Africa 2: Boxing Day

Gosh this Christmas week has turned out to be all we had wished for. The 4 families have got on well. Everyone has pulled their weight with the cooking and cleaning up (if the only the bare minimum has been done). We are living in 4 cottages and eating meals in the largest one which is in front of the pool. Plenty of space to allow for privacy when one wants it. We sort our own breakfasts out and join up for lunch and supper (sorry, 'tea' for the kiwi readers!).

Tuesday, after my first blog, we all headed off to the dam a few kms away for sundowners.

As we 18 arrive in 2 vehicles and on mountain bikes there was a couple there sitting quietly with binoculars!!! We apologised from the off-set for the noise as we settled down to GnT’s, chips n’ dips. I felt sooo sorry for them but they were fine saying they were staying very close by and could come down any time. Vaughan and I made our way through the bush to the other side of the dam to get a better view of the sunset but I did not have my camera. On the way back Michael happily relinquished his bike and I had my first taste of mountain biking, be it just on farm tracks. However, I had 3 large GnT’s on board and it was mainly downhill and much of the track was soft sand. I yelled most of the way and still do not know how I did not fall off. I guess the booze helped to dull my senses/relax me so I did not care. I don’t know. Whatever, it was exhilarating and great fun. I should thank Michael for doing the uphill slog bit for me.

On Wednesday Eric, Alice and I went into Vaalwater to top up supplies! It is a real African small town. A few small shops, one supermarket and Africans everywhere. There was a strike going on outside the Spar with lots on singing and chanting with posters accusing the owners of being racist and not paying a decent salary. It is so sad to see the extent of the poverty, but where on earth does a government start to address things? The road from Vaalwater is lined on both sides with game farms like the one we are staying on so you sometimes see game. Eric saw 2 giraffe as I was driving back on this occasion but I missed them.

Thursday, Christmas Eve, was lazy. I went with Ali and Mel to visit her friends Denise and Alan. Alan is the son of the owners of this place and they live here on the farm. Their home is amazing. Denise is a fine arts artist and I comment on her beautiful paintings throughout the house, not knowing she had painted many of them!! The stoep (patio) is huge, probably 40’ by 15’ deep and looks out onto the longest pool I have ever seen in a private home. The garden is surrounded by snake proof bush fencing. It is another world!! They told us stories of living in the bush, including watching a troop of baboon attacking a python who was crushing, and then ate, a full sized female. The python was so badly injured it probably did not survive.

Eric, Alice and I went for a game drive in the early evening. We found it difficult to follow the maps and ended up at a road end with a sign to a lookout. For some reason I thought it was just a few yards into the bush so we poured a GnT each and headed off. We walked, and climbed, for 15 minutes thinking “It can’t be much further” as we rounded each bend. We reached the top about 1 minute before the sunset and boy was it worth the climb.


I was then immediately nervous, not sure how much light we had left and very keen not to be caught in the bush with no torch! We hurried back, well tried to but Eric was struggling on the downhill climb because of his leg, and eventually got to the Kombie with just a few minutes of dusk left.

Christmas day was perfect. I ran in the morning, so I would feel less guilty eating later! The day was soo relaxed with far too much food. We managed to get 2 huge tables together to seat all 18 of us.

CLAIRE, ALICE, ERIC, HARRIETTE AND YVONNE

Dinner consisted of a starter c/o Eric. A whole, camembert stuffed with gorgonzola and soft goat’s cheese, topped with walnuts and a cranberry sauce.


Absolutely divine - everyone wanted the recipe. Turkey, braaied fillet steaks and a gammon with salads and roasted vegetable made up the main course. Lynne was just going to do Christmas cake and coffee but we insisted on desserts (of course) and did a mango tiramisu (orange juice and sherry to soak the biscuits instead of Tia Maria, and topped/layered with fresh mangos) and Harriette did a pavlova. We even managed to find kiwi fruits for that.
STEFFIE, LYNNE, WILLIAM AND HARRIETTE IN THE KITCHEN. YVONNE, MEL, VAUGHN, ABBY AND ALI AT THE TABLE.

We did nothing else all day except laze around and when it got too hot, swam. This is Mark and I.

This is Willam, Mark, Eric and Mel in the kitchen.


This morning, Boxing Day, I went for a run, swim, press-ups and then sunbathed (at 7am!) before breakfast. This has been my routine here. The run was very special this morning as I disturbed a small herd of impala. They ran ahead of me down the farm track for about 5 minutes, stopping every so often to see if I was following, and darting in and out of the bush before finally disappearing. Amazing!! After breakfast we 4 Tanners took the Kombie and went on a game viewing drive. We are staying on a game farm of about 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres in old money). There are no large cats (apart from a few leopard), rhino or elephant here, hence you can walk and cycle in the bush. There are more kudu than I have ever seen and we saw this feller

with about 12 others when we went out on Christmas eve evening. They are my favourite antelope. We see a lot of kudu, impala (by far the most common antelope) and wart hogs from our accommodation. When we wake up in the morning I creep round the place looking out all the windows as they are often very close to the cottage, until the sounds of tea making and breakfast start up!
On our drive today we saw the above, plus wildebeest with lots of babies, zebra, baboons, eland, hartebeest, bontebok and the animal we had been most hoping to see, giraffe; a mommy and baby:

Eric and I got out the Kombie and took a few paces closer to the giraffes to get a better picture but mommy spotted us and took up a very protective stance, and my battery died on the camera! I then walked down the farm track and watched a few small herds on the plain around the trees until Eric drove up to meet me. By the time we got back to the cottages I was cooking and feeling quite nauseous but then it was in the high 30’s. Straight into the pool, then lots of chatting with the others, in the shade of course, before lunch. The afternoon was spent lazing around until 5pm when William, Vaughn, Justine and I went out for a cycle. Well this was not what I expected. I thought it would be a cycle along some farm tracks, negotiating a few bumps and hills. Boy was I in for a surprise. We went mountain biking!!! It was so scary, and exhilarating. We didn’t see much in the way of animals but boy did we get round the bush. First we cycled over these 2 rickety bridges that I had been nervous walking over the previous day, then Vaughn and William decided to climb a foot path over the hill, on bikes. I reminded them that I was a novice and said that Justine and I would go a different route!! They were such gentleman they would have none of it and we took an alternate route. Back on cycle tracks this time. It was really hard work and I felt that I was holding the others back but they encouraged and advised me on the way round. The cycle paths are graded 1-3 for difficulty and on the 3’s most of us climbed/walked with our bikes for short distances. There had been a huge rain storm a few hours before we left and Justine said the bush was much prettier after the rain, the light in the damp bush was fantastic, when I was not so scared that my eyes were actually open!! It was fantastic. I loved it but boy was it hard and tiring. Sooo different to road biking. When I later commented on slowing them down lWilliam said he enjoys getting new people into the sport and does not mind the slow rides with the novices. So kind.
So who are we here with, apart from the 5 Dukes? Lynne’s brother Mark and his gorgeous girls, Justine and Claire, who are uni age, Lynne’s Mom, Yvonne and friends of the Dukes; William and Ali with their 2 children Jamie and Abby and Ali’s Mom Mel. When I lived in SA in the 80’s Lynne’s family were like a second family to me and it is great to be spending time with them again. Mark in the film/sound making industry and I am trying to persuade him that he should come and do some work in NZ for awhile.
So far, and only on the second week of this holiday, I have written 3000 words. This is going to be a novelette not a blog entry. Well done if you are still with me.

Africa1: Lindani the Tuesday Before Christmas

Well, we are finally here - Africa. Lindani to be precise. It’s mid-day-ish a few days before Christmas and I am sitting under a tree (already a tad red from sitting by/in the pool this morning), and blogging. I am writing this in Word as internet connection here is intermittent to say the least. Actually, we are not that far from civilisation. This is in effect a farm, with game, and very nice accommodation in the form of cottages. We have a cluster of 4 of them between 18 of us. There are others around but who knows where. Nowhere near here that’s for sure. The nearest town (take the word ‘town’ with a pinch of salt, we are not talking anything as big or flash as Matamata here) is about 30km away.
To describe where we are, and by the time I post this the photos will accompany, the accommodation area is a mowed area of grassland surrounded by hills of African bush, i.e. scrub and thorn trees. The cottages are spaced out and look out to mowed grass with a pool dotted with huge red rocks around it and a native looking fence and shade area. Then it is longer grass, through which a small herd of around 50 springbok strolled 30 minutes ago, and then the hills. The farm has farm tracks along which you can drive (we plan to do that later this afternoon) and walking and cycling tracks.

This morning Eric woke about 5 and I was up about 5.30am. Outside the cottage were lots of impala (smallish, elegant buck), and I think Eric saw a kudu. Mark saw a herd of buffalo but we missed them. Harriette, Eric and I did a short bush walk about 7am but didn’t see anything.
I guess I ought to start at the beginning. When we went to the UK in 2007 we said we would meet Trish (Eric’s sister) and Simon out here for Christmas 2008. They live in the UK but have built a house in Wilderness (on the Cape Coast), I think to retire to. We therefore planned for that trip but in 2008 they said they would not be out here that Christmas so we re-arranged for 2009. We managed to wangle 6 weeks leave somehow. So, we left NZ on 17th December, so exhausted after a hectic (I mean more hectic than usual) 3 months and arrived in Johannesburg on Friday morning (6pm NZ time). We spent a 7 ½ hr stopover in Singapore airport, leaving at 2am local time. Two 11 hr flights. Lynne collected us from the airport and we battled through traffic jams like I cannot remember, to their house. Lynne and Vaughn are amongst our dearest friends. Lynne and I met in 1984 when we both did our ICU training in JHB. During this time Lynne and Vaughn dated and finally married some time after I left SA. They have 3 children; Michael (15), born the day after Alice, Stephanie (10) and Daniel (9). Vaughn has his own mine consultancy business and talks in billions of rands (the local currency – R1+NZ$5) in his dealings. Lynne assures me she is very busy, but does not work and has a full-time maid and gardener. You can imagine how I tease her . They live in a gorgeous house in crime ridden JHB. Their house, like all others, is behind a high fence topped with 5 electric wires entered through a huge remote controlled gate. Once inside you are not really aware of the security, it just feels like a nice secluded garden.

We managed to stay awake all Friday but did not see Vaughn. He left for work at 6am and returned at 3am Saturday morning for a few hours kip. I saw him when I went for a run at 6am as he headed back to the office. (Just as well really as I had no idea how to exit the property!) They were just finalising a mining feasibility study for some Indian clients and right on the deadline. I am not sure if that was the projects deadline or Vaughn’s as he was heading off on holiday. He said he’d be back about 12. Naively I thought he meant mid-day. He finally got home at 11pm Saturday night! I’ll never complain about Eric working in the evenings again! (It’s all gone very quiet here, the children have left the pool and I think everyone that can is tucked up in the shade reading or snoozing. Eric’s asleep in our bedroom).
Saturday, still in Johannesburg, we went to Fourways to collect our car. We had booked a small people mover, a Toyota Avanza but they upgraded us to a VW Kombie. Now Alice dreams of owning a kombie and nearly burst into tears of joy when we met back up with the girls and told her she would be cruising round Africa for 6 weeks in one! Later that day we went to Monte Casino HYPERLINK HERE , a very impressive Tuscan style mall, I guess you would call it, but rather than shops it is mainly entertainment and food orientated. We had a late lunch/early supper there at John Dory’s and bought tickets for Cinderella on Ice, which Lynne has seen and said was unbelievable. We go on 2nd December and will take Steffie, who missed out on it first time round. We then headed home for another early night.

Sunday we, and Steffie, went to a Sandton mall shopping for last minute Christmas presents. You cannot believe the shopping here. I have never seen so much wealth, and contrasted to such poverty when you move out of town. Everywhere there are car dealers for Lotus, Aston Martin, Bentley, Lexus. It never stops. And the shops!!!! I have never seen so many. It is quite a culture shop after NZ. Cheryl (as in Mark and Cheryl) is in NZ at the moment visiting Mark who lives there (Yes an odd set up but the plan is that Cheryl will eventually move out there), asked me a few weeks ago if I missed proper shopping living in NZ. I said no, not really understanding the question as I had everything I needed in NZ, but when I was in Sandton I thought of the question again, and understood! I think I prefer lack of choice (most of the time. How on earth do you find the time to shop here. You could go on forever!!
On Sunday afternoon we went to Alberton to see Anna and Ginty (Ouma and Oupa to Harriette and Alice). This elderly Afrikaans couple ‘adopted’ me when I lived out here after I supported them in caring for their son, my friend, Alex. Alex had motor neurone disease from the age of 21. He was their only son and an incredibly gifted guy. He died after about 6 years living paralysed and on a ventilator at home. It was terribly tragic. I admired and loved Alex and cannot imagine what Anna and Ginty went through. Anyway, they are both very dear to us and it was an emotional visit. We will try and get over there a few more times while we are here.
Monday was shopping and packing for this trip. We spent a small fortune in Fourways Woolworths (R4,500 = nearly NZ$1,000), Lynne also left with 2 trolley loads of shopping. When it came to packing up it was such a good thing we had the Kombie. I am not sure how we would have done it otherwise! We finally headed out of JHB about 3pm (which was the time we had planned to arrive!). We had to drive through a township and had strict instructions from Lynne on about approaching the 2 sets of traffic lights slowly if they are red so you are not actually stationery for too long. Lynne drives like a madman (the girls said they would never complain about my driving again) but assured us that we were not in a hurry and it would be a leisurely drive. We averaged 130km/hour all the way there!!!!
PHOTO’s