Cape Town

When we finally left the safari, we drove 460 km non-stop back to Johannesburg, managed to go by Hazyview this time, but there wasn't really anything there. We drove by Nelspruit, the capital city of South Africa's Mpumalanga region. The medium-size city seems very industrial and is packed with several car dealerships. Again, nothing to see there.

After another night at the Peech hotel, we hopped on South Africa Airlines' Boeing 737 to Cape Town the next morning. The flight took about 2 hours. The landscape we saw from above were mostly flat planes until about 15 minutes before landing did we begin to see some very beautiful hills. I was surprised to see how big Cape Town actually is. The seaside city is enveloped by huge mountains on all sides, and both the city and the mountains seem to keep going endlessly.

Once the plane landed, we discovered that one of our checked bag (mine) was missing. All of my clothes for this trip were in that bag. We called American Express to find out what their travel insurance policies are regarding missing bags (we bought this trip with an AMEX card). Apparently, the bag has to have gone missing for more than 48 hours, and the airline must give you a notarized letter confirming your loss before you can go claim up to 30,000 THB with them. I found this rather pointless.

The first thing we did in Cape Town was to check out the Victoria Peer, which has a lot of restaurant's and retail stores to lure us in. We headed straight to a good chain seafood restaurant called Cape Town Fishmarket. I had a lot of oysters which were very good. Oysters here are slightly larger, sweeter, than those you'd find in the US but not nearly as salty. I personally prefer US oysters, but these were not bad at all.

I also had Crayfish, which is similar to lobster. The meat is not as tough and may be sweeter, but the seasoning was so salty it ruined the whole thing for me.




Next, we checked in to our hotel on number Four Rosmead. It is a six-room guesthouse, very carefully decorated and staged. Chic is the word I would describe this place. It seemed like every corner is made to be perfect to sit down and chill (and of course for photograph).

The two days we had in Cape Town were spent mainly on sight-seeing and shopping. We drove along a very scenic route to the Cape of Good Hope (I understand the cape marks where the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet). On the way, we found a huge white sand beach where people bring their dogs to play. I must have seen at least thirty dogs there. My mom found this craft store called "Dolce & Banana" and spent a lot of time (and money).






The view at the cape was breathe-taking. There were a few baboons (some were HUGE) hanging out on the side of the road near the cape.



On the return trip, we stopped to see some really cute penguins (I believe the South African penguins are the smallest of all penguins in the world). They were all nursing their babies. Very cute!







Overall, our experience at Cape Town has been very pleasant. My sister said that this is her favorite place in the world.


One thing I did not like about Cape Town was the food. All the restaurants we went to served extremely salty food. Also, sushi seems to be very popular here--there are tons of sushi places. However, their variety of fish is very limited. You could only get the very basic selections of salmon, tuna, shrimp, eel. I didn't even see yellowtail there. To make matters worse, when we went to a very popular Japanese place called Wakame, and they were out of salmon. However, if you come here, you should definitely try their local cape salmon which has a light pink color. It's very good.

The Game (Part 2)

So we've seen the lions, the leopard, the buffaloes, and the elephants. The only big five we have not covered is the Rhino.

We saw two Rhinos on our second game drive. There are a few different variations of this species in different habitats--Black Rhino, White Rhino, and a few others. The one that's common in South Africa (the one we saw) is the white rhino, which is actually the smaller kind (still very big though). I might be wrong on this, but the white rhinos are herbivore while the black ones eat both plants and meat. We had to drive off-road to find these two giants hanging out in the bush. When we arrived, they were getting ready to get some power nap. According to Manus, Rhinos like to sleep in pair and one would lie with its face next to the other's butt and vice versa. They do this because their behinds are the most vulnerable area, so this position allows them to protect each other. Smart, eh?

So there you have it... the South African Big Five. Now, what other animals did we see?

We saw some very beautiful giraffes. During our first morning game drive, there was family out in an open area. They were a bit far off road, but we wanted to get a much closer look, so Manus parked the vehicle, got his rifle out, and walked us towards the animals (remember- no vehicle off-road unless it is to follow the big-five animals). An interesting thing I learned about giraffe is that although its neck is very long, there're about the same number of bones as there are in human's neck. Thus, a giraffe's neck is not that flexible. Here you see a lot of postcards of giraffes with their necks intertwined and make a knot. Those are actually photoshopped. It's not a ritual they do when they mate (of course, I knew that!).

In every game drive, about 2/3 into the trip, Manus would park the car and set up a picnic table for us. In the morning drives, the picnic would include tea, coffee, hot chocolate, yogurt, cereals, milk, etc. while the evening drive's picnics would include wine, champagne, chips, pate, and some other snacks. On our second morning, we picnicked by the river and we saw this HUMONGOUS hippopotamus swimming lazily upstream then disappearing around the river's bend.

The picnic is also a good time to converse with Manus and Million. We found out that Million is actually 58 years old while he does not look a day older than 36. He has 5 children and actually forgot the name of his 4th child when we asked him. Manus is 25 years old. He's been enjoying his job for 5 years and has driven quite a few high-profile guests. Recently, he drove Gale (Oprah Winfrey's right-hand lady) and also did some photo shoots for the O magazine. He said that his picture would be published in the the June edition (I'll buy one).

Other than the animals, there were a lot of other interesting things we learned. Million educated us a lot about his culture and his way of living. He showed us how to make a toothbrush and tooth paste from a tree (of which the name has escaped my memory at the moment). We all got to try brushing his way. The most fun thing was smoking the elephants dung. Apparently, elephants have a lousy digestive system. They eat a lot of herbs but very little of it actually disintegrated in their stomachs. So... we picked up an elephant dung that's been dried out by the sun, lighted it up, and inhaled the smoke through our mouths. They believe that this would help relieve fever. Everyone except my dad tried it. It's ironic because my dad is actually the only one in our group who actually smokes.

We also saw a lot of African wild orchids which apparently are crazy expensive, mainly because exports of this species are not permitted. And if you ever got lost around here, do not try to eat any fruits or vegetables you don't know. Actually... just don't touch anything. There are so many things that are poisonous. There's this one tree that has a very toxic sap, and if you burn it, inhaling the smoke could also kill you. Most of the trees here have some sort of defense mechanisms that work really really well.

I think I'll end here for the game experience. It's actually been a few days since we left Lion Sands, and I still have to blog about Cape Town and Winelands, so...

We left Kruger feeling very satisfied and educated. And we have taken about 5GB of photos in just two days.

The Game (Part 1)

The one thing I had looked forward to the most for this trip was to see the exotic wildlife in their natural habitats. The minute you arrive in South Africa, you'll start noticing postcards with pictures of five animals on them with the phrase “The African Big Five” written in bold fancy fonts. The animals are:

1)Lions

2)Leopards

3)Elephants

4)Buffaloes

5)Rhinos

I don't know the actual history behind this grouping of animals—how they got to be seemingly more important than the non-big-five, but these creatures are what people look forward to seeing the most in the safari. It's very common that you won't see all of them in just one trip, but luckily we found them all!

At Lion Sands game reserve, there are 2 game drives per day, and each drive takes about 3-4 hours. Each group of guests is assigned to one ranger and one tracker who will stick with them for their entire stay. The first game starts at 6am, and the second one starts at 4pm. During our stay, we were able to fit in 3 game drives. The way it works is this: the guests are put in the back seats of this AMAZING vehicle which can sail over anything and EVERYTHING.

The ranger drives the vehicle, and the tracker sits in the front seat which is located above the vehicle's headlight. Our ranger is Manus (AKA Marcus), who is extremely knowledgeable about wildlife animals and plants. Million, our tracker, is a local person from an African sub-culture called Chungan. Million has an excellent instinct and experience in finding the animals.

Manus and Million work together to track where the animals might be by looking at paw prints, dungs, and random things that don't really make much sense unless you're a pro at tracking. By looking at a faint paw print on the dirt road, they're able to tell:

1)what kind of animal the paw belongs to

2)the animal's gender

3)an estimate age of the animal

4)roughly when the paw print was made

5)what direction the animal was heading

Basically, we just keep driving. When Million picks up a trail of an animal that we want to see, Manus just follows Million's directions. Most of the time, we would stay on the small path made for the vehicle, but we're allowed to go off road only to follow the trail of the big-five animals.
We saw a LOT of kudus, impalas, and nyalas. They travel in group, and we found quite a few very big groups. Luckily we're in the middle of a baby season—almost every animal we saw had babies.

The first animals we saw that got us really excited were warthogs. They are very cute in real life. The whole family stick together—moms in front, then the babies, and the dad would stay at the end to make sure everyone's alright. They're much tinier than I expected.

The first big-five we saw was, surprisingly, a big male leopard. Leopard is one of the most difficult animal to spot because leopards hunt and live alone and move around a lot. The one we saw had just hunted an impala for dinner, and he was getting quite full and tired. Usually they'd take their hunts up a tree to prevent the food from being stolen by hyenas, but this one was just enjoying his meal under a tree.

The next big-five we saw were a big herd of buffaloes who had just crossed the river from the greater Kruger park. There were so many of them—over a hundred, and they kept walking and eating into the bush. We had to go off-road after them for a while to get some decent pictures because they were moving so fast. There were a few babies running after their moms, too.

Next, we saw a herd of lions... four females and, surprise surprise, eight cubs!!! The cubs were really cute. They were running around and then started feed on their moms. Manus told us that it was his first time seeing them, too. About a hundred or so meters away, we found two male lions enjoying themselves under the shade.

As we were looking at the lions, Manus heard sounds of the elephants, and there they were—all forty of them! He (Manus) became very cautious about his next move. Instead of going directly from the lions to the elephants, he took a detour, so that the elephants wouldn't detect that we had just come from the lions. This is to protect the cubs because if the elephants knew that there were lion cubs, the elephants would try to kill the cubs by stepping on them.

The herd of elephants we saw had at least 3 HUGE males, one of whom was trying to mate right in front of us (which got us really nervous because male elephants can be very aggressive during the mating season). There were also a lot of babies. The little ones were curious and tried to get close to check us out. Again, we had to be careful because if the moms think that the babies were in harm, they would make a sound and then the big daddies would come. We don't want that.

An interesting thing happened as we were leaving the herd. Since there were soooooo many of them, and a lot of them were blocking the road, we had to drive off-road. The more we drove further into the bush, the more elephants we found. We were basically surrounded by these big animals, and we couldn't get out. The sun was also coming down, so it was getting really dark. We spent a lot of time trying to find and get back to the road. Manus and Million seemed to be disagreeing on something the whole time (we wouldn't know because they speak Chungan when they talk among themselves). Manus told us later that night that Million gets nervous around elephants because he had witnessed two people killed by some angry elephants a long time ago.

I can't write anymore tonight. More animals to come later...

Lion Sands

Day 4 – We got on the road early in the morning after grabbing breakfast at Zuleika Country House. Our destination for today is Lion Sands private game reserve which is located inside the Sabi-Sabi game reserve. We were supposed to make a lunch stop at a town called Hazyview, but the Garmin navigator screwed us up and took us on a route that bypasses the town. It wasn't bad because we found out later that Hazyview doesn't really have anything we would have enjoyed.

Sabi-Sabi private game reserve is adjacent to the southwest side of Kruger National Park with Sabi river separating the lands. Basically, it is an extension of the greater Kruger park, but it's privately managed by the hotels and lodges in the reserve. The animals from Kruger travel back and forth and many make the reserve their homes.

Lion Sands is one of the lodges inside Sabi-Sabi reserve. They own about 40 square kilometers of game land with a lot of very cool plants and animals (more on that later). There are only 18 rooms total, but they have over 200 staff working there, attending to every detail. We received a little orientation when we checked in. This orientation is very important because, as they put it, we were inside the animals' home, so there are many things we must / must not do for safety reasons. First, we're not supposed to touch any animals (duh!) There are a lot of impala's and nyala's that come very close to our room to eat grass. There are also a lot of monkeys (too bad my brother has a severe monkey phobia because he was bitten by one as a child). They are very cute, so it's very tempting to pet them. After sundown, you're not allowed to walk by yourself even if it's only to make a short trip to the next room. This is because at night, the more dangerous animals do come very close to us. We had male buffaloes and hippopotamus that came both nights we were there. If you wanted to go anywhere, you'd have to call reception for an escort. All of the staff are very knowledgeable about the wildlife, and they know how to handle animal encounters.

The hotel itself is very nice and the staff are very attentive. Lion Sands is actually rated one of the top 3 hotels by Tatler, an international luxury lifestyle magazine. Look at the pictures, and you'll see why.

Common areas:

Guest room:

The food at Lion Sands was quite good. Every meal, the hotel offers an option of traditional meat, exotic meat, or vegetarian. These are some of the dishes we had.

I will make a separate post about the wildlife that we saw. Until then...

Pilgrim's Rest and Zuleika

We got up early on our third morning in South Africa. Today, we're heading to Graskop's neighbor town called "Pilgrim's Rest." Pilgrim's Rest has a history of gold mining and is home to the famous Alanglade house museum. Unfortunately we did not get to see the museum because it was closed when we were there. However, the town's Information Center has a decent presentation that tells the story and history of the place, so we did learn something. We parked our van and walked along the main street, went into a few craft stores and spent quite a bit. I found several random things in the stores I thought would make good pictures:

We left Pilgrim's Rest and headed back to Graskop at around noon, so we could have lunch at Graskop's famous Pancake restaurant. All of the shops and galleries were open by then. I came across this store that made this "curtain" (I don't really know how to call it) out of plastic bottles, and it looked amazing and amazingly "African."

After lunch, I visited a small art gallery next to the restaurant. There was a piece that caught my attention. I don't have a picture of it, but it's a very simplistic, abstract painting of a red rose against white background. After talking to the gallery keeper, I found out that the artist is Munro, who apparently is quite famous in South Africa. I wanted to buy the piece for my condo. Though because the price was quite expensive, I decided not to buy it. I've regretted the decision ever since.

We said goodbye to Graskop and started heading towards Zuleika, our destination for tonight. The drive was supposedly about 100 km or so, but we made several stops for sightseeing. The most impressive sites were the Bourke's Luck Potholes and the Three Rondavels in the Blyde River Canyon. It's difficult to explain what's special about them, so please look at the pictures I took.

Bourke's Luck Potholes:

Three Rondavels:

There were street vendors waiting to sell craft products to tourists at these sites. We actually bought quite a few things. At one of the stops, there were local people singing and doing what appeared to be some sort of a tribal dance. It didn't take my mom and my aunt long to go join them.

We got to our destination, Zuleika Country House, at around 5pm. The route was very scenic all the way up to here. The hotel is nice. The estate is beautifully manicured, and it's enveloped 360-degrees by beautiful mountains (the view from our terrace is amazing!!!) The owner has a border collie, JD, who walks after guests and play with them. There's also a very cute cat with the most beautiful yellow eyes I've seen on any cats. Everything was perfect... except for the fact that they served a pre-fixed menu for dinner with lamb as the main dish... and I don't eat lamb!

Zuleika Country House:

View from our terrace:

I wish I could tell you all about our safari experience right now, but I have an early flight to Capetown tomorrow, so I must head to bed. Will post more tomorrow!

Graskop

On the second day of our South Africa trip, we left the Peech Hotel early in the morning and drove about 40km to Pretoria, South Africa's capital city. We visited the Royal Thai Embassy to meet with a friend who educated us about South Africa and the Thai community in this country. At the moment, the embassy is overlooking about 2,000 Thai's who reside here. We also learned that imports of Thai women for prostitution is a very big problem because the immigration process in South Africa is not very strict (we came without a visa- we only needed to present our Thai passport at customs). Many Thai women have been tricked into coming here to work as a “Thai masseuse” or as a cook in Thai restaurant but ended up being sold for prostitution. The embassy works on cases like this everyday.

Thai Royal Embassy in Pretoria:


After lunch in Pretoria, we drove over 250 km east to a cute small town called “Dullstroom.” We stopped to have coffee at a beautiful restaurant/pub. We made friend with the owner of a souvenir store who also owns a florist in town. He brought us to his house across the street and gave us seeds of South African Clivia By the time we were ready to get back on the road (with about 80 km to go), we were already an hour behind schedule. Our destination for tonight is a small town called “Graskop.” From Dullstroom, we drove past Lydenburg to Sabie—this was supposed to be one of the most scenic route we'd take this entire trip, and it was breathtakingly beautiful. Layers of mountains and canyons dramatically emerged as we drove up and down hills and valleys. The backdrop of blue sky became orange, pink, purple, and grey before everything turned pitch black when the sun finally set.

Coffee stop in Dullstroom:

Our original plan was to stop and do some shopping in Sabie, which is known to have a lot of exotic and colorful stones. We had also planned to visit many waterfalls in Graskop before checking in to the hotel, but we couldn't do any of that because we were running really late. Once in Graskop, we checked in at the Graskop hotel (which appeared to be the only hotel in town). The hotel was packed with french-speaking tourists when we arrived. The dining room was full, so they had to set up a dining table for us in the reading room (which was nice because it had a good view of the garden outside). The food left much to be desired, but I've discovered that I really like South African wine. We had a bottle of cabernet sauvignon shiraz, and it hit the spot. I usually am not a big fan of red wine, but South African red wines do not have an appalling strong kick like most other red wines—it's smooth and has a pleasant aged aroma and lasting aftertaste. I drank so much wine that I got more than a little tipsy. When we headed back to our hotel rooms, it took me a few tries to put the key in the keyhole.

Pictures of Graskop hotel:

That pretty much sums it up for today's journey, but I want to touch a little bit on Graskop. It is a very small town, and it is known for flyfishing, having many beautiful waterfalls, and for being a neighbor town of Pilgrim's Rest, a more touristy miner's town (more on that later). Graskop's main street only stretches for a couple hundred meters with small retail stores, art galleries, a hotel, and a famous pancake restaurant on the two sides. It is dead quiet at night, but street vendors flock the sidewalks during the day, selling African crafts. Graskop very much reminds me of a small town in an old Western movie. It feels like it's in the middle of nowhere, and the road that leads into and out of it stretches far into nothingness.

The town of Graskop:

Good News & Bad News...

Good news first-

I finally made it back safe to civilization (internet) after having gone without it for a few days. The good news is I have lots of interesting things to tell you about the trip so far. I will be making separate posts on them later (at least some of it will be posted tonight. I'm back in Johannesburg now and will leave for Cape Town tomorrow.

The bad news-

I just phoned home in Bangkok to get an update on Misia. P'Noi (the caretaker) informed me that the day after I left, Misia had a big pimple on her butt which popped and had a lot of discharge. P'Noi took Misia to the vet who treated the infection himself for a few days. Now P'Noi has been doing it by herself at home. The vet had to shave the hair around the infected site to control the hygiene. It sounded like Misia's doing better now, but I am still very worried. The vet said this happened because a gland around the area is clogged by something dirty. I don't know whether the fact that she'd survived the long 16-hour flight without going at all had anything to do with it... or the stress of being in a new environment and not having me there. I feel really bad now. I wish I could cut my trip short and take the next flight home to see her :(