Richard's Travel Blog

Greetings from Buenos Aires. Things have been VERY slow around here during the New Year´s four day weekend. Almost everything closed on the afternoon of the 31st and just opened up today. Myung is off doing her own thing. That gives me a chance to blog.
We´ve settled in to our new apartment and are living about as straight a life as we are capable of. One of the really nice things about settling down is we have a refrigerator. That means we can have fresh food. AND we don´t have to cook over a fire.

So far on our few days here, we´ve walked and walked. The public transportation is great too, though the bus system is impenetrable, so far. On weekends and holidays many residents of BA, who call themselves porteños, flock to a touristy historical city near the Rio de la Plata called Tigre. We decided to do as the Romans do, and went. It was okay, not photogenic. Tigre was the capital once upon a time, but the old days are gone. The market sells tourist stuff and most of hte activity is tourist oriented. Cute enough, I guess, and we can say we went.
Actually, Buenos Aires doesn´t have much in the way of great tourist stuff. What´s good about it it is that it is so alive. There are things happening in the streets of any neighborhood, at least the ones we´ve seen so far. The action is a mix between utterly modern (straights in suits going about the business of business), to country people selling their wares on a blanket in the street, to performers and fun lovers of every kind. Everywhere they pass the hat. Tango is still a big deal here.

We happened to see these guitarists on TV the next day. They looked like such a big deal on the TV set, and here they were playing for change on the street.

There is an old, cobblestone quarter known as San Telmo. On weekends it is just nuts there.

Where we live in the city center looks like a set out of Evita. For sure, many scenes must have been filmed there.

Eva Peron would give her speeches to hundreds of thousands from the balcony of the old palace in the above picture. These demonstrators no doubt saw her in person.

And no self-respecting tourist would come here without going to her tomb.

Another tourist destination in Buenos Aires is a neighborhood, barrio, called La Boca. It´s the old port area and is generally quite run down and not a place to go at night. But in the daytime, people go to look at the colorful buildings, the street performances, and to eat. The story goes that it´s so colorful there because they used leftover ship paint to paint the buildings. They got it all dolled up now, like some kind of street in Disneyland.

I guess that´s about it for now. Most of our life is pretty mundane. Right now, I´m going to buy some coffee and a book to read. Also, I left my Spanish language book at my friend´s in Oakland, and I really should rev my Spanish up. That and lunch should do it for me. Myung went to the Korean cultural center for a book in Korean. So, be well, all of you.

… I didn´t make it. I guess I looked at the wrong chapter in Lonely Planet. I didn´t think I needed a visa for Brazil, but I do. They wouldn´t let me on the plane for the Toronto-Sao Paolo leg of my flight. So I applied that ticket toward one for Buenos Aires, then spent all day Christmas in the Toronto airport waiting for that midnight flight.
The good news is that I was only half excited in the first place about traveling in Brazil alone for two or three weeks. This way I met up with Myung on the 26th. I am pretty happy with how it turned out. We have nice reunions after this and that month apart. Brazil will be there later.
As you know if you´ve been reading my posts, Myung has been traveling hard since we left South Africa. While I was basically taking in Americana and fattening up on burgers, pizza and burritos, she went around as much of Turkey as she could in only two weeks, then pushed hard through southern Brazil. She had been in Buenos Aires for about three days when I got here. By that time, she had already decided she liked it here a lot and had begun inquiries into long term stays. My initial impression was good, as good as it´s been for a big city since Hanoi, ten years ago. So, just like that, we spent another day looking for a one month apartment rental. Then the next day we selected a fully furnished one. Now we are all moved in. Wow.
Buenos Aires is big and modern. It´s not exactly New York City, but it´s no third world dump either. I can´t help but remember when my friend, Mary, and I lived in Manhattan. That was lively enough. Now, as then, we were in the heart of the city. This time we are REALLY in the heart! Eight floors below is teeming. The nice thing about this apartment is that it is almost silent up there. We are in the back of the building. It´s also air conditioned. There is even weekly maid service. There are elevators and a doorman. Quite cushy, I must say.
It reminds me of NYC also in that there are no big stores or supermarkets, yet everything you need is a short walk away. There is a subway entrance about 10 meters from out front door, and about 20 bus lines begin withing about a half kilometer.
Oh, and the weather is lovely. We are at about the same southern latitude as Los Angeles is in the north. It´s generally sunny with a high of 80 degrees F (about 30 degres C).
This could turn out to be really sweet. There is so much to do. A third of Argentina´s population, about 11 million, live in or around Buenos Aires. Everything you could want to do eat is here. It is a true world city, with current visitors and past immigrants from all over the world. Its almost like the diverse cities in America. The streets are full of every kind of people and what they´ve brought with them. There is even a fair concentration of Americans. You don´t usually see that.
So far, Myung and I have done a couple of days of exploring, nothing terribly exciting. I´ll post what happens, of course. It´s New Year´s Eve, and almost everything is closed for a few days, including the internet places. ¨This place was open, but won´t let me upload photos. I´ll post some of those later.
I just wanted to keep up to date, unlike in Africa where I neglected to do that. I hope your holiday seasons have been nice. Be well, all of you.

I feel like I owe you all an apology. I haven’t posted an entry in months. True, there was no place we were in Africa, until the very end in South Africa, where I could upload pictures. However, I could have posted text and didn’t. I was in places where it was possible. When I finally connected with people I know, most of them said they wondered what had happened. Had I been eaten by a lion or what? Nothing happened. I just didn’t take the time to do any more than take care of some business and email a few people now and then.
I hardly know where to start. There is no way I can describe all that happened between Victoria Falls and now. Myung and I stayed in Africa until November 20. We decided to go to South America. First, I had to take care of some business in the States, so I came here. Myung didn’t want to spend the money on a short side trip to the US, so she went to Sao Paulo, Brazil, with a two week stopover in Turkey. Turkish Airlines had the cheapest fare and she got a stopover in Istanbul for, I forget, little or nothing extra. I have a ticket for Sao Paulo on December 24.
How do I summarize the last months in Africa. Whew! I guess I’ll just stick to the basics. We set out north from Vic Falls to a couple of parks in Zambia. The first day, we ran across these people in the road having a festival of some sort. No English was spoken around there, so I have no idea what was going on. We partied with them for a bit, though.

Then we went to Kafue National Park. By now we were getting a little jaded about parks and animals, but it was a nice drive through the countryside. The best thing there was a herd of thousands of buffalo going somewhere across our road.

When we got too close, they just stopped and looked at us till we got bored looking at them and went on our way.

We picked up a young Korean woman in Vic Falls and took her with us for a couple of weeks. She had had her passport stolen. She couldn’t go through with a planned overland safari trip because the Korean embassy would only give her a temporary travel document to get to Kenya for her return flight.

After stopping in the capital of Zambia, Lusaka, we went to a really nice park called South Luangwa National Park. That place was worth mentioning. What a lovely and wild place. It’s even wild outside the park. One night we were camping in our tent, and an elephant took a fancy to the tree foliage above us and trampled us and our tent while we were asleep. Fortunately, he/she didn’t stomp right on us. I might not be here to write this. I would have a good excuse to being late, though. We were fine, though the tent required a lot of duct tape to fix up the tears. And they said it was the hippos we were supposed to be wary of!

That was not “the” elephant. That incident happened in the middle of the night.
South Luangwa was beautiful, with many animals. Finally, we saw a lot of lions. Watching them consume a zebra was almost like watching a nature show in person. Maybe it was better because in that park, they didn’t mind us getting close.

There were all the usual animals in that park, including wild dogs and more buffalo.

Here is a nice picture of the river itself and one of a couple of fishermen herding fish toward their net.

After that, we went into Malawi. The Korean girl didn’t have a passport or visa, but $100 got her in. We parted ways there. She did some stuff on Lake Malawi and we took to the hills where it was cooler. There is a nice backpackers’ place near the northern part of the lake called Mushroom Farm. It’s on the road to Livingstone, which has historical interest and still serves as a large missionary outpost. They grow and roast coffee a few hundred meters from there. The view down to the lake is nice, and the campsites sit right on the edge of the cliff so you can see down. Or you can stay in a cottage.

The coffee sure was good.

So was the shower,

and the composting toilet, into which you just dump ashes and some leaves and it works perfectly.

Here were some kids in the next village pounding corn into cornmeal.

There is a nice stream and waterfall with a cave at the top. That was a needed escape from the heat.

From there we bounced along by the lake, getting in frequently to escape the heat. To tell you the truth, a lot of the time now I can’t tell the Lake Malawi pictures from the Indian Ocean pictures taken in Mozambique. Sometimes I can remember.

I’m pretty sure those pictures were taken along Lake Malawi. The next ones on our memory cards are definitely still in Malawi. This illustrates how hard some of those people work. Typically, timber is rough cut where it’s cut down. Then guys like this carry it down the tiny roads. In Malawi, this man gets about $3/day to load this on a bicycle and ride/push it many kilometers.

Malawi actually isn’t much to look at. There are no outstanding animal parks, views or sites of any sort. In my opinion, however, the nicest people are there. They aren’t as jaded about tourists as in many places. They talk to you without wanting anything from you. Unfortunately, most of the time, when an African starts up a conversation, eventually he’ll get to what he wants to sell you. Or he’ll come right out and ask for money or food.
Anyway, then we went to Mozambique. Here’s the border on the Malawi side. Typically there is all kind of trade going on at the borders.

Mozambique isn’t much to look at either. There is a long coastline, but South Africa’s is prettier and more majestic. The first place we went was Ilha de Mozambique, the capital of Portuguese Mozambique until the early 19th century. This is the view across the water to the island from where we camped.

The city is a crumbling relic of what it was. It’s a World Heritage site, but like most of Mozambique, it’s not being kept up well. By African standards, Mozambique is probably a success story. They haven’t fully recovered from the 20 year battle against the apartheid South Africa/Rhodesia/US destabilization campaign that began after the Portuguese junta collapsed in 1974 and they found themselves suddenly independent in a very right wing neck of the woods.
This first picture is of part of the fortress wall and some people walking by. All those places are largely ignored, while life goes on slowly slowly.

From there we stopped at a few places along the coast on our way back to South Africa. We were pretty spent from out efforts. The stars we aligning in such a way that it seemed like it was time to leave Africa, at least for a while. The rainy season was approaching; the tent was never quite the same after the elephant episode; the truck was getting a personality; the rest of our stuff seemed to be wearing out all at the same time; and we were just plain tired. 6 months of mostly camping, cooking over a fire and the general discomforts and inconveniences were getting to us. Plus, as always happens, things weren’t as impressive anymore. It was time for a break. The last highlight for me was some scuba diving. Then we went back to Nelspruit, South Africa where I sold the truck to a used car lot, hung out in Pretoria for a few days, and left back on November 20.
Since I got to the US, I’ve been able to take care of some business/money stuff which I needed to do sometime in the near future. Also, I’ve gotten to see friends and family. I thought the month would be far more than I needed, but I now think it was just about right. The highlight of my social agenda was getting to see my brother, whose health is much improved, his wife, his daughter who had a baby boy 6 months ago, and her husband. Here’s a family photo of them.

That’s the story, morning glory, albeit in highly abbreviated fashion. Myung is in Brazil already. I’m headed down there on the 24th. We haven’t formulated a plan yet. I would tentatively like to go to Patagonia while it’s warm in the southern hemisphere, then loop around to the north through Chile and Peru. I think Bolivia and Ecuador are are in the cards. Who knows, though?
I’m going to leave you with a bunch of people pictures. I think I will start a Facebook account. Many people have suggested that, saying they’d like to know when I’ve posted a blog entry and want to be more conveniently in contact. I’ll get that up some time this weekend.
Be well, all of you, and happy holidays.

Since I last wrote, we finally made it to Chobe National Park in Botswana. We first tried to get in from the south, but the main bridge was washed out and you should have seen the row of logs some guy said was the other way. Actually, I’d have tried it if I hadn’t just spent 2 weeks and about $1500 getting my truck going after the last time it went swimming. We went 600 km around the swamp and spent a day along the Chobe River. That picture above is kind of the money shot, taken as the sun went down before we headed on to Zambia.
Here are a couple of hippo pics. You see them a lot in the water, but it’s a little unusual to be able to see them ambling around on the shore.

Botswana and Zambia have a 750 meters long border, just wide enough for the ferry across the Zambezi River.

Victoria Falls is 30 km downriver if you go through Zimbabwe, and 70 km if you go through Zambia. For logistical reasons and because it wouold be a little cheaper, we went to Zambia. the Zambezi and the falls form the border between the two countries. Here’s a pic from the Zambian side. They aren’t as dramatic, as you look down the chasm where they fall instead of head on. Also, Southern Africa is in the middle of a long, terrible drought, and it is the dry season. So there is a fraction of the usual water going over, like 1/20th.

The Victoria Bridge goes over the river, and the border is in the middle of the bridge.

There is bungy jumping from there in the middle.

Here are some pics from the Zimbabwe side.

Those pictures do not do justice to one of the seven natural wonders of the world. Maybe you can picture Niagra Falls if it was a couple miles across and had 20 times as much water and fell into a deep, dramatic trench.
That’s it for now. We are probably out of here tomorrow, heading north to Kafue National Park, Lusaka, and points north. Be well, all of you.

Hi everybody.
You could say we got into some deep shit week before last.

This is a typical road situation in a park with rhinos. They like to poop on the road and smish it around. It’s a territorial thing. They are called middens. Wild rhinos are probably gone from Botswana, though they are still unfenced in Namibia, but there are not enough of them to make this kind of clutter.
Speaking of deep shit, we’ve been driving around in Botswana’s Okavango delta. It’s vast swamp, and the road conditions are awful, to say the least. Here are a couple of puddles I drove through.

Sometimes there is a bridge.

Well, after driving through a part of the Okavango from south to north, we were faced with crossing a croc infested river about a meter deep, or being stranded outside the park with no legal way back in. It was going to get dark soon anyway. I chanced it and got stuck out in the middle. The truck stalled and filled with water. Several things drowned to death, like our cell phone (I don’t know, it was lost at sea), one of my cameras and the car stereo. We waded out, but Myung didn’t make it. This is the last photo I have of her. You don’t want to see the close up.

Actually, that’s just some vultures feeding off a cow that was probably struck by a vehicle by the side of a paved highway we were on. There are all kinds of cattle, goats, sheep, donkeys and wild animals all around the roads. You have to look out for them.
Back to the drowned truck story: There was a nearby village. They were bemused as only Africans can be. The English speaking (after a fashion) guy who came out said that people get stuck in there all the time. He got another guy with a truck to back into the water only up to his axles, and we attached my tow line to that. He was able to pull it out the way we came.
I didn’t really know what to do at that point, out in the middle of nowhere Africa. The truck wouldn’t start. Everything, including us, was soaked. It was a few kilometers back to the park entrance. (I guess it wasn’t the middle of nowhere, but it’s not like they have electricity or phones there.) The villager with the truck said he might be able to get it going. It was amazing how quickly he drained the carburetor, blew out the lines as best he could with lung power, and cleaned and dried the distributor and plugs the same way. It wouldn’t start, though. I knew we weren’t going to get out that way, but when my back was turned, he dragged it in reverse while it was in low 4WD, trying to pull start it. That turned out to be a bad idea. Anyway, it still wasn’t going to go, so he towed us back to the park gate and we appealed to the park guy for help. To make a long story short, people around there tried for a couple of days to get it going, to no avail. Too much water had gotten into the engine. New oil, which took a day to arrive, didn’t help. A guy with a truck who does maintenance for the park offered to tow us with a tow bar the 160 km back to Maun, the nearest city with a proper mechanic, for a cool $400. I was in a very weak bargaining position. Besides, Myung and I had been allowed to stay for free in a bush camp run by the park service, but it was time to get out of there.
To make the rest of this story short, Maun is a center of activity in this part of Botswana. They have dealt with this probably a thousand times. We stayed where we had stayed a couple of times before when we were traveling around, while a well respected mechanic went through the procedure step by step. I could have gotten away with the repairs of the cheap, probably, but labor is so cheap here, I got what amounts to an engine overhaul. They had to take off the head, so grinding the slightly rusting at that point valves was done. The dragging start attempts forced water through the cylinders, so I was advised to see if it was “hydraulicked”, that is if the connecting rods were bent (which they weren’t). At that point, since the cylinders had been somewhat scored by sandy water, another hour’s work and the pistons were out. So now it’s been thoroughly drained of water, water contaminated petrol, has new rings, freshly honed cylinders, a rebuilt carb, a new starter, and it runs great.
As I’m writing, they are dealing with clutch damage from the dragging. I’m told it will be done this afternoon. I’m crossing my fingers. I’ll add an addendum when it seems I can get underway.
I’m sticking to water crossings less than two feet deep from now on.
The price tag for all of this? Probably about $1500. I shudder to think how much it would be in the States or for a modern, complicated car with electronic ignition and computer.
Maun is, by far, not the worst place to hang out for a couple of weeks. We have been staying a a lovely riverside backpacker place. If you look one way up the river, there is “the old bridge”.

The other way is scenic, too, especially at sunset.

It shady and cool. There are proper showers and toilets, a restaurant and bar, picnic tables and nice lounge chairs to hang out in and read. We don’t utilize the restaurant/bar much because there is a self service kitchen with a refrigerator and stove. The bar is also a favorite people watering hole for locals, so it’s a little loud at night sometimes, but we are sleeping pretty far from them so it’s not bad.
This delta area is beautiful. We have so many pictures. Myung takes many pictures of flowers, trees, and little animals. It’s too time consuming to upload a vast majority of them. Here’s a sampling, starting with a kingfisher, which are plentiful, with it’s catch. After that is a crocodile. They are also plentiful. Too plentiful almost, if you get stuck in a river with many of them, like we did.

Many hippos.

Here are some general scenes I thought were nice.

On one of our loops from Maun, we went east. There are some salt pans out there which have been drying out during this dry season. In general, the scenery and animals aren’t particularly noteworthy, except for the baobab trees. I didn’t remember what these famous trees looked like, but I don’t think I’ll forget now. They are so individually majestic and interesting. Here are a couple of them.

That about brings you up to speed. From here we are going through Chobe National Park, which should be drier. From there we’ll go see Victoria Falls, which is on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. Maybe we’ll go around Zimbabwe for a while, though that’s a hassle because of it’s upheavals. Probably we’ll do that a little, then head up through Zambia. Anything could happen, though.
Addendum: The clutch is fixed: It runs bettr than before. Tomorrow I’m going to rough it up on some bad roads and see if anythig falls off before leaving where the work was done. Then we’ll be out of here.
Be well, all of you.

Myung and I are back in Outjo, getting my brakes fixed. They had to order parts, so we went to Etosha National Park, about 120 km north of here (without rear or parking brakes). The scenery isn’t magnificent, but the big animal life is. One night we stayed outside the park. The second night we slept in it. There are three campgrounds in this park. All three are near waterholes. Here is the waterhole by our camp.

This is the dry season, so there are almost always animals at any of the waterholes. At the campsites, they set up low intensity floodlights to allow visitors to see the nocturanl animal visitors at night. We slept in the relatively cheap $50/night tent camping area. For big money, you can get a two bedroom chalet overlooking this. I think sitting on the second floor veranda, sipping a drink with a little umbrella in it, and watching this would be sweet.

Here are other water hole shots.

Like Krugeer in South Africa, this place has no shsortage of big animals to see almost anywhere you look. As you can imagine, we have many, many photos, but here are a few.

There was this one herd of elephants walking along a small road. Threre were three of four vehicles in front of us which were leary about driving by, as an elephant can put the hurt on a car.

We passed the parked or slowly following cars and got by them, barely, as one turned and trumpeted at us. Just ahead were some more, hanging out in the shade.

There are many giraffes there.

Animals often like to go on the road. Here are some zebras and giraffes behing, heading for someplace together. Presumeably, they are going to or coming from water.

The rest of these pictures were taken of animals right by the road. It is like going to Kruger, that is, practically a theme park the size of Isreal. Here’s our first lion sighting. Admittedly, it’s a bad picture, but a tourist truck was rumbling at high speed in reverse to give the passengers a look, and the lion was getting out of there fast.

There are many jackals. They were prowling all around our tent that night, scavenging.

I like this one. It shows how camoflage works. Check out how the horns on these kudus look along with the trees and the color of the terrain.

I could post many, many animal photos, but you’ve seen it all before on TV or wherever. We should be out of here tomorrow, heading north. I’ll blog again when I can. Until then, be well, all of you.

This area is one of the last frontiers in southern Africa. One can see why. There are few people, and most of them are in small tribal groups. The big animals are unfenced. The roads, or should I say tracks, are awful. Sometimes there are no services, no cell phone coverage, no gasoline, electricity or water. You have to carry what you need. There is a decent road up the coast north of Swakopmund. That area is called the Skeleton Coast because of the number of shipwrecks, the survivors of which usually perished in the desert.

Sand and rough terrain have taken it’s toll on my truck and it’s driver.

For a couple of days, we took along a French guy and his mother. While we were with them, we were in the modern world for a couple of days. We based in Uis and looked at 5000-6000 year old rock paintings and engraving at Namibia’s only World Heritage Site, Twyfelfontein.

I don’t really know why I uploaded this one. I guess it just captures how a group looks while they are doing the desert safari thing. This was at a pretty amazing petrified forest, much more impressive than the one in Wyoming.

After going up that way for a while, we headed up to more remote areas, like where that primary school sign was. It was nice to see animals that aren’t in parks. Here are desert elephants and rhinos there, but we didn’t see any of those. We did see many springbok, gembok, oryx and the like, as well as a few giraffes and zebras.

Oh, I have a picture of a 1500 year old flower near Swakopmund. Maybe someone would like to pin this on his prom date.

It’s really easy for first world tourists like Myung and me to focus on the natural splendors, rock paintings, animals, etc., and to hang out with white people. Shoot, so far the whites here are culturally similar to us. They speak English, even if their first language is German or Afrikaans. It’s not easy to connect with the blacks. I’ve found that when we do speak with them, they are working for the whites and there is a socio-cultural divide. It’s more pronounced than in the US. Getting together with traditional blacks is even harder. I can’t say we’ve gotten to know any, but we have visited a couple of villages and talked with one woman for a little while who worked for the owners of a guesthouse (of sorts) in Opuwa. Like all the tourists who get up this way, we take pictures and try not to be geeks.
This is a Himba village.

It’s interesting the way the men wear regular western clothes and the women often don’t. Here is that guy’s girlfriend and her kids. The women have kids whenever and eventually marry someone.

Here’s dadie, looking after her grandkids like most of the other grandmas of the world.

Fat chance Myung was going to try on the traditional clothes, too.

Up here, you don’t have to be in some far flung village to see traditional people. Like in India, Laos or Peru, they go to town.

The women can spend up to three hours a day getting dolled up. they cover their bodies with a mixture of ochre, mud and oil to get than brown glow. The hair is amazing. It’s also fixed up that way with ochre and mud. They take it down and redo it about every three months. They say their scalps don’t itch.

Here are a couple of young girls flirting with the boys. They parade up and down the street, showing off. Too bad it leads to a terrible HIV+ rate.

There are other tribes up here. The Herero have interesting headwear. The women like to become very fat.

After doing all that up there, we came down here a few hundred kilometers to this town of several thousand, Outjo, to have some work done on the brakes. We’re going up to Etosha National Park, Namibia’s premier wildlife habitat. That should be excellent. You’ll be seeing pictures, of course. Until then, be well, all of you.

I can’t remember if I posted this picture of Myung. WE made another DVD of our pictures and ran across this one again. Gosh, I love this one.

Some places are as good as advertised.

As if THAT wasn’t enough, Namibia was a German colony until after WW 1, so there are many people of German decent here. So there’s strudel in the morning! This is Moose. He runs Solitaire, the only stop for 350 km between Sossusvlei and Walvis Bay. You buy gas when you can in Namibia, and definitely don’t pass up the strudel.

After that, you go through an area where it hasn’t rained in 350 years; that is, since the first white settlers came. The other memory card has some pictures, but Myung has that right now. Meanwhile, I uploaded a few pictures of some of the thousands of wild flamingos and fur seals along the coast near Walvis Bay.

This place reminds me of the Sinai, seemingly so lifeless on land, but obviously teeming in the water. The drive out to the seal place would make you think there is no life on the land. Yes yes, I know, the desert is full of life.

That’s what I’ve got uploaded. We’re in Swakopmund now and heading north. Petrol will be a problem for a while. Likely, internet access is doubtful. So I’ll talk to you later when I can. Until then, be well all of you.

Hi, y’all. I’m a little surprised to be able to blog again so soon. We were in the boonies of southern Namibia until yesterday. There was definitely no opportunity to get to a computer. Shoot, there is a lot of nothing in this big country of only 1.8 million where what people there are are mostly in the northern half. This picture is typical of what you see here in the south.

We saw a couple of towns with about a thousand people, and given the size of the print they warranted on the map I figured, okay, no place is big. I can handle that. The capital of Swaziland has only 60,000. One of the five or six biggest cities is Luderitz, on the west coast. We headed for there.

As you can see, it’s not too big, I’d say about 20,000. I went to one internet place and it was so slow I assumed they didn’t have high speed and I was lucky to be able to slowly open my emails. Then I found this place. I think they have satellite. So, I’m blogging while I can. We’re heading for the boonies again after this.
Here’s what one of the few paved highways looks like while driving across this lunar landscape. I may have to kiss my windshield goodbye.

One of Namibia’s premier attractions is Fish River Canyon. If you’ve seen Utah and the Grand Canyon, maybe you aren’t totally impressed, but it’s quite a sight, really.

In some ways, Naamibia is like South Africa. There is a largely white upper class, mostly decendents from the days before Germany lost WW 1 and lost Namibia to South Africa. There is a majority of blacks, many of whom live just as poorly as in South Africa. The big difference is since there are no big cities, there is no large scale urban blight. They have rural blight here. It’s not as bad, but these people are definitely just getting by. Soon we hope to visit traditinal villages.

Despite the lunar nature of much of the landscape, they had a little bit of rain in the late fall, so it’s like springtime in some places. If you’ve ever been to, say, Death Valley, you know that for a short time the flowers are spectacular.

We got to Luderitz in good shape, including going over a hundred miles or so of dirt/gravel roads. (Oh, I’m glad I have this tough truck.) It’s was a diamond mining center until the early 20th century when better diamond fields were found south and north of here. Then it got pretty pokey, and it’s pokey to this day. The most interesting thing about it is the early 20th century art nouveau architecture the Germans built at that time.

There are other quaint views.

We drove around today. There is a rocky seashore which is generally unimpressive. One place had sea lions and penguins out on a little island you. You could see them well with binoculars. Here’s a picture from back near Cape Town. I was tempted to say it was here, but we didn’t get this close this time.

While we were out there, Myung gathered a bag full of snails from one of the tide pools. Man, she likes to gather those. We’re having them again tonight.

In fact, I should be getting over to the backpackers place we’re staying at. Like in South Africa, Luderitz at least has a place to sleep cheap in a dorm and a kitchen to use. Myung should be getting about ready to make snail whatever for dinner. I’m outta here.
Be well, all of you.

We’ve been in South Africa, Swaziland and Lesotho for a little over 2 months, and will be starting the drive up to Namibia in a few days. Right now, we are in Cape Town enjoying “civilization” while we can. Namibia will be almost entirely an outdoor experience. Oh, before I forget, there’s a Schuckmansburg in Namibia. I must visit that place because my surname is Schuckman, which is not a common name.
Our trip since last time I blogged has been an almost entirely coastal thing. We have walked many hours along beaches, rocky shores and trails through hills overlooking the water. There isn’t much going on in most of the places. One place, Jeffreys Bay, is one of the premier surfing beaches in the world. We enjoyed watching hardcore surfers from around tyhe world do all those cool things you see the great ones do on TV. If you’ve been to Hawaii or any other great surfing place, you’ve seen it. It’s been a while for me, so I was entertained. Myung had never seen anything like it. In fact, she’s never seen anything like South Africa in general. I’ll never be a good phographer, so my pictures of surfers are all blurred. I have a couple of reasonably good pictures to give you an idea. Maybe you can see the two dots on the left part of this crest. Those are surfers. These waves coming in are about 4 meters.

And here is an okay picture of a “tube” as they call them. I don’t recall if there is a surfer in this one.

Another nice place was Plettenburg. There is a lovely peninsula jutting out a few kilometers into the sea. Whale watching is supposed to be good this time of year out there, but it was too rough to see any spouts. There were many sea lions, though, basking on the rocks below. They are too small in our pictures, so I didn’t upload them. After this weekend, we may have better distance pictures, as Myung’s snapshooter gave up the ghost and she’s considering buying one with 10 times optical zoom. Anyway, here is around there.

The hills above Knysna are nice.

That last one is of a flowering aloe. Most of us North Americans are used to aloes being these little succulents that can grow anywhere and have terrific medicinal uses. Well, here, they are practically trees and have beautiful orange-red blossoms this time of year. I hope you can see that in that picture.

Another stretch of Eastern Cape, east of Plettenberg, is called the Wild Coast. There are a few roads into there, but it’s mostly empty except for a few tribespeople, a few hippie types whom society has rejected and the feeling is mutual, and some intrepid long distance hikers. One backpacker ghetto you can drive to is called Coffee Bay. It’s about walking along the near deserted 20 or so km of beach and looking at coastal forest and rock formations. Myung missed it, but I saw a couple of small humpback whales a couple of hundred meters off the beach. I have a couple of pretty pictures of that area.

Also around there is a place called the “Valley of Ferns”. It’s like somethng out of Jurrasic Park, a forest of huge ferns.

We continued west toward Cape Town and went inland to the wine making areas. First we went to Robertson Valley, which is not very commercial. I guess that is because the wine there isn’t as good as farther west around Stellenbosch. We started tasting wines there, then continued to Stellenbosch What a beautiful area that is! I hate to say it, but it leaves Napa/Sonoma for dead.

There are many grand old estate wineries there, some over 300 years old. We spent three days there just driving around, visiting the estates even if we were’t tasting the wines, and of course tasting. In general, the whites are quite good, especially for the money. The good reds are shiraz or mostly shiraz. It wold be easy to stay there for a good long time.

In the Robertson Valley, the tastings are generally free, like in California. Around Stellenbosch, you get six healthy (maybe a little too healthy) tastes for a dollar of two.

Stellenbosch itself is generally quite affluent, plus it’s a college town. So it has an ambience that reminds one of Marin County. Oh, they have great gourmet bread, cheese and the like. It’s one of the oldest towns in South Africa, dating back to the 1600’s, so there are many old buildings the Dutch put up at that time.

Ah, what a perfect place that would be for a vacationer who wanted to golf on the beautiful courses in these settings, then eat fine food and drink wine afterward.
That said, I have to say here somewhere, that the crime situation is appalling everywhere in South Africa. I thought it was going to be bad, but I had no idea it would be like this. Even in Stelllenbosch, outside of right in the cool downtown area, almostno one goes out at night and certaianly not with a wallet or purse, Everybody locks up their car behind a gate or in a garage. Armed security guards are everywhere. Everyone has been robbed. South Africa has the second highest crime rate in the world after Columbia. It’s sad.
Back to the good stuff: Then we went to Cape Town. This is a nice place, really. It’s even halfway less crime riddled, as non-whites were all removed from the city center even before apartheid became official. Most of you have seen pictures of Cape Town. Here’s one picture everyone takes. That’s Table Mountain. We went up there today.

And here is the view toward Cape Point.

You can see why they call it Table Mountain.

The weather turned bad while we were up there.

This was on Signal Hill, an easy walk from anywhere in downtown Cape Town. Myung and I had a lovely time sitting on that bench. I just love benches with a view.

There’s a Muslim community here. The main area in town is called Bo Kamp. It’s interesting because they hae made it so colorful.

Here are striking union workers building the new soccer arena here for the 2010 FIFA championships. There are several stadiums going up in S. Africa. There is concern they won’t be finished on time.

Lastly on Cape Town itself, there’s a San Francisco Pier 39 type area where everybody always goes. There’s a big mall, cutesy and high end stores, many restaurants, street entertainers, etc..

__________________________________________________________________________

I’m continuing this a couple of days later. We drove down to Cape Point, the tip of the Cape of Good Hope.

As is true almost anywhere along the coast, it’s beautiful by the water. Cape Point and this are within an hour of Cape Town.

Myung takes wonderful flower pictures. The flowers and plants in general are interesting here. There are six floral zones in the wprld. One is a tiny strip only near the coast of Western Cape. One spectacular flower is the Protea. This picture of one is so sensual.

We have so many great pictures, but things being how they are in South Africa where there’s only high speed internet where there is satellite, that’s going to have to do it for now. I don’t know when I will be able to blog again because Myung’s visa expires the day after tomorrow. Tomorrow morning we’re going to put our heads down, pin our ears back, and make a beeline for the Namibian border. Namobia is a big country with 1.8 million people. There ain’t much there, but if I can write, I will. Be well, all of you.