South Africa

Writing in a state of Jet lagged and post hike tiredness. Sorry if it doesn't make much sense. Nevertheless I'm determined to stay up and write rather than fall asleep again at 8pm like I did last night (which resulted in my waking up at 4am).

Back to the beginning. I am here in South Africa for a grand total of 10 days, in order to attend a conference on endangered languages in Stellenbosch. I flew out of Melbourne Sunday afternoon 5pm. 7 hours later I arrived in Singapore (9pm). Spent about 5 hours sleeping in an armchair at the airport then went to board my flight to Cape Town, via Johannesburg. To my surprise their were a large number of Chinese businessmen also boarding the flight. We were all handed our customs declarations form to fill out in the waiting room, before boarding the flight. The businessmen were sitting next to me and I could hear that they were engaged in a heated discussion about the difference between surname and firstname, because of course, their first names are their surnames and their last names are their given names. As it didn't seem any closer to being resolved I went over and offered my translation services.

After a moment of blank astonishment, they showed me their forms and we got it all sorted out. I sat back down and chatted to a Chinese gentleman who was very intrigued as to the hows and whys of my knowledge of Chinese. Boarded the flight and was seated next to a Singaporean woman and her little boy, so no more conversation. Relaxed and watched a few movies and tried to catch some sleep on the 10 hour flight to Johannesburg.

The sun came up as we flew over the Indian Ocean. Then over the South African mainland. There was quite a bit of farmland that we flew over, and I was bemused to notice that a lot of the fields were perfectly circular. I finally figured out that they had a watering system that was fixed in the centre of the circular field and rotated around, accounting for the perfectly round circles of green. We didn't get to get off the plane in Johannesburg, so I sat and watched the airport staff unloading luggage and postal and other products they were transporting. Included with the boxes were quite a number of cardboard boxes that were clearly marked "Live Fish- Urgent" I still haven't quite figured out whether they had fish tanks in the cardboard boxes being thrown carelessly off the plane.

The approach to Cape Town was very different. There were rocky mountains in the region surrounding the city, which were quite spectacular from the plane. It took an hour to clear passport control and the huge queues, after which I got a backpacker bus to my youth hostel the 'cat and moose' in a bustling section of the city. The bus first drove past a shanty town, a huge area filled to bust with houses constructed out of corrugated iron and about the size of a caravan. No sooner were they past then we came upon the large mansions with security fences and swimming pools. Pretty striking.

It was midday when I arrived, (10pm Monday night Australia time). The "Cat and Moose" was very pleasant with a large sunny courtyard in the middle, where I dozed and chatted to backpackers for the remainder of the afternoon.

This morning I went on a tour. There were about 10 of us in a minibus. We went out to a fishing village, and got on a boat to see some seals. Yes. My first African animals to see were seals! Hmmm. Oddly enough, on the boat I ran into the Chinese gentleman I met in Singapore, and he has invited me to visit him in Hangzhou. Then we went to another village and saw ..................(Drum roll).... Penguins. Not the fairy penguins you see on Phillip Island though. These ones are known as African, or Jackass, penguins, due to the donkey like braying that they do. Very weird. Apparently a pair of them moved into the area about 20 years ago and now there are a few thousand. They've had to put up fences confining them to the beach because apparently they started venturing into peoples homes and taking a dip in their swimming pools.

From their we drove to the original object of our journey: the Cape of Good Hope. It is set in a national park and we had lunch near the ranger's station. One of the rangers came up to have a chat to me. In the space of 5 minutes, this elderly black man had ascertained that I was from Australia, told me that the 'fynbos' which that region is very famous for, is even more extensive in Australia (I think he meant what we call 'scrub'), how many species there are (In S.A. as well as in Aus.), discussed the separation of the continents, the political situation in South Africa, including economic immigrants from Zimbabwe and South Africans who migrated out after the end of Apartheid but now want to come back. Kind of reminded me of Scott's Dad, Eddie. Bit of a storyteller.

Then, on to Cape Point (which houses the lighthouse) and the Cape of Good Hope next to it, which is the most south-westerly point of Africa apparently. We had quite a hike around there. It was really spectacular country, lots of rocks, scrub, cliffs, white beaches and two oceans running into each other. I saw some Dassies (largish guinea pigs) eating scrub and a few lizards. We climbed down off the Cape and rejoined our minibus. As we drove off, we came across four ostriches hanging out on the beach, which was pretty cool. Oh and we saw some bontebok in the far distance earlier on.

I didn't join in the cycling this afternoon, because my body decided it had had enough. Got back to the hostel at 6 pm, showered, and went out for sushi. One thing that really surprised me about this place is how much it reminds me of Australia. The countryside, anyway. Obviously the black population is much much huger than in Aus, and income differences are more evident.

Can't think of an elegant way to end this post, so think I'll just go to bed. Night Night.