B&B roadtrip the Eastern Cape: Day 2

Kms driven: 630km
Start point: Rhodes Hotel
End point: Ulovane Environmental Training Centre, near Grahamstown
Animals spotted: Dassies, Mountain Reedbuck and goats (dud day)

There are three routes out of Rhodes: The route we came in via Aliwal North, which meant backtracking 60kms of sand road; another nondescript route via Barkley East or Naude’s Nek Pas which is 90km of sand road and takes you to a height of 2596m/8517ft above sea level and went in the exact opposite direction to where we were heading. We decided it’d be worth it. On the way, we picked up a hitchhiker (not a particularly common or safe practice in South Africa) who stank of Boxer tobacco and pretty much stank out my entire car. He was a tough passenger because he couldn’t speak a word of English or Afrikaans and my brother and my Xhosa is completely non-existent. But he had far to go and I have no idea how else he would’ve got to Maclear without us (Bjorn and Brigitta to the rescue!!!).

Highlights of the day:
Icicles at the top of Naude’s Nek Pas – it was that cold!
Boxer the smelly hitchhiker
The traffic jam in Umtata – avoid at all costs
Collywobbles – random town name near Idutywa (where?)
Flowering Coral trees

B&B roadtrip the Eastern Cape: Day 1

Roadtrippers: Me and my brother, Bjorn

Kms driven: 900
Start point: Johannesburg
End point: Rhodes (the town, not the university)
Animals spotted: Slender Mongoose, Albino Blesbok, Llama, Eland, Springbok, Ostrich, Spring Hare, Red Duiker

We knew in advance that this was going to be the kind of roadtrip where one needed to relax, not have an agenda and not worry about where one was going to sleep that night. As we left Johannesburg on the morning of Thursday 15th September, we had only one place we had to be and that was Grahamstown on the Friday night. Half way to Bloemfontein, it occurred to Bjorn that he always wanted to go to Rhodes and stay in the Rhodes hotel. So we did. They accepted the booking and 9pm arrival time with reluctance. We only realised when we got there that we were the only guests in the hotel that night.

Highlights of the day:
The August winds were late this year and the windmills in the Freestate were going crazy and glistening in the sunshine.
Smithfield is a tiny town worth going back to. A quick drive through really doesn’t do it justice.
The sunset in Rouxville.
Letitia was the lady that stayed up to let us in at the hotel. Turns out she was grumpy on the phone because she was sick but was accommodating and friendly when we arrived and opened the bar for us so we could at least have a drink.

The photo above is the till on the bar counter at the Rhodes Hotel. Most of these were destroyed when South Africa changed from Pounds to Rands. Some crafty guy hid this one in the basement for safe keeping.

Some bits from Ireland

Kinda, not really, enjoying my first Irish Guinness Some locals in Clogheen tried to teach me some Gaelic. These were the phrases they thought would be important for me to know.

Castle Grace ruins. A scene from Barry Lyndon was flimed on this lawn.

Duck heart on gluten free bread.

View of county Tipperary (Clonmel area) looking towards Castle Grace from the Vee.

Being a tourist and kissing the most kissed and yukky bit of castle rampart in the world, the Blarney Stone.

Irish Mastication

I struggled to keep this post short and interesting because I could go on about food in Ireland for ages. Here are two highlights:

Ireland, not surprisingly, has an outlandish variety of fresh seafood. We visited a restaurant called Aherne’s in Youghal (pronounced “you’ll”), a village in the south of Ireland. Between three of us we ate various crab, cod, salmon, mussel, oyster and scallop dishes. It was a seafood banquet like I have never experienced before.

At Ballymaloe Cookery School, we watched a traditional Irish cooking demonstration by the one and only Darina Allen (famous in Ireland for traditional Irish cooking, her Irish cooking school, numerous Irish cook books and for saying, “Well, that was a gas,” after completing an Irish dish). One could say the Irish are quite patriotic. She also subtly hinted that she wouldn’t be around the next day so if anyone wanted cook books signed; it’d better be that day. Half the stock of her books in the shop was promptly sold during the tea break (the Irish are be very sneaky money makers). I succumbed to the sneakiness.

Caoimhe? What?

While staying in county Tipperary in Ireland, I met a 9 year old girl with a gorgeous round face and brown curly hair. She wore a little purple striped t-shirt and skinny jeans, innocently dressing herself older to a fashion lost in countryside. When she told me her name, she proudly said, “Queeva.” That’s what I heard her say, phonetically, at least. When I asked her to spell it, having never heard the name before, I expected her to start with Q or C or K. But she carefully and thoughtfully started C…A…O…I…. hold on. What? Start again? Her name was not Queeva at all, or Kweever, or anything similar. She was proudly Caoimhe. What a beautiful name and what confusion and to her, what normality.

In between

On the 8th August, I slept in my tent at Khankhe Pan.
On the 9th August, I slept in a chalet at Mokolodi.
On the 10th August, I am not getting much sleep, but when I do, it’ll be in my bed at home in Johannesburg.
On the 11th August, I will be sleeping (or not) on a plane to Abu Dhabi and then to Dublin.
On the 12th August, I will be sleeping at Castle Grace in Ireland.

That’ll do ;)

Khutse Stats

Sand
0 injuries
0 degrees Celsius on our first night camping
1 new power steering pump
1 Brown Hyena in campsite
1 bottle Patron
Sand
1 session of bush yoga
1 damn awesome lamb knuckle potjie
2 campsites (Moreswe Pan #2, Khankhe Pan #3)
2 games of Scrabble (one win, one loss)
2 Black Backed Jackal
Sand
2 bottles of champagne
2 bush showers 2 pairs of Ugg boots
3 tents
4 crossings of the Tropic of Capricorn
5 people

5 Shakespearean sonnet recitals
7 nights
9 Oryx
18 items of clothing (including 2 blankets and 2 sleeping bags) I wore to bed to keep warm
20 litres of wine
Did I mention the sand?
42 species of bird
140 litres of water
Sand
100 000 000 impala

…and googolplex grains of sand

Botswana is calling

I am beside myself with excitement at the moment. For the last two weeks, I have been full time planning a 4x4 camping trip to Khutse Game Reserve in Botswana. Khutse Game Reserve just to the south of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (check out the map courtesy of botswanatourism.us. Khutse is the little bit sticking out the bottom of the big green section in the centre of Botswana).
The amount of work that goes into planning a trip to the middle of nowhere is mind-numbing. I have been doing cool things like going to 7 hardware stores in one day to find a two meter long piece of clear plastic tubing for the water tank (small but very necessary) only to discover that it is no longer manufactured in that size. But all the planning is worth it.

The itinerary is as follows:

Night 1: Camping in Mokolodi Nature Reserve which is just outside Gaborone
Night 2-6: Khutse Game Reserve. We will be camping at two spots. One is on a pan in the south of the reserve. The other is near a pan in the north. When I say “spot” I really do mean it. It’s not a camp “site” by any means. There will be nothing there! The only way to tell you are at the right place is by using GPS coordinates or finding something that looks like a clearing in the savannah or an old rusty sign. No toilet and no shower. We’ll have a spade and a canvas sack with some holes in strung to a tree instead.
Night 7: Chalet at Mokolodi (because by then I think we are all going to be dirty and fed up with camping).

Departure date: Wednesday 3rd August

Coastal Bliss

Over the last month I spent some time at our family holiday home on the South Coast in a little coastal village called Southbroom (it’s worth having a look on Google Earth if you are not from South Africa). It is one place where I am my happiest.

It was a quiet break but there was lots of company. The entire population of Southbroom’s Vervet monkeys descended on the house around 3pm every afternoon, causing chaos, trying to get inside to the fruit bowl, scampering over the roof tiles, hurling themselves from branch to electricity pole and back and squealing with delight at the feel of the glass table under their little monkey hands.

Every time I looked at the ocean, I could see at least two schools of whales spurting water, launching into the air and crashing down onto the glass smooth ocean. Sometimes, a school would come in close to the shore line and you could see them clearly through binoculars racing through the water.

Lastly, Southbroom has unfortunately become overrun with dassies (Rock Hyrax). They however provided endless amusement on my walks. There was the fatty in the drain on Beach Road who could barely get through the gap between the road and the pavement. There was the family near Granny Beach that suntanned lazily in a row on a ledge. There was always a big one perched (yes, bird like) on top of the roof of an empty cottage. And finally, there was the group that climbed trees. Who would have thought that dumpy dassies were so agile?

Happiness

I found this article on happiness quite interesting. Have a look at the rest of the site too.

http://www.raptitude.com/2009/03/why-is-happiness-such-a-struggle/

First and last

As promised, here is a blurb on some of the food I ate in Bali.

I think in my previous life, I must've been some type of Asian. I ate Asian food non-stop for a week and loved it. Club Med in Bali must have one of the best Asian buffets in the world. You can choose from Chinese, Japanese, Balinese, Indonesian and Korean food at every meal.

The first lunch I had in Bali was stingray accompanied by Balinese wine. The stingray was good. The wine, not so much. I also had jackfruit stew. I first ate raw jackfruit in Vietnam and didn't know you could turn it into a savoury meal. Cooked jackfruit looks like shredded chicken.

This is a photo of one of my last breakfast in Bali. It is kimchi fried rice, a salted duck egg, a century egg (the black one) and sugared banana. It took me the whole week to pluck up the courage to have the century egg. Unlike what it's name suggests, the egg isn't 100 years old. It is made by preserving duck, chicken or quail eggs in a mixture of clay, ash, salt, lime and rice hulls for several weeks or even months! Still a long time. This process makes the yolk dark and creamy. The egg white goes dark, translucent and jelly like. The egg is supposed to be accompanied by a smell of sulphur and ammonia which I didn't smell this when I had it, thankfully.

Bom Bom!

I went rafting on the Telaga Waja river in Bali this week, 14 km of non-stop rapids. Despite being only grade 2 rapids, it was something I didn't want to miss out on. Carin, Darren and Geralyn, who I went to Bali with, didn't want to do it, so this was my solo adventure.

Things I will remember about rafting on the Telaga Waja:

• Debbie and Lisa: Two Taiwanese girls who I shared a raft with and who shrieked with pleasure and fear the whole time.
• "Bom bom!": The guide, Nixo, screamed this every time we hit a rock or the side of the gorge which happened all the time.
• Waterfalls everywhere: I must've seen more than 100 waterfalls on that stretch of river a lot of which fell directly into the water (see the waterfall behind me and Nixo).
• A white water rafting highway: I have never seen so many rafts on one river at the same time.
• Drinking water out of palm leaf cups and eating "home made cake" aka deep fried banana.
• Impossibly tall trees
• Feeling so happy being back on a raft again after so many years.

Now!

Finally, it is now. I am getting out of Johannesburg. I am going to warmer weather. I am going flying. I am out of here. Tomorrow, I leave for Bali for a week. Bali is in Indonesia. I know everyone has heard of it but I bet you don't really know where it is (go Google it if you need to). Here's a map of Bali island itself. I am going to be staying at the ClubMed resort in Nusa Dua right in the far south.

Watch this space. The next few posts will be about what this blog is supposed to be mainly about; my travels, much better scenery and most probably a lot about the food I eat there too. Selamat tinggal!

Rice milk is no substitute for dairy milk

One of my new years resolutions is to cook more. Because it is Winter, I decided to master soup making. I was given this recipe book as a present to encourage my interest and tried my hand at making a cauliflower soup yesterday. Delicious, creamy, rich cauliflower soup flavoured with home-made garam masala. Yum! Because I am lactose intolerant, I made two separate soups; one with dairy milk (the proper way) and one with rice milk. The dairy milk cauliflower soup was amazing (the couple spoonfuls I tried). The texture was thick, but not too thick and light and slightly foamy from blending. The rice milk cauliflower soup came out brown, sweet (?) and, over all, very average in comparison. You can see the rice milk soup in the pot in the photo. Rice milk is no substitute for dairy milk.

Lactose free cauliflower soup...fail.

City Education

I attended an interesting exhibition opening last night in Braamfontein. Called Re-educating the City, this exhibition is not by an artist or even several artists but a group of Architecture Masterstudents from the University of Johannesburg. It's a project that explores the spaces, buildings, and land that has been used for inner-city schools, areas that weren't necessarily designed to be used as such. Here's a link if you would like to read more about the exhibition itself. This is me drawing on the feedback chalk board. Students who presented also designed a postcard that represented their work. A very different and interesting concept of art and what art can be and worth a visit.

Freedom to choose

My brother is a lodge manager at Singita Grumeti Reserves in the Serengeti in Tanzania. He sent me this photo on Saturday. If you can't see it clearly, those are thousands and thousands of wildebeest. It is the view from his office, the view from his room, the view as he walks to and from his room and his office, the view when guests arrive, the view when you eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, the view from every guest room and the view when guests leave. He sees it every year and if you are there to see it, you are incredibly lucky. Singita gives people access to animal kingdom heaven. 

I decided to make my own luck and investigated flying out to visit him and the entire Serengeti gnu population this week, tomorrow. Why not? There is no reason not to go apart from needing to be back in time for my flight to Bali.  

My reasons for not going are irrelevant. The point is I had the freedom to choose, to consider it, to make it happen or not. I have the chosen to have time.

I'll start with some wine

Enough with all the introspective stuff. What have I been up to for my first few days of unemployed life? This is a photo of me after I completed the Cape Wine Academy Introduction to South African Wine course. It's a very informative and enjoyable course and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn wine basics (the history of wine, viticulture, how to taste wine etc.). 

You also come away with lots of new wine jargon like "the nose and legs" of a wine (who knew wine had limbs?) and phrases like, "this wine has a full bouquet" (what?). 

Energy

How does it feel?

It hit me in the face that first Sunday of this halcyon state. That day, I felt different. That day, I no longer needed conserve energy for the coming work week. I could breathe in the whole day; I could make of it what I wanted. If I wasted it, only I was to blame.

It was a shock, it was a reality check, it was a new idea of being that I haven't ever known.

It was glorious!

Friday 13 May

 

My final day at work was on Friday 13 May (great choice of date, huh). After a week of farewells, handing in my laptop, exit interviews and handovers, I drove out of the office park, access card-less and completely overwhelmed by what I was doing. Although the right one, this is the most extreme decision I have ever made. Making the decision to go to university after school? That was easy. Deciding what to study? Easy. Deciding on business school? A no brainer. Deciding where to work? Not a problem. Deciding that temporary retirement is the right thing for me to do now? Off the charts.

Carly sent me this photo when she knew that I struggling with the new reality that I had created for myself on Friday 13 May. 

That feeling

This has been a long time coming but there was one specific moment some where in the middle when I realised that something had to be done; I had to make the decision, take control and change my life. This picture shows me on the back of a motorbike in Hue, Vietnam, on Christmas Eve 2010, whizzing down narrow roads between paddy fields. I couldn't believe the photo when I saw it (Thanks Giles), because I knew it captured the exact moment when I was feeling like there was no place on Earth I would rather be and nothing else I would rather be doing. I realised that I need to strive to have those kind of moments every day.