On the motorway...

During our travels here in Africa, we have spent some quality time on the highways (also known as the motorway). Life in Africa is different, to say the least, and you get a pretty good feel for just how different it is from the motorway. Where do I begin...

For starters, how about the radio. We didn't bring an iPod hookup...it is a pretty big deal for Ryan to be going 18 days without his iPod but he's handling it very well! So we're left to whatever's playing on whatever radio station we get in. All stations play the same thing: American top 40 and 80s power ballads. Lots of Rihana, Black Eyed Peas, Britney Spears, Foreigner, Elton John, and tons of Barry White. It is very rare for a song to come on the radio that we don't know.

As previously mentioned, they drive on the left over here. Roundabouts are very common. Besides for routinely mixing up the blinker and the windshield wiper, Ryan has done a great job of getting us around. My driving was limited to about 3 kilometers in Franschoek and I am fine with this! In the passenger seat, it means I can close my eyes whenever things get a little scary out there...

Like the first time Ryan pulled over onto the shoulder of the road to let someone pass him. I yelled what are you doing! And he said, letting this guy pass me, duh. Apparently he had read some driving manual before coming to Africa, thankfully, and was aware of this practice. If someone is driving faster than you, it's encouraged that you pull over (while maintaining your speed) and let the faster car go by. The faster car then flashes their taillights at you to say "thanks." The cars here even have a special lights setting for this, like a blinker but for the tail lights! This practice works out well because cars seem to travel at whatever speed they want on the motorway, from very very slow to fly-by fast. Most of the traveling we've done has been on 2- lane highways -- not big 4 lane interstates like in the U.S. Sooooooo it gets a little tight sometimes, 4 cars wide on a 2 lane highway. Hence the need to close my eyes from time to time.

Because English is the national language, most of the signs posted are in English. But some are in Afrikaans, and all of the towns have Afrikaans names, so trying to pronounce the words on these signs has become our number one travel game.

As Ryan mentioned, we have seen various animal crossing signs. A lot of "don't feed the baboons!" signs, and unless we would have seen a little one crossing the road, I would have thought they were posted as jokes. There are a lot of cow crossing signs, posted with a phone number underneath. Not sure who that call goes through to....the farmer who owns the cows?? "Hello, I'm sorry, I hit your cow!" that's not a conversation I want to have but we have seen a number of cows walking down the shoulder of the road, so I'm guessing that conversation happens all too often.

Speaking of cows, I am always staring at the farmsteads...guess it is the farm girl in me. We'll see a field of dairy cows grazing and then look to the nearest barn, and see that it doesn't have any power lines/electricity. How are all these cows getting milked?? Doesn't sound like fun to me. We've also seen a fair amount of field work being done...tractors in the field, baling straw, etc.

But tractors, cows, monkeys aside, what we see the most of on the highways is people. People walking, trying to hitch a ride, some offering money. Most of these people are men and I think it's because the women get picked up right away -- anytime we have seen a car/truck stop to pick people up, it's always for women. Sorry guys! No reliable means of transportation definitely makes life tougher...how are you supposed to hold down a job if you can only make it there occasionally? We learned the unemployment rate in Cape Town is 47%...and we think America's is bad! We've seen quite a few construction work zones and there always seem to be ample people working at them...always a couple people extra just watching or waving a flag. But I guess, when there's no guarantee how many will hitch a ride to work that day, you've got to hire 10 for a 6 person job and hope at least that many show up?

Enough of these ramblings for now...clearly I have too much time to bethinking about all of this from my passenger seat!

Going back to our time in Durban

Durban
Ran outnof time to write about Our time in Durban, so I'm here to recap what happened :)
We started off our first morning in Durban with some unfortunate news, my surprise birthday gift from Holly had been cancelled. :( Instead we decided to venture off into the city to find some fun. Our first stop was the new soccer stadium, Moses Mediba Stadium. Its first match was for the world cup in 2010. There is a beautiful arch that goes over the middle of the stadium that you can take a tram to the top, so we did that and got some great view of the city and the Indian Ocean. After that we came across the Big Rush, the worlds largest swing. And being in the playground business, how could I pass up an opportunity to take a ride?? So, I signed up for it. After taking 150 steps up the arch over the stadium, you walk over a platform that over looks the field. From there, they hook you up to a big strap/rope that is connected to the middle of arch. And then they say "3, 2, 1, jump!" then you're off to the swing off your life!! Well, first you're falling and then the rope catches up and you swing across the field. When I got up to the platform I thought we would get let off in the middle of the field. No, they pull you back up and you have to walk back down the arch. I think the trip back up was just as terrifying as the jump, hahahaha... But definitely fun overall! There will be video and pictures posted later!
After the Big Rush, we went down to the beach where we had a nice lunch where we could see the beach and all of the little stands selling homemade goods. Then we decided it was our turn to jump in the water, so we pulled out our beach towels and swimming suits, and jumped into the ocean. Not warm at all! But after a little bit of time it certainly got better. It was a lot of fun having all of the waves crash into you, and see how far they could push you towards the shore.
Once we got back to the guest house, Holly found out that my surprise birthday gift had been rescheduled for the next morning, very exciting! We went out for a nice Thai dinner, and went to bed.
The next morning we had to be up early be up early because by surprise birthday gift from Holly was surfing lessons :) It was an hour long, one on one session, and it was a blast! I may not be very good (and I'm sure that doesn't surprise some of you) but I still had fun trying! I would say that I got up twice, but they weren't long enough times for Holly to take my picture. Haha... My instructor was great, very helpful and very encouraging. I can't wait to try again!
After cleaning up, we took a three hour drive north to the safari, where we are now. And even took a game drive that evening. So, I feel like my theme song for Saturday should have been Surfin Safari by the Beach Boys, but renamed Surf and Safari :)

P.S. We enjoy comments if you have one :) Thanks!

Safari!

We have a lot of blog catching up to do, but in the meantime wanted to write a quick post to let you all know we've made it to Zulu Nyala Reserve for the safari!

We're staying in this "tent." Its acutally made of concrete and has electricity and a very nice big bathroom, but I guess the screened windows and no AC makes it "tent" worthy.

We went on our first game drive last night -- what a trip!! We saw the "usuals" -- zebras, nyalas, impalas, little monkeys sitting in trees (Mugsy-- Ryan could spot these before the tour guide could, he thought you would be proud), ostrich, warthogs, one lizzard and kudus. Also some cape buffalo, giraffes and a mama rhinocerous with her little baby. All very cool, but the real highlight were the 2 cheetas. They were on the prowl, looking for their dinner. We lost them in the bush for 3 minutes and by the time we got repositioned and found them, they had already made their kill -- one less impala living on the reserve! We watched them eat their dinner for awhile...it felt very Lion King "circle of life"-ish.

That's all for now! Headed out for our second game drive this morning. Miss you all!

The Loft, the sky and Durban

After arriving in Knysna last night we needed to find a place to stay, one of the two nights on our trip that we didn't plan a hotel or guest house. We drove around the waterfront area and found some really nice places, which also meant really pricey! After Holly left one of these hotels, the receptionist at one came running out behind her. She offered us a room for pretty much half price if we paid in cash. After checking out some other places, we found it to be our best and safest bet. So we took it. The pic attached to this post is from the Lofts, a converted boat making building right on the water.  It was beautiful.
For dinner that night we were determined to eat some of the world famous Knysna oysters, at least according to Ron Sweetman :) We decided to go to a little restaurant within walking distance of our hotel. And there we tried the oysters, I had 3 and Holly had her first (and I think it may have been her last). Haha...
Then this morning we had a nice little breakfast and got on the road for Port Elizabeth, where we caught a flight to Durban.  And her comes the part that Mugsy has been waiting for! We finally saw a monkey :) After seeing countless number of signs warning that there is a fine for feeding baboons, we had our first monkey run across the road while driving to Port Elizabeth. We had been competing with each other to see who could spot the first of many different exotic animals. And up to that point we had only seen a bunch of ostriches, but they are farmed over here, so it was kind of like seeing a cow. Which we have seen plenty of too!
After a couple of odd turns due to our goofy GPS, we made it to the airport. A short hour flight later and we made it to Durban. It didn't take long for us to get our rental car, a Toyota Carolla this time, ans make our way to our guest house. A cute little place on a hill in a nice neighborhood with a view of the Indian Ocean :)
Thats all for now. Just laying low for the rest of the evening. Got some fun plans in Durban tomorrow, which should work out well with 80's in the forecast and plenty of beaches! :)

Hermanus and Knysna

Lack of internet connection has made it hard to post on the blog, but luckily my phone was able to find a tiny amount of Wi-Fi here in Knysna.

So, after leaving franschhoek we made our way to Hermanus, a coastal city known for the whale watching. And many whales we did see!! The first night we saw many whales breaching, air coming out of their blow holes, and other whale activities all from the shore. That afternoon we were supposed to go kayaking in the ocean, and see the whales more, but it was too windy and it got cancelled. We also found out that our activity for the next morning got cancelled too, shark cage diving :( I know Lana and Judy are happy to hear this. Haha... Instead this morning we went on a whale watching cruise. Which was pretty good, saw a few whales, even a couple baby calves. Unfortunately they all seemed to be camera shy to my camera, because every time I brought mine out they would stop splashing or disappear under the water. 
After the cruise, we hopped in the car and drove to Knysna.  A five hour drive through so many different terrains I'm not sure I could remember them all. There was sea side drives, forest drives, drives thru farm land, through the mountains, tall pines that reminded me of the Pacific northwest, etc.  It's all be really really beautiful!
That's all for right now. Headed to bed soon. Off to Port Elizabeth in the morning, where we catch a flight to Durban. Where I'll be doing something fun in the water, thanks to Holly's birthday gift to me. Stay tuned to find out what it is :)

Table Mountain pic

Franschhoek

Monday...what better way to start the week than with winery tours?? We started the day by sleeping in...yessssss. Much needed after two early AM wake ups and 30+hours of traveling. We had breakfast at our guest house and our host here helped us choose a few wineries to check out. I drove us to our first stop, a couple miles outside of town. Franschhoek is tiny, compared to Cape Town at least, so I was pretty sure I could get us there safely.

The first winery we toured was La Motte. It was beautiful! Very extravagant and fancy. We pulled in around 11 am but decided it was ok to start drinking that early..it was almost five o'clock (am) in Wisconsin! We sampled 8 wines there, took a few photos and hit the road back into town.

We parked the car at our guest house and checked put the Huguenot Memorial, then started walking to the next winery. Buuut the midday African sun got the best of sand we turned around to get the car again. Good call because the next winery was a few kilometers away, uphill, and it was not the type of place you would like to show up to drenched in sweat. La Petite Ferme was the name of this place and it.was.gorgeous. At La Motte I told Ryan that was the prettiest place I had ever been, but once we got to La Petite Ferme, I was eating those words. It is for sure the prettiest place I've ever been (so far!). We ate lunch and then sampled a few wines, buying one bottle and a cookbook, which the owner signed for us. The waiters were giving Ryan tips on which ones were easiest for him to cook for me... We'll let you know how these turnout!

After La Petite Ferme we parked the car at the guest house and walked to the third winery, Mont Rochelle. It was a long, hot walk and the service we had was pretty underwhelming, so I don't have much to say about that stop. We bought one bottle, blazed a short cut through the vineyard, and headed back to the guest house for a nap.

Tonight we had a fun "tapas" dinner, trying springbok (south african deer-like animal, also the name of the country's rugby team that everyone is crazy about) for the first time. We had sticky-bun ice cream for dessert. Look out Ben and Jerry, we're bringing this one back to America!