As I make yet another draft of this post, I am in Doha, Qatar. It's 2.30am in Cape Town, I think it's around 00.30am in England and it might be 3.30am here but I'm not entirely sure I know what time zone I'm in! I've left South Africa and I don't currently plan on returning as a volunteer. I know this is probably quite a surprise but let me reassure you, it wasn't a last minute decision. About 2 months ago, I wasn't working at all and I was getting very bored and slightly depressed as there didn't seem to be anything for me to do. I spoke to my manager and mum about it and decided to return to England in time for x-mas. I definitely feel this was the right thing to do and I have no regrets!
I have changed so much over my 2 years in South Africa, all for the better, and I think if I hadn't taken the gap year as well as going back I wouldn't be half the person I am now. The children's home gave me so many skills I can and will use in life - who else can say they worked in an environment where they had to manage 30 Germans as well as caring for 10-15 Afrikaans and Xhosa children?! I have met people who have inspired and taught me to do things with my life that I never would have even considered. I don't want this to become overly mushy because I'm already the crazy person that cries on the plane and I don't really want to be the person sobbing alone in the airport! But I cannot really put into words the gratitude I have for all the people that helped me get here and the amazing people I met along the way. I'm also pretty darned proud of myself for raising something like £10000.
My plan now is to set up drumming circles in England. I've been running one every other week with the younger children at the home which they've loved, I hope to be able to run circles in care homes, schools, homeless shelters and maybe even hospitals and prisons if I'm allowed! As soon as it's online, I'll post a link to the blog/website I make for the drumming and anyone interested can come along to any circles I run!
I want to thank everybody that helped me in anyway and all the hundreds of people I met along the way. This is beginning to get a bit cheesy so I'm going to leave it there. The pictures from my holiday are in the post below! :)
Damson.
Thursday, 18 December 2014
Promised Pictures!
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| Our guide at Robben Island |
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| Mandela's Garden, where he hid his manuscript before it was smuggled out. |
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| Labourie wine farm in Paarl |
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| Paarl mountain in the background |
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| Mum at Thursday drumming |
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| Baboons |
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| Chapman's pass |
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| Hout Bay market |
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| The 'blind trail' at Kirstenbosch. It featured scented and textured plants with a rope to guide you round. |
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| Braai-ing at Montague |
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| In the Karoo (desert) |
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| Cango Caves |
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| A sign at one of the backpackers. It made me happy! |
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| Our guide at Schotia with a leopard tortoise |
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| Male white rhino |
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| Goshawk at Addo |
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| Our Cheetah friend |
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| Rainbow at Chrisling lodge, over the mud huts |
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| Mum on the river safari |
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| Fish Eagle...with fish! |
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| Two bull elephants |
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| Testing what feels nice on his face! |
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| Morning lion |
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| Addo dawn drive |
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| Vervet monkeys on the side of the road |
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| Cheryl swimming in funky tannin filled river water at Teniqua |
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| Teniqua treehouses. And my fantastic outfit! |
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| Cheryl and Mum on Table Mountain |
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| Me just off Table Mountain |
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| She knows she's got the sale! (it was a beaded guinea fowl) |
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| Veld fire on Lion's Head |
Tuesday, 9 December 2014
Days 14 and 15
Day 14: Table Mountain.
Day 14 was spent on Table Mountain. We all made our separate ways to the top: me in the cable car, mum hiking and Cheryl rock climbing (and reaching the top to a group of rather surprised tourists as she pulled herself over the wrong side of the wall!). We then got to abseil down again which was nerve wrecking but an awful lot of fun. At one point we had to go from walking down the cliff face, to jumping off and dangling in mid air to lower ourselves the last bit, it was hard working out how to step off the overhang without accidentally smacking your face into the rock, but after that it was great!
The afternoon we just spent chilling because we'd been up since 5am and were tired. I went to go talk to Manan - the guy who runs the drumming on Long Market Street, Mum had a look round some of the shops on Long Street and Cheryl took a nap. In the evening, Cheryl met up with her climbing friends to say goodbye and me and Mum went to Mama Africa, then Durbanville because I have to take 2 full size djembe's home and won't have room for all my clothes, Mum and Cheryl are taking my patchwork coat, violin and as many jumpers as they can fit.
Day 15: Red Bus Tour
Day 15 is the last day and we all had a lie in. Actually, that's not true...Cheryl was supposed to go climbing on Table Mountain again so she was up at 7am so I was too because we were sharing a room. However a Cape Doctor blew in (strong wind - I can't even think of wind of a similar strength in England) and her climb got called off. We both went up to Mum's room, had a coffee and decided what to do that day. We spent the morning on Long Street and Greenmarket Square getting souvenirs for them and went for a red bus tour in the afternoon. We walked along the promenade at sea point and had lunch at the waterfront, we wanted to go up signal hill for the view but there was a bush fire on Lions Head so we got evacuated off. Instead we came back to Durbanville to put all the photo's on my laptop as back up before Mum and Cheryl left for the airport. Overall it's been a fantastic holiday!
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| Just hanging around above Camps Bay. |
The afternoon we just spent chilling because we'd been up since 5am and were tired. I went to go talk to Manan - the guy who runs the drumming on Long Market Street, Mum had a look round some of the shops on Long Street and Cheryl took a nap. In the evening, Cheryl met up with her climbing friends to say goodbye and me and Mum went to Mama Africa, then Durbanville because I have to take 2 full size djembe's home and won't have room for all my clothes, Mum and Cheryl are taking my patchwork coat, violin and as many jumpers as they can fit.
Day 15: Red Bus Tour
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| Coffee in bed! |
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| Lunch was had at the same place we had our first coffee, only this time you can't see Table Mountain for all the clouds! |
Monday, 8 December 2014
Day 12 and 13.
Day 12: Teniqua
Day 12 starts with the morning sun on our tent but thankfully we didn't get up until 7/7.30am. The biggest spiders we've seen so far are about the size of a teabag and dead which isn't too bad, although we have seen smaller living ones. Once we'd had breakfast, we headed off to the weekly market in Sedgefield to get some veg for our braai tonight and some Christmas presents for mum and Cheryl to take home. Mum has been saying things like 'if you're going to make a living from djembe drumming, then you need to ave a certain 'look' that people will remember you by' so I have decided that 'look' shall be as colourful and quirky as I can make it! I already have the bowler hat from Hout Bay market (which I'm going to customise) and mum very kindly bought me a pair of flour-bag trousers and an african patchwork shirt at the market, hopefully I can make some more of my own when I get home.
This afternoon we went for a walk down to the river, but I'd been feeling quite shaky all day and had begun to feel dizzy, so mum and Cheryl continued to the river and I headed back to light the braai. I think I just haven't been drinking enough because it's been really hot recently so I'm going to pour myself a glass of rainwater!
Day 13: Teniqua to Cape Town.
Day 13 is another driving day. It's around 400km from Sedgefield to Cape Town so we planned to set off as early as possible (10am!) so as to get to Cape Town before dark. As we only stopped off for a quick sandwich break, we made it by about 4pm. We're staying at a hotel on Long Street called Daddy Long Legs and all of the rooms are designed by a different person and have unique themes. I room I was in was called 'You Are Here' and had various maps around the room as wallpaper. The ceiling had a huge map of Cape Town, and the other walls had the western cape, south africa, africa and the world. You also receive a free welcome drink so we had that, then went down long market street to the eastern food bazaar for supper and an early night!
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| Part of our tree house. |
This afternoon we went for a walk down to the river, but I'd been feeling quite shaky all day and had begun to feel dizzy, so mum and Cheryl continued to the river and I headed back to light the braai. I think I just haven't been drinking enough because it's been really hot recently so I'm going to pour myself a glass of rainwater!
Day 13: Teniqua to Cape Town.
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| There were 3 rain spiders in the bathroom last night...this coffee is needed! |
Sunday, 7 December 2014
Day 10 and 11
Day 10: Addo.
Today, day 10, started with a river safari! We got picked up in a jeep full of women on an work trip/holiday (?) and most of whom seemed to be from in or around Durbanville! We were driven down to the river and told to group into pairs for the boats, but, because there was an odd number, I got to ride with the guide. The other women seemed quite nice, but were only there because all the men were playing golf (I kid you not) and were quite loud and giggly which scared off all the birds me, mum and Cheryl were trying to spot. One pair of them had a complete inability to row in a straight line and had to get rescued from the reeds every 3 minutes so the guide suggested I swap with one of them as I've rowed before and had a vague notion of steering. I climbed to the back of my boat while one of the women climbed in the front and we were off again-this time in a straight line! Because the boat I was in had originally been the guide's boat, we had the cooler of drinks and as soon as the other woman realised this, she immediately pulled out a Savannah (cider) and cracked it open on the side of her oar and earned herself the nickname beery-hat. Although I didn't see many birds and I got the joy of sharing with beery-hat, the morning was quite nice, and Mum and Cheryl who were sharing a boat saw lots of kingfishers and even a water monitor (which Cheryl apparently mistook for a crocodile when it jumped out the water near her!).
After the river safari, we went straight into a park safari in Addo. This time we were with a guide and not self driving, but after our luck the day before, I wasn't expecting to see much especially as the couple we were sharing the jeep with apparently hadn't seen anything at all that morning. We got to the picnic area for a braai lunch and got talking to the couple who were also English. The husband had been researching and planning this trip since February and had only used a rough guide book and trip advisor and happily told us that 'anyone that says you need to use anything else is wrong!' The wife merely said he needed to get a life! And on that, they earned themselves the nicknames Terry and June! Just to add to everything, after they had ensured their flights were cheaper than Mum and Cheryl's, they told us they only wanted to see an elephant cross the road ("you know, like you see on youtube") and maybe if they were lucky, a tiger. We began to wonder if they hadn't seen anything because they'd been looking for the biggest thing in the park and missing anything smaller, and not to mention they were on the wrong continent for tigers!
Anyway, we got back in the jeep, and with me, mum and Cheryl spotting things for everyone, Terry and June's afternoon seemed to perk up a little. Most of what we saw were really cool little birds such as bright yellow weavers, green glossy starlings and the occasional blue-y green malachite kingfisher. We saw a few kudu, several flightless dung beetles and even some distant elephants. I was beginning to wish we had either done another self-drive, or just left it at our spectacular cheetah sighting when we turned a corner into a massive herd of elephants right next to the road! There were at least 20 or 30 of them from huge bulls, to tiny tiny calfs. We moved slightly forward when one of the biggest bulls suddenly charged at one of the smaller ones, if we had been self-driving we probably would have reversed straight out of there but the guide stayed put and although the bull grazed slowly past our vehicle, he never payed us too much attention more than the rare inquisitive look. We moved forward again a stopped near the matriarch of the group who was keeping an eye on one of the smallest calfs. Almost as soon as she noticed us, she came right over as if she was going to getly headbutt the jeep, but veered off last minute and simply ambled behind us to the other side of the road, with the calf trotting along behind. Terry and June got their youtube worthy moment and the 3 of us felt like the luckiest people alive!
Day 11: Driving to Teniqua.
Day 11 started way to early for me at 5am when we got up as we'd decided to try our luck one last time and go to Addo for a dawn self-drive. We got to the park at around 5.45 as the gates said they opened at 5.30, however the guard on the gate told us that you could only self-drive from 7am. No matter, we charmed our way in! Again, I had low expectations - Addo is a humongous park (around 444 700 acres) and although they have more than 600 elephants, they only have 6 lions and 2 cheetah which only served to intensify our disbelief at our luck!
Almost as soon as we were through the gate, we almost ran over a kudu as it sprang from the bush straight in front of our car. We continued on and saw some more spectacular birds and after 5 or 10 minutes or so, came across a safari jeep that had stopped to watch something. We pulled up behind it to see if we could see anything but nothing was obvious. All of a sudden, something caught my eye and after asking mum to reverse slightly so I could see better, I realised it was a mane. Lying in the bush, sunning its-self in the early morning warmth, barely visible from the road was a massive lion! I'm not even making this up. We watched it snooze for 10 minutes when something else moved near by and another lion sat up! It was the same two we'd seen by the cheetah and after listening to the (very noisy) guide from the jeep, we learnt they were cousins, 4.5 years old and had been together since they were 2. We drove on after they both stood up and wandered almost completely out of sight, into some shaded bush, and we didn't see much after that other than some zebra crossing the road (which we stopped for several 'zebra crossing' jokes and photos!). And we were back to the lodge in time for breakfast!
We had a 4-5 hour drive to our next accommodation, situated between Knysna and Sedgefield, a place called Teniqua Treetops. That's right, Cheryl booked us into a treehouse! Oh yeah! The way we drove to Teniqua took us over Bloukrans bridge, where I did my bungee nearly 2 years ago and I happily pointed it out to mum and Cheryl who immediately felt slightly ill :) We drove on to Tsitsikamma (yeesh I've been here a lot!) and it's national park where we stopped for a quick jaunt along the coast, then back in the car and onwards to Tenquia. There are 8 treehouses here, but they're so far away from each other that you might as well be alone in the forest, which is probably for the best as there aren't really any walls, even in the bathroom! The bedrooms are completely enclosed in canvas but are the only areas that are, the rest of the treehouse either has barriers to stop you falling off, and the bathroom has one semi-transparent wooden fence/wall so you have at least a sliver of privacy (although the other walls are completely open to the forest. The tap water is pumped up from the river, so it's almost coca-cola coloured because of all the tannins in the water from the fynbos. There is a separate tap for drinking water-it pipes rain water! The only downside, is that because there aren't really walls that keep things out, rain spiders and baboon spiders are frequent visitors apparently. Rain spiders only come in when it's about to rain (hence the name) but they're about the size of your hand. Baboon spiders are known elsewhere around the world as tarantulas. I will be sleeping well tonight!
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| Mum: 'Damson, stop pulling faces.' Me: 'But I'm trying to eat my breakfast' |
After the river safari, we went straight into a park safari in Addo. This time we were with a guide and not self driving, but after our luck the day before, I wasn't expecting to see much especially as the couple we were sharing the jeep with apparently hadn't seen anything at all that morning. We got to the picnic area for a braai lunch and got talking to the couple who were also English. The husband had been researching and planning this trip since February and had only used a rough guide book and trip advisor and happily told us that 'anyone that says you need to use anything else is wrong!' The wife merely said he needed to get a life! And on that, they earned themselves the nicknames Terry and June! Just to add to everything, after they had ensured their flights were cheaper than Mum and Cheryl's, they told us they only wanted to see an elephant cross the road ("you know, like you see on youtube") and maybe if they were lucky, a tiger. We began to wonder if they hadn't seen anything because they'd been looking for the biggest thing in the park and missing anything smaller, and not to mention they were on the wrong continent for tigers!
Anyway, we got back in the jeep, and with me, mum and Cheryl spotting things for everyone, Terry and June's afternoon seemed to perk up a little. Most of what we saw were really cool little birds such as bright yellow weavers, green glossy starlings and the occasional blue-y green malachite kingfisher. We saw a few kudu, several flightless dung beetles and even some distant elephants. I was beginning to wish we had either done another self-drive, or just left it at our spectacular cheetah sighting when we turned a corner into a massive herd of elephants right next to the road! There were at least 20 or 30 of them from huge bulls, to tiny tiny calfs. We moved slightly forward when one of the biggest bulls suddenly charged at one of the smaller ones, if we had been self-driving we probably would have reversed straight out of there but the guide stayed put and although the bull grazed slowly past our vehicle, he never payed us too much attention more than the rare inquisitive look. We moved forward again a stopped near the matriarch of the group who was keeping an eye on one of the smallest calfs. Almost as soon as she noticed us, she came right over as if she was going to getly headbutt the jeep, but veered off last minute and simply ambled behind us to the other side of the road, with the calf trotting along behind. Terry and June got their youtube worthy moment and the 3 of us felt like the luckiest people alive!
Day 11: Driving to Teniqua.
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| What a morning coffee shot! |
Almost as soon as we were through the gate, we almost ran over a kudu as it sprang from the bush straight in front of our car. We continued on and saw some more spectacular birds and after 5 or 10 minutes or so, came across a safari jeep that had stopped to watch something. We pulled up behind it to see if we could see anything but nothing was obvious. All of a sudden, something caught my eye and after asking mum to reverse slightly so I could see better, I realised it was a mane. Lying in the bush, sunning its-self in the early morning warmth, barely visible from the road was a massive lion! I'm not even making this up. We watched it snooze for 10 minutes when something else moved near by and another lion sat up! It was the same two we'd seen by the cheetah and after listening to the (very noisy) guide from the jeep, we learnt they were cousins, 4.5 years old and had been together since they were 2. We drove on after they both stood up and wandered almost completely out of sight, into some shaded bush, and we didn't see much after that other than some zebra crossing the road (which we stopped for several 'zebra crossing' jokes and photos!). And we were back to the lodge in time for breakfast!
We had a 4-5 hour drive to our next accommodation, situated between Knysna and Sedgefield, a place called Teniqua Treetops. That's right, Cheryl booked us into a treehouse! Oh yeah! The way we drove to Teniqua took us over Bloukrans bridge, where I did my bungee nearly 2 years ago and I happily pointed it out to mum and Cheryl who immediately felt slightly ill :) We drove on to Tsitsikamma (yeesh I've been here a lot!) and it's national park where we stopped for a quick jaunt along the coast, then back in the car and onwards to Tenquia. There are 8 treehouses here, but they're so far away from each other that you might as well be alone in the forest, which is probably for the best as there aren't really any walls, even in the bathroom! The bedrooms are completely enclosed in canvas but are the only areas that are, the rest of the treehouse either has barriers to stop you falling off, and the bathroom has one semi-transparent wooden fence/wall so you have at least a sliver of privacy (although the other walls are completely open to the forest. The tap water is pumped up from the river, so it's almost coca-cola coloured because of all the tannins in the water from the fynbos. There is a separate tap for drinking water-it pipes rain water! The only downside, is that because there aren't really walls that keep things out, rain spiders and baboon spiders are frequent visitors apparently. Rain spiders only come in when it's about to rain (hence the name) but they're about the size of your hand. Baboon spiders are known elsewhere around the world as tarantulas. I will be sleeping well tonight!
Saturday, 6 December 2014
Days 7 and 8.
Day 7: Driving
Today (day 8) we spent 3 hours driving from Tsitsikamma to Schotia, a private game reserve. We're booked in for an afternoon/evening drive, dinner, night drive AND an early morning drive as we're camping IN the park! We met our guide Etienne who was just phenomenal - he could mimic so many of the animals perfectly and at one point he seemed to be conversing with a warthog!
As we drove into the gates of the park, we were immediately met by a gang of African Buffalo, one of South Africa's big 5 and apparently quite rare. We were off to a good start and after watching them for a while, we headed further into the park where we quickly ran upon a parade of 6 African Elephants (can you tell I was writing this with the game book in front of me?) another of the big 5, as well as plenty of impala, kudu, nyala, bosbok, springbok, blue gnu (hurhurhur), tsessebe, waterbuck, warthogs and several mongooses (I checked-as much as I want it to be mongeese, it isn't). We did see 2 lazy lions, but I think the highlight of the afternoon drive was seeing a male and female white rhino! We spoke to Etienne about rhino poaching as their horns are thought to cure many ailments and diseases. As of 2 December, 1077 rhinos had been killed for their horns which is nearly 1000 more than in 2008. Etienne and Schotia as a whole are apparently fighting to legalise the trading of rhino horns so that there would be some kind of control over it. You could breed rhino specifically for it, and if a trained vet takes the horn off, the rhino is perfectly fine (just missing it's horn) and the horn grows back, were as the way the poachers do it is to remove the whole nose. It would also flood the market and bring the price down and hopefully, people would realise it doesn't work and stop killing the poor animals.
The evening drive was fairly uneventful. We did see a porcupine, a genet and what our guide called an african kangaroo but is actually a spring hare. The hippos (one thing I REALLY wanted to see) didn't leave the water all night, so all we saw were their noses.
Sleeping in a tent seperated from the lions by only a meter (or 2) thick thorn fence was mildly terrifying, but ultimately great! It wasn't camping as much as glamping (they gave us fluffy white dressing gowns and white slippers - the gowns were fine but white slippers and mud seemed like an odd combination!) but it was still fun, and we didn't hear much other than the insects, wilderbeast and Cheryl's occasional squeak of terror when she had the only light strapped to her head and was getting bombarded by insects!
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| Route 62, it isn't actually a sex shop, just a cafe/pub! |
Day 7 has been a day of almost continuous driving as we have to get as close to Port Elizabeth (PE) as we can. We set off from Montague around 10am and headed to Oudtshoorn with the plan of stopping at an ostrich farm there and for coffee. In a bizarre twist on the day, had coffee at Ronnie's Sex shop instead! I should probably point out that it is a roadside cafe/pub on Route 62 that is very popular with tourists probably only because of the name, and I didn't go to a sex shop with my mum. We carried on to Oudtshoorn and decided last minute to go to the Cango Caves instead of the ostrich farm in the hope that it would be less touristy. It wasn't, but they split our tour into Germans and non-Germans so the group of maybe 30ish people ended up with only 6 of us in the English speaking group so it was almost a private tour! The caves were very impressive, especially the drum room: a chamber filled with solid but very resonant columns that our guide banged out some pretty good rhythms while singing the click song!
Because we spent an hour or so at the caves, the last few hours of driving were slightly stressful trying to get to our backpackers in Tsitsikamma before it was properly dark. We inhaled some dinner in Plettenberg Bay, and made it to the backpackers by around 9/9.30.
Day 8: Schotia.
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| Safari time! |
As we drove into the gates of the park, we were immediately met by a gang of African Buffalo, one of South Africa's big 5 and apparently quite rare. We were off to a good start and after watching them for a while, we headed further into the park where we quickly ran upon a parade of 6 African Elephants (can you tell I was writing this with the game book in front of me?) another of the big 5, as well as plenty of impala, kudu, nyala, bosbok, springbok, blue gnu (hurhurhur), tsessebe, waterbuck, warthogs and several mongooses (I checked-as much as I want it to be mongeese, it isn't). We did see 2 lazy lions, but I think the highlight of the afternoon drive was seeing a male and female white rhino! We spoke to Etienne about rhino poaching as their horns are thought to cure many ailments and diseases. As of 2 December, 1077 rhinos had been killed for their horns which is nearly 1000 more than in 2008. Etienne and Schotia as a whole are apparently fighting to legalise the trading of rhino horns so that there would be some kind of control over it. You could breed rhino specifically for it, and if a trained vet takes the horn off, the rhino is perfectly fine (just missing it's horn) and the horn grows back, were as the way the poachers do it is to remove the whole nose. It would also flood the market and bring the price down and hopefully, people would realise it doesn't work and stop killing the poor animals.
The evening drive was fairly uneventful. We did see a porcupine, a genet and what our guide called an african kangaroo but is actually a spring hare. The hippos (one thing I REALLY wanted to see) didn't leave the water all night, so all we saw were their noses.
Sleeping in a tent seperated from the lions by only a meter (or 2) thick thorn fence was mildly terrifying, but ultimately great! It wasn't camping as much as glamping (they gave us fluffy white dressing gowns and white slippers - the gowns were fine but white slippers and mud seemed like an odd combination!) but it was still fun, and we didn't hear much other than the insects, wilderbeast and Cheryl's occasional squeak of terror when she had the only light strapped to her head and was getting bombarded by insects!
*BONUS DAY*
Day 9: Schotia and Addo.
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| We cheated with a rooibos tea as there wasn't any coffee. |
Today, day 9, we had an early drive in which we saw giraffe (and got to get out of the jeep and walk close-ish to them) and zebra before heading back to the lapa for breakfast, then back to our car. We spent a few hours lazing around the pool of our new backpackers/hotel, near Addo Elephant Park, as it was just too hot to do anything else. We set off into Addo around 4.30pm for a quick self-drive as it closed at 7pm.
We did see a kill straight away, but it was a Goshawk and some unidentified rodent so not quite the intense excitement we were hoping for. We kept driving though, seeing plenty of various types of antelope and zebra. As we were crawling along, eyes peeled for any kind of movement in the bush, a car comping towards us waves us to a stop and say there's a Cheetah with it's kill maybe 300 yards ahead. We immediately raced off (really slowly so as not to miss it), straining to see anything. We drive a kilometre or so without seeing anything, we thought we might have missed it as the road was surrounded by quite high bush with animal trails leading through it, so we turned around and slowly, slowly drove back to where we'd talked to the other car. Still not seeing anything even remotely close to a cheetah, I was beginning to think he might have been messing with us for a joke, but, Mum and Cheryl still held hope so we turned around again and repeated the process of scanning the shrubbery. On our 3rd try, we hailed down another car that seemed to be in a rush and asked them if they knew anything. They told us their son was their in another car, so follow them, and sure enough they led us to a gaggle of cars! After a few frustrating minutes of not being able to see a thing, some other cars left and we nabbed one of the best seats in the house. Sure enough, right off the road, there was a cheetah - blood on it's jaws and paws, eating what we thought was an impala. It was incredible, it would eat some, then look around, eat again, then look around, occasionally it would sit or even stand up to re-arrange it's meal before resuming it's eating and watching routine. After watching the cheetah for about 20 minutes I noticed a jackal that was on the right side of the wind, so hadn't been noticed by the cheetah and was edging ever closer. In the end it seemed to decide it wasn't worth it, and moved further away again.
Maybe 10 minutes later, Mum suddenly got very excited and says 'Look, look, look: A LION!' and sure enough, crossing the road just in front of the first car in the line, a massive lion was wandering into the scene. As it was downwind to the cheetah, it was immediately noticed and the cheetah stopped eating to watch it however the lion simply lay down at the waterhole and seemingly fell asleep. The cheetah continued to eye it though and didn't start eating. A few minutes later, ANOTHER LION WALKS IN! Again, the cheetah immediately clocks it and is now turning it's head to always have an eye on at least one lion.
Imagine the cheetah in the middle of a clock, it's body is facing us, so let's say our car is at 12 o'clock (and we're the last in the line of cars). The Jackal is hovering at around 2 o'clock and the lions are at 5 and 7 o'clock. The cheetah kept looking at the 2 lions and very occasionally, at our car. Mum joked that we were at the apex of the triangle and how quickly could me and Cheryl get our windows up? For about 10 minutes we sat watching the cheetah, 2 lions and jackal without anything really happening. The lions seemed to be asleep, the jackal would occasionally move slightly closer and the cheetah was always watching the lions and not eating. Suddenly, without warning, the cheetah seemed to decide his meal wasn't worth his life, and took off. Straight towards our car. Silly really, because as mum predicted, we were his safest option out. So me and Cheryl are both panicking, have dropped our cameras and are desperately trying to get our wide open windows closed! The cheetah ran so close to us that, had I wanted to lose and arm, I could have stroked it's back as it ran past!
Cheryl has some beautiful pictures which is good because I don't think I did it justice explaining!
Friday, 5 December 2014
Days 5 and 6
Day 5: Hout Bay.
Day 5 has been a pretty chill day. We had breakfast in Simon's town before driving the scenic route to Hout Bay via Scarborough. The views were spectacular - really blue skies against massively rocky cliffs, we drove through Chapman's Pass which was unbelievably beautiful and part of the road is carved into the side of the cliff face!
When in Hout Bay we visited the harbour market and got some small things for my brothers and a bowler hat for myself as well as lots of lunch! We drove a different scenic route back to Cape Town with a quick stop at Llandudno for some gentle bouldering and a paddle in the toe-tingling cold water before going on to our backpackers in Observatory. Obs was a 'grey area' during the apartheid which meant all races could live together and although it is now more of a student-y area, there is still the most racial diversity here that I've seen round Cape Town.
Day 6: Kirstenbosch and Montague
Day 6 and today we meet back up with Cheryl. Me and Mum spent the morning at Kirstenbosch Botanical gardens (Mum was in heaven). A lot of the plants are very similar are similar or the same as ones in Cornwall and the layout compared to Cornish gardens was uncannily similar, it's easy to see why a lot of Cornish folk emigrated here. That and the tin mining!
We had lunch at the tea room before popping into Woolworths (the luxury!) to buy ingredients for a braai supper, an experience made slightly more stressfull because we didn't know what was already at the farm house where we were going to be spending the night: did we need charcoal or oil?! But once we'd got everything, we were off! The drive to Montague (where Cheryl's been rock climbing and where we're staying for a night) took about 3 hours and by a happy coincidence, the pair of us arrived just as Cheryl and the other climbers got back.
Once all-but-one of the climbers had left, me, Mum and Cheryl decided to try out the natural hot springs in the area. We were told a hotel had been built up around it but we could get a day pass to go in. We were all expecting something along the lines of a hot rock pool with a hotel in the background, instead we were met with several outdoor swimming pools of varying temperatures, presumably filled with the naturally hot water that had then been chlorinated. It was a little disappointing but apparently there's another one in the middle of nowhere an hour or two away so we might try that one tomorrow.
Once back at the camp site/guest house, we fired up the braai pit (with the wood they provided) and had a fantastic meal of veg kebabs (cooked without oil because we didn't buy any) followed by roasted peaches soaked in amaretto with raspberries and goats cheese on top, because my mum doesn't know how to slum things!
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| Another cheat-y one of Cheryl's pictures with one of her climber friends in the background! |
When in Hout Bay we visited the harbour market and got some small things for my brothers and a bowler hat for myself as well as lots of lunch! We drove a different scenic route back to Cape Town with a quick stop at Llandudno for some gentle bouldering and a paddle in the toe-tingling cold water before going on to our backpackers in Observatory. Obs was a 'grey area' during the apartheid which meant all races could live together and although it is now more of a student-y area, there is still the most racial diversity here that I've seen round Cape Town.
Day 6: Kirstenbosch and Montague
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| The last of the cheating photos! This one with my Dad's x-mas cake. |
We had lunch at the tea room before popping into Woolworths (the luxury!) to buy ingredients for a braai supper, an experience made slightly more stressfull because we didn't know what was already at the farm house where we were going to be spending the night: did we need charcoal or oil?! But once we'd got everything, we were off! The drive to Montague (where Cheryl's been rock climbing and where we're staying for a night) took about 3 hours and by a happy coincidence, the pair of us arrived just as Cheryl and the other climbers got back.
Once all-but-one of the climbers had left, me, Mum and Cheryl decided to try out the natural hot springs in the area. We were told a hotel had been built up around it but we could get a day pass to go in. We were all expecting something along the lines of a hot rock pool with a hotel in the background, instead we were met with several outdoor swimming pools of varying temperatures, presumably filled with the naturally hot water that had then been chlorinated. It was a little disappointing but apparently there's another one in the middle of nowhere an hour or two away so we might try that one tomorrow.
Once back at the camp site/guest house, we fired up the braai pit (with the wood they provided) and had a fantastic meal of veg kebabs (cooked without oil because we didn't buy any) followed by roasted peaches soaked in amaretto with raspberries and goats cheese on top, because my mum doesn't know how to slum things!
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