The last two weeks have been a fantastic blur running on African time. Our adventures have been great and plenty but I think I finally found time to truly relax. I keep trying to tell myself that it’s a good thing, since many of you know that I am addicted to filling most of my Ottawa days with 418 things to do.
Today, I’m sitting boringly alone in my dorm room, trying heartily to steal a signaless internet connection. Before departure, Prof Rex shared an anecdote about insanely late taxis, and advised that “It’s easy to believe we’re living in a first world country until you get little wake-up calls that remind you that TIA” (this is Africa). The lack of internet at just about every backpackers hints at this notion. While I can’t reconcile myself with the whole “TIA” generalizing thing, tons of people we’ve met here emphasize that they came up with it before Leo and use it constantly.
I started to explain the excellence of our Kruger Park safari before, but I think I’ll leave the rest to be explained by some of my pictures later. The only things I will mention: We did see the Big 5 on our first day (rare, as we’ve met South Africans who have yet to see Leopard after a few years of safaris), Our tour guide turned out to be an absolute Dr. Doolittle, and in the end, Nipuni and I both ended up getting some brutal gastro sickness that took us out the second and third days, respectively. Courtney was the last Canadian standing. I fear that the Brits and Aussies might be afraid to come to our country now because of this mysterious immune deficiency.
We, along with Lorinda, the brave Aussie we met on Safari, arrived in Swaziland the day after our savannah bonanza, the only ‘authentic’ African kingdom sitting in the northeast corner of South Africa along the border with Mozambique. Besides being excited about the multitude of cool Swazi stamps we’d be getting in our passports, Courtney and I decided to visit Swaziland because we wanted to try to get a taste of rural southern Africa, take in some new scenery, and meet some other people who were cool simply for being game to check out Swaziland. Actually, you would be surprised how many people were literally afraid to go to the country because it has the world’s highest per-capita HIV/AIDS rate. My thinking was that we didn’t intend on having anesthetized surgery, doing heroin, or getting it on with the locals, so the natural next step was to learn about the country outside of its championing of the stats.
We arrived at a fairly mediocre backpackers that also had broken internet, a smelly kitchen, bitchy morning staff, and, worst of all, zero other travelers. We decided to drown our sorrows with a coke and food at a lodge 300M down the road. For this, though, we needed a security guard escort. To be honest, with the lack of enthusiasm he showed at making small talk, I think I would have felt safer walking alone. Once we started digging into our authentic Swazi (read: Italian) pasta, we also dug into a little discussion of African politics. It was our mention of Sierra Leone that got the attention of a lone South African diner, Barry, who told us never to visit the west african country and would eventually spend the next day as our tour guide to Swazi waterfalls and dams. These were places we never could have seen without his car (which we lovingly named Bernadette), so we were indebted to him enough to allow him to take us to a huge pineapple field and snatch some prickly fruit. We did buy some pineapple legitimately later, and it was a bit overpriced, so we felt we made up for the bad behavior. Courtney still feels remorse and just said hysterically “It’shisonlysourceoflivelihood!”
The other few days we spent in Swaziland were fairly laid-back, but luckily, we were joined by some other travelers who helped make the nights a bit more lively. Courtney and I are proud to say that we did finally take a minibus/Combi(n)e although we did need to be escorted by a cool male Indian friend Lovell (who won his trip to SA!). These busses are usually insane and the cause of many traffic accidents, but luckily we arrived in one piece that day - after another hop into the back of some guy's truck to get to the actual nature reserve we wanted to visit. We did some on-foot reserve exploring, beers in hand, and then made our way to the "Swaziland Cultural Village." As much as I was very interested to learn about Swazi culture, Courtney, Lovell and I were a bit distracted when we learned that our tourmates were all from UNESCO. It was definitely a kind of celebrity sighting that lame developent students appreciate.
Another day of random curio shopping, quiet times, and drinks, and we were out of Swaziland and down to St. Lucia, which I've already blogged a bit about. It was a really cool place to be; a UNESCO (oooh, ahh) World Heritage Site. From here, we headed back to our home base of Durban. I think Courtney and I sincerely felt like we were coming 'back' to some kind of home when we returned. It was actually quite nice, and we made sure to try out some old favourites, including 10R ($1.35) Veg Biyani on the UKZN campus and a visit to the Overport Mall, not to mention a few monkey street-crossing sightings. I also got a chance to interview some more people for my work in the Warwick Market. I won't divulge my little findings and such now, but anyone who is at all interested can get an earful from me when I'm home; just ask.
From Durbs, we were off to Mthatha, an old city that has been described by others as an almost central african city in the heart of the Transkei (Eastern Cape).
-------
Well, we've just arrived in Cape Town, and I think I want to either go and party on the rooftop bar in our hostel or go to bed. Stay tuned to see which extreme wins out! I will return to our coastal journey when I grab this SUPER CHEAP INTERNET again (R5 [$0.70] for 30 mins! What?!)
Back in Ottawa in T-12 days :O
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment