herbs they chew on when they are sick, and they even showed us how to start fire using sticks (pictured below). Although most Bushmen are settled in villages now, it is cool to see how they lived less than a generation ago. There were women who guided us too, and they carried their very cute babies in little antelope skin pouches on their backs. I asked them, through an interpreter, if they had a founding myth, and they said they did. "We came from the place where the sun rises," one said. "And we came from two monkeys, and we learned to hunt with bows and arrows." There was more to it--it was a really cool story.After dinner that night around the fire, I told the one and only scary story I know (lone backpacker on the Appalachian Trial, serial killer, camera with pictures of lone backpacker sleeping) and thoroughly scared my fellow overlanders. To me, it's a lame story, told too many times, but it must not have done a circuit in the UK. We'll have lots of campfires ahead of us and I wish I had more scary stories. Do anyone of my buddies out there have scary stories to share? I'd love to scare their pants off!

Books read: The Bottom Billion: Why Poor Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by Paul Collier. He argues that the bottom billion poorest people on earth belong to countries that are stuck in poverty traps. They will only become richer with capitalism. He urges the developed world to make policy changes (tariffs) and use military interventions to stabilise fragile governments. I think he is too optimistic about capitalism's ability to uplift people, and in light of the current snafu in Iraq, I don't think military intervention is the best idea ever.

Cowboy Pilots in the Okavanga Delta

January 31st and February 1, 2010

Maun / Okavango Delta, Botswana

From our camp in Maun we began our foray into the Delta, which boasts all kinds of wildlife. We drove to the edge of the delta and then hopped into mokoros, which are canoes guided by polers which were traditionally made from sausage trees and are currently made out of fibreglass (to conserve the sausage trees). My poler, Leba, was a Tswana, and we had a great time chatting in Setswana. The other polers were talking about me, in Setswana. They were saying "That lekgoa (white person) is speaking Setswana. Who taught her how to speak Setswana?" The thing I love about being conversant in another language is that you know what people are saying about you!

We ended up on an island, where our guides built a fire and dug us a toilet with a shovel. The shovel served as the "door" to the toilet. When the shovel stood at the entrance, the toilet was free; when it was gone, it was occupied. Our island boasted a "swimming pool," a swimmable bit of the Delta. We spent the afternoon swimming and then we went on a nature walk with our guides, which turned out to be kind of like a forced march. The guide was a little shy, so instead of telling us about the flora and fauna we saw, he marched us through it, very quickly. We marched along in the stifling late afternoon, avoiding spring hare holes. After two hours, we were relieved to return to the camp. In the evening, we took a final dip in the "swimming pool" and roasted our dinner, potjiekos ("pot food," vegetables and potatoes and meat) in a three legged pot over the fire. For dessert, we toasted marshmallows over the fire.

The next morning, we rose at the crack of dawn for another nature walk in the Delta. This time, it was leisurely and interesting. After a breakfast of scones heated over the fire, we hopped into mokoros and returned to our camp in Maun, in time for our afternoon flight in prop planes over the Delta. As it turned out, I was in a different plane from the other seven members of my group, and we were flying side by side over the Delta. Our pilots, as it turned out, were absolute maniacs and started doing tricks and turns. The other plane swooped down in front of my plane, crazy close, startling my pilot, and then did some twirly-twirls and plummeted down towards the ground. They're going to crash, I thought, with interest. Ten meters above the ground, the pilot pulled the plane upwards. Everyone was spared. Inspired by the other plane, my pilot started in on some tricks, until a passenger, an Australian, threatened to vomit. "I swear, if you do that again, I'm going to spew!" she hollered. I didn't doubt that she meant it. I was very, very happy to be on God's good earth when we landed. This is a shot of the Delta from above.

Overall, I am absolutely loving Botswana! It's wonderful to speak Setswana again, and everyone is so friendly! It's also a country with a very small population (about 2 million people) and the spaces are big and empty. It reminds me of the Northwest Province of South Africa, where I lived as a PCV, and no surprise, the NP is due south a couple of hundred kilometers.

In other news, I've started a Coke-a-day habit and I've become a connoisseur--I'll only drink Coke out of a glass bottles, not aluminum! I'm also on one Savanna Dry a day habit, but I'm starting to get a little tired of it. You can only drink cider every day for so many days until you get a little sick of it.

Books read: Land of a Thousand Hills: My Life in Rwanda by Rosamund Halsey Carr. The story of a white plantation owner's life in Rwanda from pre-independence to the post-genocide.

55,000 Elusive Elephants at Chobe

Chobe National Park
Botswana
January 28, - 29, 2010

At Chobe Park in Botswana, I upgraded to what must be the most lovely room in all of Botswana. With crisp white linens, fluffy towels, a thatched ceiling, an ensuite bathroom and coffee and tea making facilities, it was wonderful! It was particularly wonderful in light of the fact that the camping spot where everyone else pitched their tents was wet and muddy. Will I upgrade, given the chance, for the remainder of the trip? I don't know: I don't mind tents but I do mind how dirty I get putting up and taking down the tent and how rushed it is to take down a tent in the morning, particularly when have to report for cooking duty at 6:00a. While at the Chobe Camp, we met up with a segment of our group who had diverted on another truck to go south to Johannesburg. Martina, who did the Livingstone Island excursion with me, was there, and she was less than thrilled to be sleeping in a tent. Her new tent was dirty & smelly and she had been on tour and in a tent since mid-December--she went to Uganda for gorilla trekking before meeting us in Nairobi. I said "There's an extra bed in my room; do you want to sleep there?" and so she joined me. She is absolutely wonderful and I was sad to see her leave for Joburg the next day.

At Chobe, we went on a game drive and sunset cruise (or, as my group interpreted it, a booze cruise). Of the 55,000 elephants that Chobe boasts, we only saw half a dozen, because it's rainy season and they do not need to congregate around the water holes like they do in the wet season. We did, however, see one very hungry lioness who had her sights set on one dude in the truck who was hanging out the window trying to get a perfect shot.

It seems that now that there are only 8 passengers on the truck instead of 19, it's more relaxed. We have definitely had (and continue to have) some characters on our truck. It's interesting how individuals typify their nationalities. At the risk of being stereotypical, we have had the following characters on our truck:

The Mother Hen
The English tart, on the lookout for blokes to shag
Loud-mouthed Australian girl with a drinking problem
Cuckoo Kiwis
Boorish Yorkshireman
Doughy round the world traveler
Friendly Irish couple
Frumpy Australian couple with poor manners
American smart ass (that's me!)

As you can perhaps tell, I liked the Australians the least. That accent! It grates on the ears! (I suppose you could say the same thing about that terrible American accent!)

Joining my group again in Livingstone for another two and a half weeks down to Cape Town, I am definitely at a remove from the group. I'm no longer forming alliances. This new position is wonderful because it allows me to be a contrarian, and you know how I love to be a contrarian! I feel like the fool in Shakespeare--I can say whatever I want!