Out of Africa 3 Kruger, Okavonga, and Victoria Falls

We left you as we arrived in Johannesburg by train, picked up our VW polo hatch and headed for Kruger NP. Overnight in Middleburg in a nice BNB and then 6 nights in Kruger. On the first game drive (on our own) we saw a very fat, well fed, leopard sleeping in a tree,  and later we saw a leopard's kill hanging in a tree, but missed seeing the leopard. We stayed at 4 different camps during the stay, and every day we drove around seeing gazelles, kudu, hippos, elephants, giraffes, warthogs, cape buffalo, vultures, honey badgers, and more. Had to backup on one road, to give the elephant, who was pawing the ground,  right of way.

Fat Leopard

Elephant Crossing

One morning, we had a personal guided walk with armed rangers thru the park. Most animals were scared of us, and stayed far away. We did, however, see fresh lion tracks as we were returning to our vehicle - disappointing as we didn't see any other lions in Kruger.

Next stop was Johannesburg again, over some potholes caused by coal mining trucks,  and then off to the Okavonga Delta.  Gunn's Camp was without Wi-Fi but otherwise 4 star. Excellent food, (and lots of it--5 meals a day!!) with morning and afternoon boat or mokoro (poled fibreglass dugouts) trips thru the Delta. Sundowners, one evening next to 3 hippos in a pool, were a highlight of the day. The nights were also interesting with elephants wandering through the camp, knocking down trees and railings. We were obviously not allowed to go out of our tent at night!

Okavonga Sunset

Hippo Pool

We were sad to leave the tranquil green marshes and rivers of the Okvango Delta,  but our next adventure beckoned.  We flew from our camp to Kasane in Northern Botswana,  and from there by car to Zimbabwe and the famous Victoria Falls.

We are now about to leave Victoria Falls, after 2 nights here. Seeing the falls took about 2 hours and US $30pp, but even now, in the dry season - spectacular! The rest of the time we checked out all the shops, watched the adventure tourists white water rafting and zip-lining, beat off the street sellers with a stick, swam in the hotel pool and ate. Dieting is going to be required, on returning home!  Victoria Falls was also the worst place for mosquitos that we have encountered.  And they are totally silent,  no high pitched whine to give you an early warning they are about to attack.

Victoria Falls

2 more days in Johannesburg to see Soweto and the apartheid museum, and 2 nights in Perth, and we will be home. Final blog will probably be from Yamba...

Out of Africa 2 Cape Town & Western Cape

Our last blog ended with us descending Table Mountain and ending up with very sore legs that persisted for a few days.    Before we left Cape Town we also visited the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens,  an awesome spread of beautiful  plantings on the lower slopes of Table Mountain,  with the mountain itself as a backdrop.  The spring flowers were beautiful,  especially the hedges of Bird of Paradise in orange and yellow. We also visited the V and A Waterfront, an upmarket shopping mall on part of the old harbour. We thought about going to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned,   but the grey, stormy weather and rough seas put paid to that idea.

We also visited Green Market Square, an area that used to be a handmade craft market,  but is now just immigrant Nigerian and Somali traders selling the ususal tourist junk.

Leaving Cape Town the next day we drove along the coast via the stunning  Chapman's Peak Drive that clings to the ciffs as it winds its way along the coast to Cape of Good Hope and the Cape Point Lighthouse. We took the funicular railway most of the way up to the lighthouse. The wind was very cold and blowing a gale,  interspersed with showers of horizontal rain. The area is wildly beautiful with heathlands,  craggy rocks and peaks,  and pounding surf on the shore. 

Cape of Good Hope

We also stopped at The  Boulders, an African Penguin Sanctuary where we watched the release of some rehabilitated penguins back into the wild.

We spent the next few days making our way north up the spectacular west coast of South Africa.  It is an area of numerous mountain ranges, often marching right to the shore in steep cliffs and crevasses, interspersed with white sand beaches. We stayed with lovely people we contacted through airbnb.   After many stops at beautiful places on the coast including Hermanus, Mossel Bay and the very unaptly named suburb of Wilderness, we ended up in Knysna (pronounced Nys nah). This is a beautiful tranquil bay with magnificent rock cliffs forming the heads either side of a narrow channel to the ocean. We stayed here three days and visited the awesome Storms River Mouth to the north where we hiked to the river mouth and up a very steep climb to a lookout.

Knysna

Storms Bay

We also took a cruise to Knysna Heads and hiked down through the Featherbed Reserve to a tasty lunch at a Featherbed Restaurant looking out at the lagoons and the heads.

We drove back to Cape Town via the inland route to Outdshoorn.  We did the tourist thing and visited the Cango Caves and an Ostrich farm.  Bill took a ride on an Ostrich, but it was so quick, there is no photographic evidence. Did you know that Ostrich is the second toughest leather in the world (after Kangaroo)? We crossed many mountain ranges interspersed with fertile valleys and endless green and well managed farms.  We became connoisseurs of mountain passes  and river valleys through the ranges.   The highway engineering here is truly amazing with excellent quality roads twisting and climbing through rocky gorges and divides.  The roads of all types from expressways to gravel are of excellent quality and all in good repair.

We made our way back to Cape Town through the wine regions and pretty towns of Franschhoek and Stellenbosch.   We sampled some wine in the Robertson area, had an excellent lunch in Franschhoek, and did a walking tour of the museums and heritage Cape Architecture in Stellenbosch.

Stellenbosch

Afrikaans is spoken  widely here,  although most people speak excellent English as well. We were occasionally flummoxed by town street signs with English on one side and a different Afrikaans name on the other.  And a grocery store aisle with signs for versnaperings,  grondboontijes,  verromers,  skyties,  sjampanje,  langlewe sap,  stroopdrank and doos wyn had me worried about what we were going to eat.    But food is very  cheap here in restaurants and supermarkets,  and there are lots of ready to eat meals in the supermarkets so we have eaten well.

Most of all,  the South Africans we met have been wonderful.  We can't fault their kindness,  generosity and helpfulness. They are true tourist ambassadors for their country and have willingly offered food and drink,  rides,  use of a car,  help with washing our (very dirty) rental car--we can't resist a gravel road:  nothing was too hard.   Their only failing is they can't help showing their disappointment that you didn't spend your entire South African vacation in their part of the country that is obviously the best possible place to be.

We have returned our little rental VW Polo to Cape Town and embarked on the Shosholoza Meyl train from Cape Town to Johannesburg.  Our cramped sleeper cabin with purple leatherette upholstry looks like something out of the 1950's but it is running to time so far. Look out for our next installment.

Train travel is tiring

Hello blog followers. Some of you may know that we are on trip through Africa.   We haven't published for the first two weeks as many of the places we were staying had marginal and/or very expensive  internet.  But now we are in Cape Town SA and back in the electronic world.

We flew out of Brisbane on 29 August.   Our trip did not get off to a flying start as Virgin cancelled our flight to Perth,  apparently due to a shortage of cabin crew!! Not very impressive.  The later flight that they put us on missed our  connection to Johannesburg, so we spent an unscheduled night in Perth. We arrived at our eventual destination,  Nairobi Kenya,  a day late.  Luckily, we had planned to be in Nairobi a day before our Safari started,  so we did not miss that  but we did miss out on looking around Nairobi.

Our Kenya Safari started by driving out of Nairobi,  across the Great Rift Valley,  and into the Masai Mara. Mara Simba Lodge greeted us with elephants at the front gate,  and crocodile and hippos in the river behind the lodge.   On our first evening game drive we were overwhelmed by the numbers and variety of game that we saw,  including lions, wildebeest, gazelles, warthogs,  zebra, cape buffalo, giraffe, and a rare black rhino.  And all in just two hours!!

Our time in Kenya  continued in this vein in all of of the parks that we visited.   In Lake Nakuru NP we saw wonderful bird life including large groups of flamingos and beautiful crested  cranes. In Lake Naivasha NP we took a boat cruise and got up close to a mother and  baby hippo,  as well as seeing fish eagles.   Both of these lakes are in a string of water  bodies that run down the Great Rift Valley.

Our last National Park in Kenya was Amboseli, located at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro.   Unfortunately,  during our whole stay there the mountain was shrouded  in clouds and we never got to see it. We did see more interesting birds including Ostrich,  Kori Bustards and Secretary Birds.   Our main interest this trip was wildlife and Kenya was awesome.

The second week of our Safari took us into Tanzania,  and out to the Serengeti Desert. The sky in the Serengeti never ends.  The vistas are vast and empty.   Animals were not as concentrated as in the Masai Mara,  but we did see vast herds of wildebeest and zebra stretching to the horizon on their annual migration.  We also saw our first leopards, a mother cheetah and cub, and prides of lions. At one point a grumpy elephant charged us,  but luckily he was  not as fast as a Land Cruiser.

We also visted Ngorongoro  Crater,  an incredible circular plain surrounded mountain ranges.   Our hotel was high on the crater edge and we  could gaze down into it from our rooms. We spent a beautiful day down in the crater,  where we had breakfast beside a pool full of hippos.   We later watched anothef huge group of hippos take mud baths and roll over to coat themselves with mud.   An upside down hippo,  kicking his feet in the air, is a never to be forgotten sight.

In between game drives,  we managed a few other activities,  including an early morning  ballon flight and visit to a Masai village in Kenya,  and guided nature walks and Swahili  lessons in Tanzania. (The most useful words of Swahili we learned were "hakuna metata"--"no problem")

We have left Safari life behind for the immediate future,  and are now in Cape Town SA.  We are staying at a beautiful bed and breakfast house in Geen Point,  on a hill overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and the stadium built for the 2010 world cup.   Today we took the cable car up through the  clouds to Table Mountain,  then walked to the highest point at Maclear's Beacon.   We later walked down the mountain via Platteklip Gorge,  a spectacular 2 hour walk that left us with jelly legs and and aching knees. A local member of one of the mountaineering clubs took pity on us and offered us a ride back to our accommodation.   We gratefully accepted,  and shared a beer with him at a pub on the way home.

We are staying in Cape Town for 2 more days,  then picking up a rental car and heading up the east  coast.   Stay tuned for more adventures.

2013 YE Report from Yamba

Friends,
Here I am, on Christmas day, dictating the newsletter to my phone. 2013 was a busy year for us settling into our new home in Yamba. We just celebrated 1 year in Yamba with a party on our back deck for 30 people. All were new friends and their partners we've met since we moved here. Most of the year we've spent setting up our new home. We added a pantry and dishwasher to the kitchen, installed 2 televisions, built-in wardrobes in both bedrooms (who builds houses without wardrobes?!), weeded the yard and did the inevitable maintenance on the the two tenant's places.
Bobbie has re-established  her jewellery studio, and is making and selling the creative results.  She has also joined the local Arts an Crafts Group and has her jewellery for sale in their co-op gallery at nearby Maclean.  A piece she entered in their annual award show was highly commended.  Not too bad for a first go. Bill has refurbished his boat and has finally completed a club race just before Christmas. He has also taken Bobbie's cousin Janet (visiting from Canada) for a sail.
We had an exciting introduction to life in the sub-tropics during January to March of 2013.  During January, massive storms flooded and washed tons of driftwood down the Clarence River that flows through Yamba.  Instead of moving out to sea, as it usually does, the wood washed back onto all of our beaches, up to a metre deep in places, leaving the local Council with a massive clean-up headache.  The heavy flooding also caused a lot of damage in low-lying areas and Yamba was cut off from the main highway for 5 days.  Luckily, our house is up quite high so the flooding does not affect us.  Later in March, storms again cut the Pacific Highway near the coast. This forced us to travel to Sydney via the New England Highway (the inland route) on our way to meet friends in Sydney.

As far as travel is concerned, we have been back to Sydney (700 km) 3 times. Bobbie was also back in Canada  in November, as her mother, Lucille, passed away this year and she went back to spend some time with her sister Naomi and settle the estate. During the year we also spent 10 days minding a motel. A friend of Bobbie's, who owns the motel in Hawks Nest (about 2 hours north of Sydney) needed a vacation to visit her daughter in Vanuatu. We haven't completely forgotten about our camping and have been camping for 2 weekends in nearby national parks. We also spent two weeks travelling and camping with Canadian friends Mike and Rhonda when they visited Australia for 3 months.  It was good to catch up with them and share some travels.  They later visited us in Yamba before heading home. No long trips were taken but our plan is to do more camping in the new year. We have also been to Port Macquarie to a craftshow/ exhibition where Bobbie displayed and sold some jewellery. In Port Macquarie we stayed with a friend Peter Thompson and caught up with Dave Moxon another old friend from Sydney

We are thoroughly enjoying the slow and easy life in Yamba with a weekly routine much different from that in Sydney. On a normal day we walk to the beach and go for a run and/or a swim. Bill dips his toe in occasionally Bobbie always swims. Wednesday is market day, in the park near the lighthouse, where we pick up fresh fruit and vegetables for the week after our trip to beach. Additionally Bobbie swims 3 times a week with the local masters swim club as well as swimming on Sundays with the surf club as she has for many years now.  She has also joined the local surf club and is already involved in an executive role. Bill does the sailing race most wednesdays, and usually goes to the Yacht Club bar on Friday nights.
Keeping fit and doing regular exercise has insured our health has remained good despite Bill having a swollen foot and cellulitis from an ant or spider bite and spending a couple of weeks recovering.
In other activities Bobbie has been going to the Men's Shed (oops Women's Shed) every Friday and has completed several projects. The first was a wooden toolbox so she can carry her tools to and from the shed. The second was refinishing a stool and the third is a very elaborate 11 spool clothes rack to hang under the model boat ( built by her grandfather ) which functions as a hat shelf by our front door. See picture below

P. S. Dictating to the phone was OK, but the extensive editing required didn't save much time. BTW my new phone is a Phablet - Sony Xperia Z Ultra with 6.44“ screen...
Best wishes for the New Year and we hope it is happy and healthy for you.
Cheers,
BiLL & Bobbie
M: 0411 877 499 / 0412 832