traveldiary.stracke.us

Every few days we get a newspaper and here are some recent news from the South African Times :
Namibia held general elections last weekend and the Swapo won again by a large margin. The current President Sam Nujoma ( who himself had been nominated by the tribal chiefs) will turn over the power to Mr. Pohamba.
There was already talk about encouraging white farmers ( who own most of the land in Namibia) to voluntarily sell their land to be given to the black people of the country. We met a German couple in Swakopmund who are just building their retirement home there and were stating that, in their opinion, Namibia will remain status quo for a long time. For their sake, I hope they are correct.
More than half of the 4000 white farmers in Zimbabwe( former Rhodesia) have left the country after being evicted from their land. President Mugabe
started the campaign to disown white farmers several years ago and the paper today mentioned that the farmers have a deadline of 6 days to fight this in court. Zimbabwe is our next destination and I am curious to see what it will be like. The country is pretty much ruined, people are standing in line for basic food items, there is little gasoline for cars and so on. Zimbabwe has the dubious honor of having the highest HIV infection rate( around 50% of the population are infected) in the world and life expectancy has dropped from the low 60’s to about 52 years. The government takes in millions of dollars each month from gold and heavy metal mining and I wonder where all that money goes.
Bishop Tutu of South Africa gave a speech yesterday blasting the government to do more about the AIDS crisis. There are 4 million confirmed HIV cases in need of antiretroviral drugs in this country and 400 000 are expected to die from AIDS this year. AIDS is now with over 50 % the most common cause of death here. There are more than 40 Million AIDS related orphans in southern Africa and the countries will suffer from the lack of a middle age work force in the coming years. It is estimated that about 20 to 30 million Africans will die from HIV over the next 10 years!

Apartheid—-actualy meaning the process of keeping apart……in southern Africa..to keep the races apart. Yesterday I read in the Sunday Times of South Africa that the people’s optimism is soaring due to the biggest economic BOOM since WWII. It stated that the greatest optimism was among Africans( 74%), followed by coloreds at 60%, Indians(55%) and whites at 36%. They base their optimism on moral, educational, and economic standards as improving.
The economy is growing at a higher pace than the inflation rate, the Rand currency is strengthening against the dollar( not good for us), Gold ( they possess the major world supply)has hit a 16 year high$ (almost $450 an ounce) and their industries are claiming profits as high as 88 % increases.
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We stopped in Tsitsikamma National Park and hiked to a 800 year old yellowwood tree. The thing is huge at the base and about 120 feet tall. The trail was through a dense forest and we now can tell apart a stinkwood from a yellowwood tree. We must have been the first people on the trail for a while. I did the trailblazing and constantly had spiderwebs and small spiders on my legs ! Next time I will wear long pants. At least there were hardly any mosquitos! Next on the agenda was bungee jumping( watching other people jump!). We were at the Bloukrans River Bridge which is the highest bridge in the southern hemisphere ( 216 meters to be exact). We saw suicidal people jump head first from the bridge and they were eventually winched back up by an employee in a sitting harness. I do not think, I could do his job being suspended in mid-air for an eight hour shift ! I don’t even like to climb on a ladder to clean out the gutters on our house ! On the other hand the bungee jump is free for people 65 and over, so we always can come back at that time ( frugal people that we are).

We visited Addo Elephant National Park and we were not disappointed. We have never seen so many elephants in one place. There were about 70 elephants, including many youngsters, in and around one waterhole at the same time ! We also saw ostriches, red wildbeest, warthogs and a few large turtles coming to drink at the waterhole. While driving through the park we came across 2 more large herds of elephants. I had stopped the car next to an elephant bush trail and they walked right by our car without paying any attention to us. We have been told that they only react to people on foot, but do not associate the cars with enemies. This so far has worked for us! The rental car has no trunk or elephant foot marks!

Today was 8 hours of driving on a South African Interstate from Knysna to Stellenbosch. I had to fight a strong crosswind all day long and steering our VW Polo ( with extra big boot for the luggage) was like landing a plane on a runway in strong crosswinds. We made it without going off the road, but it took a lot of concentration and holding on to the wheel for dear life! The complicating factor is that the interstate is a twolane highway and drivers are expected to move into the emergency lane to let faster cars pass. This creates a fourlane highway out of a two lane road.
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So, after having had a nice lunch on Sunday, we were back on the beach. Within a few minutes a 2nd alert was sounded and all were out of the water again…..within a couple of minutes. We were beginning to wonder about this ocean:roll:…so I decided to ask some locals if this was normal…I’m afraid the answer was YES.. for this time of the year because the sharks were migrating back to Antartica for the summer(remember it is late Spring here right now). Lucky for us! They said not to worry though, the people here have taken to naming the sharks and one who likes to frequent these waters was called Ella…
I’m really not sure if I want to be on first name basis with a great white shark:eek: We decided to only wade in the water.
Breaking headline!!!!!!!!Lothar just read the news about “our shark” on CNN. It killed an elderly lady yesterday in the same place we were on Sunday… scary.
Now I know why we aren’t scuba-diving here!!!!!!
This all has some history though…. man is once again at fault, as usual when you play with nature…. they have started shark diving in this area in the last few years…shark diving is when a diver goes down in a cage and feeds the sharks from within the cage and the shark gets thoroughly annoyed because he starts to associate the cage and the diver as deciding when he will get his food…… is there any question as to why the sharks become aggressive? Now some in the dive industry claim, one has nothing to do with the other:roll:…..these have to be divers, who have had too much nitrogen narcosis or are just too greedy to care about anything but money….or is it the adrenaline rush? Poor lady!
Yesterday at a new beach about 4 car hrs drive away from the Cape Town area, Mossel Bay, we did venture into the water but were always on the watch.
Maybe we should start looking at hostels or B/B with pools:shock:

Today we climbed on board a ship replica of Bartholomeu Diaz’ vessel. This ship was built by the Portuguese in 1987 and actually sailed from Portugal to Mossel Bay ( our current beach location) in 1988 in order to commemorate Diaz’ journey 500 years prior. Diaz was the first European to land here in 1488. Vasco da Gama stopped here on his way to India in 1497.
The display explaining the spice trade routes was very interesting. It is amazing how far people traveled for a few spices!

We had a restful sleep on a train last night………yes I said restful…. because the train didn’t move… it is a train converted to a youth lodge …yes I said youth….but not really that many youths here, since there are no semester breaks right now….. just quite a few people who still believe they are youthful:wink: We have a nice compartment with a spit basin overlooking Mossel Bay on the Indian Ocean, all for US$25. Down a few train steps and we can take our swims. Last night I took a shower in the communal shower ( 1 at a time), while dazing at the ocean. Later we sat on the hostel deck just whiling away the time with our bottle of South African wine, watching a local extended Boer family having a braii(barbecue) on the beach. They used real wood, not charcoal for their fire and ate the marshmallows as an appetizer. When the meat was ready, all took a seat on the sand and ate. We realize how spoilt we, as Americans are, we always want it real comfortable. …… charcoal, or better a gas grill, collapsable chairs, or better picnic tables supplied by the park.
This lifestyle we are leading has to be illegal because it really is too good to be true!:shock:

It is easy to get disoriented here !
Yesterday we left Cape Town and had to drive east to reach the Western Cape.
The sun is in the northern sky at noontime.
We are at the beach of Mossel Bay on the southern coast, but this is the only north-facing beach in South Africa.
The traffic sign indicating school children in the area is called “scholars”.
A tanker truck in South Africa carries ” inflammable” gasoline.
We had a nice bottle of wine in our beach restaurant last night, but we could have been in Europe or the USA : only white people on the beach or in the bar.
We drove through South African towns looking for street signs. The street names are painted on the curbs, there are no signs at eye level.
In Namibia we were sharing the roads with monkeys, chicken, ostriches, cattle, sheep, warthogs, horses , goats and maybe a car every ten minutes or so. It was somewhat unnerving to have to drive always straight for 5 to10 minutes until the road would make a 10 to 20 degree change in course and continue straight again.
It is still very warm here and we are enjoying our ” endless summer”. Yesterday was our first swimming in the Indian Ocean !

It’s a lazy Sunday morning at Fisch Hoek in False Bay on the Indian Ocean. Many locals and a few tourists are sunning themselves or playing cricket on the beach, enjoying a swim or a kayaking experience in the ocean. Plenty of room here for an entrepreneur of chairs and umbrellas; there are none at this beach or any other that we have seen in South Africa or Namibia. Maybe they just want to keep it that way—-pure nature. The whole of South Africa really seems like a nature company in itself. Since we seem to always rise with the sun, we already have a self guided driving tour through the working class neighborhoods of Cape Town, a morning at the beach, and lunch behind us. We are now escaping the warmest part of the midday sun with a session on the computer. Besides keeping up with family and friends, we need to get our news somehow.:!:
A couple of hours ago, at the beach, we heard a major siren blowing and thought it must be noontime……, we were so enthralled reading about the history of this country, that we had thought a lot more time must have past and we didn’t realize it… but …… it was only 11:05. Then we heard lots of shouting and saw the golden bronzed lifeguards (apartheid still lives in many places–but that’s another post) manning their kayaks and rushing out to sea.
Slowly we understood what was happening… a shark had found its way into the bay waters.:shock: It was amazing how quickly the people were gotten out of the water, even the ones in kayaks, who were way out there. The South African seemed to take it all in stride, making us think that this was a usual occurance and nothing to get too worried about. It was all under control!
Within 15 minutes all were back in the water and I hope Mr. Shark was on his way. He was probably scared by the life guards driving around in a motor dinghy at top speed. The life guards did patrol the whole area before letting people back in. No shutdown of the beach for hours or days, as one might have expected. Here in Africa, one must live with the wildlife.
Now I’ve encountered sharks underwater while scuba diving, where they think we are one of them, but I really wouldn’t want to be splashing at the surface, where they know we are not….. there, in their instinct, we are helpless injured fish and thus tasty morsels.:roll: