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Postcard #4 -- More Africa Images

Stuart Wilson — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 17:19:37 GMT

Postcard #4 -- More Africa Images

Thanks for all your comments on our southern Africa postcards. Due to popular demand, here are 31 additional images from our trip with captions so you know where they fit in our Postcards. At the end we have added a section called For More Information. We hope we have inspired you to visit there.

                   Our Room at the River Club in Zambia; A craft market near Victoria Falls in Zambia


                  Victoria Falls, Zambia; African Darter on the Chobe River, Botswana; Janet and a bucket shower


                   Lion in Linyanti Game Area, Botswana; Elephant in Chobe River, Botswana

                  Impala in Botswana; Lion in Selinda Concession, Botswana


        Zebra in Linyanti; Saddle-billed Storks, Selinda Concession; Okavango Delta Camp Staff, Botswana

                  Last breakfast in our Okavango Delta Camp; African Rock Python and Thuto, our guide

              Thuto and his rifle take us on a nature walk; A bridge in the Okavango Delta

                         Our safari vehicle crosses a stream at Selinda Concession; Brunch in Linyanti


         Elephants in Linyanti; Our local guide with Meerkats in the Kalahari

               A Kalahari Bushmen explains about Scorpions; Our tour group on ATVs in the Kalahari

                        Cape Town, South Africa and Table Mountain; Kloof Street building, Cape Town


                        Cape Town: The Clock Tower; Downtown Park; Cycad at Kirstenbosch Gardens


           Cape of Good Hope; Baboons near Cape of Good Hope

                Stu and Janet (middle) with Betty from Florida and guide Nizaam in Bo-Kaap; Street Market, Soweto

For More Information:

For Botswana try www.botswanatourism.co.bw and for South Africa go to www.southafrica.net/satourism. Natural Habitat Adventures at www.nathab.com arranged our Botswana Safari through Wilderness Safaris www.wilderness-safaris.com an African company. In Cape Town, we stayed at Four Rosmead Bed and Breakfast www.fourrosmead.com. Our Bo-Kaap Cape Malay Cooking Tour was through Andulela www.andulela.com

Happy Traveling, Janet and Stu

Postcard #3 - Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa

Stuart Wilson — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 17:33:55 GMT

Postcard #3 --South Africa

            Janet and Stu at Cape of Good Hope

     “Don’t take any photos in this area and keep your cameras out of sight. The drug dealers
might mistake us for police.” Chilling words from Desmond, our guide, as we drove through the
city center. Formerly a vibrant area with five star hotels, shopping, corporate buildings housing
international businesses, and busy government buildings, the abandoned downtown is now home
to squatters--migrants from rural South Africa, illegal African immigrants, and criminals.
Welcome to Johannesburg.
    After our once in a lifetime safari in Zambia and Botswana, we spent a week in South Africa traveling first to
Johannesburg, or “Joburg” as they say here, for two days and then Cape Town for another five.
Traveling independently, we arranged local tours and lodgings in both cities.
    Our Joburg hotel lies in Sandton, in a newly developed area several miles north of the
city center. Many of the downtown businesses fled here as did shops, restaurants and hotels
which have now congregated in and around Nelson Mandela Square, a gigantic mall.
    Desmond got us up to speed. The unemployment rate in Joburg is 35%. About 90% of
the city center squatters are not South African, but from other African nations. They, like rural
migrants, came here to find a better life in this new democracy.
    Graffiti covers most first floor walls. A tiny storefront “Betela-Zanke-Muti” offers
witchcraft to cure medical problems, and here and there laundry hanging out windows reminded
us that real life is here too.

Women on the street in Soweto.                    Soweto shantytown.

    Government is working on the problems, according to Desmond. In a nearby historic
area, restoration is beginning on the Supreme Court building and others. But even here, the
tallest building in Africa has a giant “To Let” sign on it and the IBM building remains
abandoned. Orange-suited private security guards patrol some downtown areas under contract
with the government to maintain order.
    On our way to Soweto, we drove through one of the more expensive neighborhoods
where high walls surround estates, razor wire atop. Signs everywhere proclaim, “Armed
Response.” Desmond said that some homes abandoned by their owners and taken over by
squatters were demolished.

   Signs like these were everywhere in South Africa

    During Apartheid, the white government (9% of the population) forced Black people
(75% of the population) to live in segregated townships like Soweto (South Western Township).
One million people live here now. The original four-room houses with an outhouse in the back
are everywhere, but now the occupants own them. On the same blocks, some homes are larger
and remodeled. Shanty towns occupy undeveloped space although there is an organized effort to
develop permanent housing for the occupants.
    In Soweto we visited the Regina Mundi Church, home to many anti-apartheid activities,
the Freedom Charter Memorial and street market, and the Hector Pieterson Museum. A 12-year
old child, Hector, was killed by police in 1976 during a children's march opposing the
requirement to use Afrikaans as the language of instruction in school. Many say this march and
children's deaths began the end of Apartheid.

Cape Town Waterfront and Table Mountain.            Cape Town and Robben Island from Table Mountain.

    After two nights here, we flew to Cape Town at the bottom of the African continent with
Table Mountain looming above it. Settled in 1652 by the Dutch East India Company as a post to
repair and supply ships, today 3.5 million residents call this delightful city home. For five nights
our home was Four Rosmead, a lovely Bed and Breakfast in the Oranjezicht suburb on Table
Mountain’s lower slopes. This 1903 contemporary-styled place was convenient and the
breakfasts superb with local fruits and breads, plus creative cooked breakfast.
    In Cape Town too, we saw shanty towns along highways. Even Four Rosmead had razor
wire. But unlike Johannesburg, we felt safe walking everywhere. Our young B&B managers
insisted we take taxis in the evening and we followed their advice.
    Since we first learned about the early explorers in school, we both knew we wanted to
visit the Cape of Good Hope. Our Cape Peninsula tour guide Randall drove south from Cape
Town along the coast and there it was, surprisingly close to civilization. Endangered Right
Whales frolicked in False Bay below us with their new babies – quite a bonus. And we also
visited Cape Point lighthouse, the world famous Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, Boulder’s
Beach penguins, and Simon’s Town for lunch, a darling seaside English village with Cape Dutch
architecture.


Cape Dutch Architecture and us at at Rost en Vrede Winery in the Stellenbosch Region.

    Our wine tasting day dawned cool and rainy. We visited three wineries in the
Stellenbosch region: Rost en Verde, Bilton, and Thelema; and one, Rickety Bridge, in
Franschhoek. Surrounded by Cape Dutch architecture and fields of grapevines just beginning to
bud (we are south of the equator here so it is early Spring), we tasted wonderful Merlot, Shiraz,
Bordeaux blends, wooded and unwooded Chardonnay and sweet Chenin Blanc wines. We loved
Thelema’s 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon with mint which apparently is unavailable in the USA, and
their 2008 Sauvignon Blanc which we drank with our seafood dinner one night at Baia
Restaurant.
    The other Cape Town days were cool to warm and sunny like an October day in San
Francisco-- to which this city is often compared. The architecture is Cape Dutch and British
influenced. The British ruled South Africa for much of the 19th century until independence in
1910. Most South Africans speak English as a common language, but there are 11 official
languages.
    To us, the most colorful part of the city is Bo-Kaap where we signed up for a Cape Malay
cooking class. Bright yellow, turquoise, lime green and pink houses march up Signal Hill and
add an almost Caribbean feel to this old neighborhood. Our young guide, Nizaam, explained that
the residents are not really Malay, but a blend of cultures descended from slaves the Dutch
imported during the 17th century. Their roots lie in Indonesia, India, Malaysia and elsewhere
and more than 90% are Muslim.
    Before we actually got cooking, Nizaam toured us through the local museum and the
mosque (our first time ever in a mosque). At the spice shop, he opened spice bins used in Cape
Malay cooking–aromatic cumin, spicy cardamon, bright golden tumeric, and fragrant coriander.
At the local Halal or Muslim butcher shop we tasted locally cured meats before heading to
Faldela’s kitchen.

                               Bo-Kaap Neighborhood                           Fadela, our cooking teacher

    The tiny and energetic Fadela opens her family’s home for cooking classes on a
regular basis between her teaching job and family responsibilities. She also routinely takes in
foreign students for weeks at a time. In this hands-on class we learned to cook chicken curry
with tomato and onion sabal, spicy beef samosas, a bread called Roti, and Malay donuts for
dessert. Nizaam taught us to eat with only our right hands (no utensils ) and use Roti to sop up
the pungent curry.
    Cape Town offers a host of good restaurants. In our B&B’s neighborhood we ate at
several places–steaks at Nelson’s Eye, gourmet burgers with the young and energetic at Café
Royale on Long Street, and pasta and pizza at Bacini’s. On the Victoria & Albert Waterfront we
liked the Belgian restaurant Den Anker, Cape Town Fish Market, and Baia.
    The Waterfront’s large mall contains scores of stores. But for us, the de Waterkant
neighborhood has the best one of a kind specialty shops selling African crafts and jewelry.
    One sunny afternoon we rode the tramway to the top of Table Mountain and viewed the
peninsula below from Cape of Good Hope to Robben Island.


                   Penguin at Boulder's Beach                             Our guide at Robben Island

    It seemed fitting to visit Robben Island Museum on our last day in South Africa.
Between 1961 and 1991, over 3000 political prisoners were incarcerated here by the Apartheid
government, including Nelson Mandela from 1964-1982. Our tour guide once was a prisoner
here too.
    As we walked down the prison corridor, we stopped in front of Nelson Mandela’s tiny
cell. Each of us took turns photographing the bleak surroundings while listening to our guide’s
stories about the conditions then. Prisoners were allowed only one family visit each six months
for 30 minutes. They had no beds until 1974, and were forced to work breaking up rocks and
mining lime. Pretty grim.
    As we rode the ferry back to Cape Town, we realized how far South Africa has come
since 1996 when Nelson Mandela became President. Crime, poverty, unemployment remain
daunting problems, but most non-white South Africans we spoke with, while acknowledging the
serious problems, wanted us to understand that freedom, democracy and human rights had
infinitely improved their lives and given them hope. They said please don’t forget that. We
won’t.

Happy Travels, Janet and Stu

P.S. A photo gallery with additional African images will be published as Postcard #4 next week.

Postcard #2 -- Botswana, Africa

Stuart Wilson — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 17:42:04 GMT

BOTSWANA, AFRICA

Our tour group at the Baobab Tree

Formerly a British protectorate, Botswana feels uncrowded, at least with people, elephants perhaps another story. With an area almost as large as Texas, the population is just a little greater than Sacramento County. Here in the north of the country we found only a couple of middling towns and some scattered villages. The only traffic problems involve other game drive vehicles, and even these proved thankfully rare.

One such encounter, involving only one other vehicle and six to eight other tourists with guide, occurred in a most unlikely place–the Kalahari, on the edge of the Makgadikgadi Pans, the world’s largest salt pans. Out just after sunrise, we sought what our camp guide billed as “meerkats in the morning.” The camp’s trusty meerkat scout unable to locate the usual band, we joined another camp’s vehicle, producing our rare morning, 2-vehicle traffic jam.

These creatures define the term adorable. Unafraid of humans and highly social, they cooperate by taking turns as lookout, mostly for birds of prey. One or more are always standing upright on hind legs scanning the sky. And when people cooperate by sitting nearby on the relatively flat ground, they may climb up a person’s back to sit on a hat or shoulders for a better view. Needless to say we shot up a lot of digital storage capacity on this morning. Even the presence of another tour group proved no distraction, as each group took turns pausing for morning tea. Very civilized.

Thuto and a Meerkat Marci and a Meerkat Giraffes

On our return to camp we detoured to Jacobson’s Baobab tree, a huge multi-trunked specimen, said to be the only landmark visible from out in the pans. Nearby we passed a couple of cattle posts, a traditional feature of Botswana. Cattle are central to traditional Batswana life, and while most people reside in villages, each family has a cattle post some distance away, with corrals and basic shelter.

Kalahari camp, our last and easily the most luxurious since the River Club, offered huge tents with concrete floors, real beds and an outdoor but adjoining shower and flush toilet–a whole different level of comfort than Linyante, Savuti, or our previous camp in the Okavango Delta.

On an island accessible only by boat, seasonal Xigera ( pronounced something like KEY-jera) Camp had pit toilets because septic tanks are not permitted in the Game Reserve where we were located. Even in the midst of all this water the dust prevailed. The Okavango River flows from Angola’s highlands, and after several months the water arrives at a very flat stretch of Kalahari where it spreads out forming an enormous delta–a watery world in a very arid place. The river’s flow supports perennial wetlands in the heart of the Delta, while the fringes are seasonal. This year proved wetter than normal, following several dry years.

Here, rather than game drives (no roads in the Delta) we went on game walks and mokoro rides. And because we’re in a national park (Moremi Game Reserve) Thuto could not carry a gun. Instead, he carried a stick–and we’re thinking, “not much use against an irritated elephant.” And we did encounter one female pachyderm with calf who gave us a sort of a mock charge, as Thuto told us all to scramble up behind a nearby termite mound.

On another walk Thuto gave lessons on elephant dung. He explained that the round pellets we see are undigested palm nuts. He says the elephants love the nuts and do digest the outer husk, and that only after passing through an elephant’s digestive tract can the nut germinate. Thuto illustrated the phenomenon by pointing out the lines of palm trees marking elephant trails. A little later we cautiously approached a small herd that Thuto described as one lone bull, plus several teenager hangers-on. As they approached a small cluster of palms searching the ground for nuts, the youngsters waited for the big bull to press his massive head against a trunk and slowly shake the tree, causing it to shower the ground with nuts.

Bushmen in the Kalahari Mokoro in the Okavango Delta

Our sundowners in the delta were imbibed on small islands after short mokoro rides through the reeds and tall grass with birds and frogs providing the background music, punctuated by the occasional percussive grunt of a hippo. The sunsets here, as elsewhere in Botswana, consistently captivated us–the atmospheric dust acting like an orange-tinted filter on the lens–though the effect resulted even with the naked eye.

We partook of another memorable sundowner on our last safari evening out on a salt pan in the Kalahari. This one during the return from an ATV ride out into the pans. (Can you picture Stu & Janet on an ATV?) It took a few minutes to get the hang of the machine, and to learn to keep a big separation between ATVs when we were heading into the wind.

The sensation of being on an endless, featureless plain can be disorienting. We tried an experiment where we would stand looking at a pack on the ground maybe 150 feet away, try to fix its location in our mind and then walk straight toward the pack with out eyes closed. One of us came close, but most of us veered rather sharply left or right and missed the target by 10 to 40 feet! And, one of us started walking in circles. These results were either due to the absence of any landscape features preventing us from doing any mental triangulation, or else we all had a hitch in our get-along which led us off course, the absence of visual feed back not allowing corrections. We’re not going into the theories about walking in circles.

Our last morning on safari we discovered another dimension of the Kalahari–the Bushmen. Three Bushmen or San, traditional inhabitants of the most inhospitable regions of the Kalahari, led us on a walk. They conversed among themselves in their amazing click language and the youngest (age 20) spoke good English and served as translator. They pointed out hyena tracks from last night (we’re within 100 yards of our camp), and several bushes to illustrate how roots, bark, leaves and stems are all used to make tools, medicines or flavor food. One is the source of poison for arrows. Their small bow and arrows do not look capable of killing much more than a hare but they say with the poison they can bring down a giraffe! Their poison is a neurotoxin that kills by paralysis, thus not tainting the meat, save for a small area around the wound which they cut out.

Making fire in a few minutes using a stick and some dry grass kindling; finding and digging a scorpion out of his burrow, explaining that Bushmen entertain themselves with scorpion fights; and locating an edible lily bulb by recognizing its dead brown tops amidst the surrounding dry grass, were other highlights of our walk with these remarkable people, whose traditional way of life is in serious jeopardy. (We’re told its tough for a nomadic people to comply with mandatory public school attendance laws.)

We returned from our walk with the Bushmen by late morning and after a small plane flight from a strip near our camp to the main northern town of Maun (rhymes with town), a quick run into the souvenir shop, and a jet flight, six hours later we’re in Johannesburg.

Happy Travels, Janet and Stu

Postcard #1 - Zambia and Botswana, Africa

Stuart Wilson — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 17:46:55 GMT

BOTSWANA, Southern Africa

Bouncing along the sand track, we clutched our cameras and field glasses while
our open-back Land Cruiser growled with each shift of gears. Our spot light searched
passing trees, as we held our collective breath. Then our guide Thuto said, "There,"
as he stopped the vehicle, training the spotlight on a large limb maybe 15 feet 
in the air, "the leopard!"

We arrived for our Botswana safari just three days earlier, crossing the Zambezi
River from Zambia in a small aluminum boat along with Thuto and six traveling 
companions whom we had met upon arrival at Livingstone, Zambia airport. The six are a couple
about our age (Kathy and Charlie) from Wisconson, their grown daughter and her husband
(Becky and Kevin) and Kevin's friend and colleague and his wife (Greg and Marci)
all from Arizona. Fortunately we are all good sports and adventurous, as we are 
destined to spend 10 days together tent-camping around northern Botswana in search
of wildlife and the "feel" of Africa. Of course this was after our first
night at the exotic and comfortable River Club, along the Zambezi River in Zambia.

We are quite lucky, we are told, to have seen a leopard at all, especially at
this place called Selinda Concession, that was a hunting concession until two years
ago.  Thus the animals remain quite wary of humans. Our leopard seems totally unconcerned
about the 11 people sitting below her not more than 30 feet away and shining a light
into her eyes. She lifts her head and looks directly at us as we madly click shutters
and observe through field glasses. We move slowly to stand and peer through the 
open roof and keep our voices low as Thuto advises.

We found our leopard in the tree the evening of our arrival at Camp Lechwe, 
the second camp we visited in Botswana.  We have dome tents with cots, sleeping 
pads, outdoor toilets and bucket showers.  It is definitely camping, though the 
very good food is prepared by camp chefs, campfires built, drinks served, warm water
delivered with morning wake-up calls by personable and efficient camp staff.  The
dust, very fine Kalahari sand, permeates everything, especially our clothes and 
shoes--we'll see how long it takes to get the stuff out.


The Leopard                                                                       A Border Boy

Our first camp, Linyante, overlooking its namesake river that forms Botswana's
northern boundary with Namibia's Caprivi Strip, will be remembered for the hippos
in the river serenading us each morning and evening with a sound resembling a series
of deep honks. Though emanating from a distance of 100 yards or more, when lying
in our tent we'd swear the animals were right outside.

On our journey to Linyante we traveled part way up the Chobe River aboard a
canopied pontoon boat and witnessed crocodiles sunning on the banks, hippos standing
in the river, elephants crossing the river--some very near our boat. We spotted
African Fish Eagle, Egyptian Geese, cormorants, egrets, honeyeaters, and an African
Spoonbill. We also saw Cape Buffalo, Red Lechwe and Impala grazing on the banks.
This three-hour boat trip was our welcome to Botswana.

Twice at Linyante we viewed Lions up close and personal. A 5:30 A.M wake-up
call for our first morning game drive sent us with Thuto searching for a pair of
male lions known to be in the general area. We tracked those lions back and forth
and round and round through the bush, often without benefit of a hint of road, for
two and one-half hours. It was nearly 9:00 A.M. when Thuto abruptly stopped the
truck and told us to remain seated and keep our voices low. He pointed out two young
male lions, he later identified as the "Border Boys" because they'd
arrived in the area from across the river in Namibia.

The "Boys" were lying in the grass maybe 30 yards away just looking
at us. After about 10 minutes one lion stood up and slowly walked toward our truck
stopping once to stare then sauntering within 20 feet before passing the truck and
heading into the impenetrable (by land cruiser) bush. Our first big cat sighting
convinced us that Thuto could read the minds of animals.

Lioness with Zebra kill Camp Lechwe

We saw lions again the next day after a dusty 2-hour drive to the Savuti Channel.
Here we viewed an amazing abundance of wildlife, including the zebra, giraffe,
a huge baboon troop, elephants, antelope and four lions--two males and two females
feasting on a zebra they had recently killed. We watched as they rested with bloated
bellies, three lions wandering very slowly to the shade of a tree while the fourth
male began dragging what remained of the carcass in the same direction. It was
so large and heavy, the lion couldn't drag it more than 20 feet at a time without
resting. We doubted he would make it to the shade. Vultures hovered waiting for
him to give up. After a break for tea, we came back to find the lion and his zebra
in the shade of a bush with the vultures still at bay.

A fleeting leopard sighting and a very close encounter with an elephant herd,
where one elephant actually walked up to our safari vehicle and tried to take a
bite out of it, were other highlights of Linyante Camp. Of course our camp cook,
Gladys, an excellent chef and a "traditionally built" Botswana lady and
the rest of the camp staff who sang and danced for us as well as took cheerful care
of us were another highlight.

Lechwe Camp on the shore of the Selinda Spillway resembeled Linyante, with our
tents strung out along the waterway with a charming, personable and competent staff.
Here we took our first bush walk--Thuto carrying a high powered rifle for our protection.
We canoed on the waterway, viewed cape buffalo, observed our bushman guide Cady
strip bark from a bush and make rope with it and then use it to make a snare.

African Elephant Cape Buffalo

Remarkably we observed another leopard our second night at Camp Lechwe. As
we were sitting around the campfire after dinner, Thuto heard an unnerving sound
and said, "It's a leopard--let's go." We all piled into the truck
and headed in the direction of the sound along the bank of the waterway. Thuto
shined the spotlight across the water and we soon saw eyes reflecting the light.
Then we saw the cat walking through the bush. After the leopard disappeared, we
raced through the darkness hanging on to our seats as we splashed across the 4-foot
deep channel. When we got to the opposite bank we saw the leopard walking toward
us. Twice more we lost sight of the leopard and then found him in the darkness.
We finally headed back to camp after 11 pm and slept--excitement finally succumbing
to fatigue. Happy Travels, Janet and Stu

Zambezi River, Zambia

Welcome

Stuart Wilson — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:16:32 GMT

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