Away from the world

aka Swansong - IV

The last time I'd been on safari, it had changed my entire perspective on viewing animal life. Vastly for the better, I should add. The only regret had been that we never got to spend too much time in the reserve. So the prospect of a three day trip into the wild was exciting to say the least!

We started with a visit to the erstwhile St. Lucia Wetland Park, or the iSimangaliso Wetland Park as it is called these days (apparently to avoid confusion with the island country in the Caribbean :D). It was a nice day to be out on the river. And by the looks of it, the hippos agreed! We saw no less than a dozen pods, some of them with as many as fifteen hippos of various sizes.

For our overnight stays, we'd settled on the Emdoneni Lodge, the cat rehab centre that is part of the set-up kinda sealed the choice for us :). We made multiple visits into the enclosures of the four different types of cats they have there. They even have a couple of young cheetahs that have grown up in the centre and as such were supposedly safe to approach.

I wouldn't have believed anyone would want to get that close to anything with teeth that size, but it was quite the experience. It's not exactly like the cheetahs are exactly tame, but under the watchful eye of their handler, we managed to get quite close. Close enough for one of the cheetahs to start licking my hand! I have to admit, I was more than a little worried there for a bit :). I've never had a regular cat lick my hand, so I wasn't sure of the sandpaper feel is a cheetah specialty or not.

One of the best parts of the whole experience, however, was the early morning game drive we went for in the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve. It was the same place I'd been to on my previous safari four years ago (what can I say, I'm a sucker for going to the same awesome places again and again :P). The pre-dawn hours made everything look very different though.

We'd barely moved off the paved roads onto the dirt tracks when a roar stopped us dead. More followed, full throated thunder, up close! In moments we saw a couple of lions emerge from the brush ahead of us. And then in a flash they were gone! We tracked the pair for some distance amidst the tall grass and the trees, but the roars continued for several minutes. Through it all, most of us had been too stunned to actually get any photos :). Any proper steady shots anyway!

It's not that we didnt't see anything else on that trip, or on the other more relaxed afternoon game drive. We saw zebras and rhinos, impala and nyala, wildebeest and baboons, giraffes and buffaloes. But nothing quite matched the experience with the lions :). We never did see any leopards. But then they are hard to spot at best of times. So I'm still one short of seeing the fabled big-five in the African wild.

The evenings were spent over some delicious fare at the lodge as our guide regaled us with stories of his years of experience as a park ranger. Surrounded by forest, it seemed like we were in a different world altogether. It was with a definite sense of loss that we headed out eventually. But before the end, there was one more treat, a quick stop-over at a crocodile farm on the way. I was more entertained by the peacocks and the gigantic Koi fish than the crocs to be entirely honest, never quite liked those...

Eventually it was back to the world of metal and concrete as we headed to Durban airport to catch our flight back to Cape Town. That's right, there's more, we hadn't even made it up to Table Mountain yet!

Currently: waiting, wishing...
Listening to: Dido - The girl who got away

Water water everywhere

aka Swansong - III

In some ways, our extra day at Haga-Haga was my best memory of the whole trip :). Part of it might just be that we had had quite a hectic few days, not to mention the weeks on the ship before that. A day with nothing to do in just the right place can do wonders!

I for one, spent the day mostly either staring at the water or strolling aimlessly along its edge. There was even a river quite nearby, flowing to the ocean. As it hit the beach, most of the water sank below, out of sight, leaving just a trickle running into the waves. You could stand still and just feel the flow. The waves of cold ocean water drowning the river. But as the waves fell back, the warm river water rushed back to engulf your feet.

As we left the next morning, I think each of us were wishing we had more time. It was a quiet peaceful drive as we finally hit the east coast and once again the world around us changed. Fields upon fields of sugar cane. The weather was as different here from the Cape area as winter and monsoon back home. Almost :).

Our destination this time was Umkomaas, just south of Durban, and home of scuba diving at the Aliwal Shoal! Early the next morning we were back in the ocean! The weather here was as perfect as it could be, with visibility so much better, and the water temperature so much more civilized than the other side :D. We had a great time with a couple of long dives, but it was during the surface interval in between that we managed to do something really amazing, swim with a pod of dolphins!! 

Well, 'with' is a bit of an over statement. We saw them coming, throwing almost everyone in the boat in a frenzy to get their masks and fins on and jump in the water. I made it just in time to see a few of them pass fairly close by. And then all we could see were tail fins waving :). Man, those things are fast in the water. They did make a few passes, but I guess slow surface swimmers such as ourselves didn't seem very interesting.

Eventually we made it to Durban proper, and as luck would have it, we were staying quite close to the Moses Mabhida stadium. South Africa just happened to be playing one of their AFCON 2013 matches there that night :D. I was watching the match on TV, but the sound was better in the balcony, direct from the stadium! Not only did they win, it was a local lad that scored! The whole thing was quite festive, with fireworks and everything.

After spending much of the previous trip on the ship in dock in Durban, it was something of a full circle. Being back at the beach front, I almost felt at home :). But we weren't staying for long. The next day we headed for the Shakalands, a Zulu homestead providing a pretty neat experience of traditional Zulu culture and lifestyle. I guess the fact that it was literally in the middle of nowhere kinda added to the atmosphere.

Finally we headed back to Durban and after a good ten days and 2500kms, handed in our comfy, if somewhat underpowered Corolla :). The next few days were to be something of a breather for me in terms of driving. But seeing how we were headed on a three day safari, there was no let-up in the excitement!

Currently: in limbo
Listening to: Dave Matthews Band - Mercy (Live from Bristow)

Different roads

aka Swansong - II

Is it just me? Or did Smaug's growl (it could hardly be called a roar) at the end of The Hobbit sound like a giant big block V8 starting up? :D

Last weekend I took a trip down to Asansol and it wasn't just the usual family visit. There was a wedding to be attended. I wasn't the only one who made it, so a few of us converged on the old school campus after many years. As is usually the case with such visits, old memories hung thick in every corner and corridor. I'm afraid the wedding reception was rather overrun by excited recollections from a decade ago :).

Speaking of recollections, let's continue with the story where I'd left off. So we left the Western Cape behind and started making our way east. The idea was to make it from Cape Town to Durban in three days. Yes, a somewhat steep hill to climb, but we were in high spirits. The first day went about as perfectly as anyone could ask.

The weather was perfect and so were the roads. We hugged the coast for a little while before it became obvious that this wasn't going to be the usual long distance trip across an unobtrusive landscape. Not that I'm one to complain about that :). Rolling hills, sudden passes, deep gorges, tantalizing views of rivers rushing along at impossible depths. To say nothing of the changing vegetation. It was as if every few hours or so the whole world around us transformed itself just to keep things interesting :).

I kept thinking about the last most spectacular road trip I'd ever been on, back in New Zealand. This was as close as I'd ever come to that in the intervening five years, and it wasn't for lack of trying! Eventually we hit the ocean again, close to Mossel Bay and made our way to Knysna. It was just an overnight stop, but we managed to make it to the lagoon waterfront and even found a particular seafood restaurant that had been recommended by some fellow divers in Simon's Town :).

Early next morning, it was off to the Storms River. We weren't just going to be driving through for three full days, we'd decided, so zip-lining on the way was just the thing! As far as adrenaline rushes go, it turned out to be fairly tame :). But hanging suspended 30m above the forest floor and zooming across from tree to tree was quite a refreshing experience! Once we were done with that, seeing how the Storms River mouth was really quite close by, we decided to visit that too.

We might have gotten a little carried away by the Middle-Earthesque scenery a bit, as it was very late in the morning by the time we got back on the road. We still had about 600km to travel to our next stop! We did quite well, despite the traffic and the road-works. But then the GPS got us in a spot of bother. Luckily, we'd been in touch with the proprietor of out next hotel at Haga-Haga. When we called to let her know we were quite close and told her where we were, she seemed to go into quite a panic! We'd overshot the mark by a good 90kms!!

Getting lost in a foreign country can be a bit distressing. Especially having just spent most of a very long day in a car. Thus it was quite a dreary trio in a completely inappropriate vehicle that traversed the last 15kms bouncing along on a bone-jarringly awful dirt road in a darkness pierced by cicadas. But then things looked up again. The proprietors turned out to be an extremely charming old couple thoroughly worried about our ordeal. Dinner was waiting as was the lawn out back. We were back at the ocean, and even though we couldn't see it, there was no mistaking the crashing waves and the soothing breeze.

The plan had been to leave again the next morning, and head all the way to Durban. But, cold beer in hand, standing in the wind, the water that close and absolutely nothing else for miles and miles all around (not to mention the 15km of horrifying dirt that would have to be covered before we could go anywhere), we couldn't help but throw all the plans to the wind and ask the owners for another night on our cabana. The gentleman was only too happy to oblige us, and we woke up the next morning, three rather tired but extremely happy people.

The resort lay at the edge of the water. A mix of rocky and sandy beaches stretched both ways as far as the eyes travelled. And there was hardly a soul to speak of. Paradise, as far as I was concerned!

Currently: reminiscing
Listening to: Dido - Sitting on the roof of the world

Swansong - I

It's not that I haven't been somewhat occupied lately. Impending life changes of the dramatic type tend to bring with them a whole lot of rather more banal details to sort out. Nevertheless, I find my thoughts straying back to South Africa. Barely a month past, it already seems like a long while ago.

Much has happened since, and I'm rather happy I managed to fit in a quick trip to Bombay over the weekend in-between. You see, farewells aren't something I get to do personally very often. Not that I'm one much given to whims, but things seem to work out that way more often than not :).

Anyway, I figured if I thought one of these days I'd be able to put down the whole story of the South Africa trip, I was kidding myself. For one thing, it'd take forever. For another, it'll be closer to a short book than a blog post :P. But where do I start?

The thing with this trip was that it was really quite random :). As has been the case before, there wasn't a lot of time for planning. Well, not for me anyway. While we'd been hoping to go on this trip for almost a month, it wasn't until about a day or so before crew change that we actually knew it was on! Yeah, hurray for late cancellations.

One of the regrets I've had for a while was never visiting Cape Town on my previous South Africa trip, so I was quite happy to begin this one doing just that! The V&A Waterfront is quite the place. But since we'd already picked up what was to be our car for the next 10 days, we decided on staying out in the rather more quiet Simon's Town on the other side of the Cape.

What followed was three days of scuba diving and relaxed ambles down the Main Street in some spectacularly chilly weather for the middle of summer :). Instead of trying to find a hotel, we'd actually got ourselves a little holiday rental place close to the beach. The view looking out over False Bay was quite spectacular.

I hadn't had a dive for a bit over a year, so it was a bit interesting. Especially the shore dives. I'd absolutely never waded into the water and then just kept on walking as it got deep enough :). There were a couple of scares with the weather and visibility, but all in all it turned out to be good fun.

On the last day we decided to drive down to Cape Point. We were too late to get in, but the drive around itself was a spectacle! The next morning though, we went again, this time all the way to the old lighthouse at Cape Point :).

It was one of those life-affirming sort of moments. You know, the kind that seem to in some way justify all the shit you've taken in the immediate past ;). All the colours seemed to be especially bright. The blues and greens, the whites of the wave tops. Even the sand seemed a sparkling gold.

About the only thing that helped us move on was the lure of the epic road-trip we were about to embark upon. All the way from Cape Town to Durban. But of course, little did we know exactly how epic just then :).

Currently: reminiscing
Listening to: Lifehouse - Between the raindrops (feat. Natasha Bedingfield)

The choices we make

It would seem, one sure thing with change is that it is sudden. Even when it isn't it surely appears that way. Sometimes there's even a choice. But when you think about it you wonder if there really ever is. I mean who would refuse something only because it would cause change? Yeah, some people, I guess. :)

Had things gone on as they were supposed to, I would be just about getting started with the packing, heading back to the boat. Shame, would have managed to see Namibia. Haven't actually been to a new country in well over a year.

Now I have at least a month at home. Well, half of that is gone in a hurry. It was a little strange getting back behind the wheel here again. :) Too much driving in, shall we say, somewhat different driving conditions. Bit ominous, that. Seeing how I don't expect to drive in India for the next few years.

Bottom-line is, my boat days are over. For the foreseeable future anyway. Who would have thought? :) I didn't! I never thought I would be ready to stay in one place for long. Still don't, but then, I'm never really ready for anything till it's all over me, so who knows.

Be nice to land in Norway in the summer I guess. And afterwards, there's all that snow to look forward to...

Currently: hmm..
Listening to: Lifehouse - Slow motion