Pietermaritzberg, South Africa

Headed back to Elaine and Rodney's place to warm up and get some laundry done. We were able to catch up with their news as well. Rodney's South African Master's Hockey team didn't lose any of their games so that was good. Elaine had to look after the shop and was dreading having to deal with a delivery of stock at the same time as she had to serve last minute shoppers for Womens' Day. She did however manage to get 25 pallets of stock unpacked and stored and they had a bumper day of sales so she was pretty chuffed about that.

We stocked up on supplies again at the local shopping centre and spent time researching for a new cooker. We had photo CDs burnt and usually we burn two discs and post one home to our daughter Kerri and then we can dump the second one.

Our car was so dusty we had to take it to the local BP service station where the locals hand washed it. You drive through an area where it is water blasted by a guy and then it comes out the other side where other guys are waiting to hand wash and hand polish it. It took them 1 and 1/2 hours. We could not have done such a good job as they did as it needed the high pressure wash.

It was hair cutting time so we set ourselves up outside and I cut John's hair and he trimmed mine. The maid watched us fascinated with the whole procedure. John likes it if I wear a shirt with lines on it then he can follow them to get a straight line!!!

We enjoyed our final evening with Elaine and Rodney and look forward to a visit from them in NZ one day.

Sani Pass, South Africa

Have included a photo of the last cook up with our old optimus at Giant's Castle.

Drove the incredibly dusty, rocky, bumpy road known as Nottingham Road. There was not much along the road as there were miles and miles of eucalyptus forest and some pine.

Passed through a few small towns and here is a postbox stand that can be seen in many of the small towns.This one is in pretty good condition but some of them have been vandalised or burnt and unusable. Lots of the formal settlements have numbers stencilled onto the walls of the houses to identify them from informal settlements.

Saw lots of women carrying long branches on their heads which they use for firewood or to construct the walls of their houses. A frame of flexible saplings is made then filled with small rocks and finally this is all daubed with mud or mud and dung.

As we drove down to Underberg from Nottingham Road we passed several dairy farms and most of them seemed to be owned by members of the Watson family as the nameplates on the gates informed us. The farms were huge with dams and some green grass which was a noticeable difference to the scenery we had travelled to this point. It was easy to tell the farms were owned by white farmers because there were exotic trees lining the driveways and along some of the fencelines. Although there were no leaves on the trees they still looked beautiful all spaced equally and provided a nice view from the monotony of the forests and dry brown grass hills.

We stopped at Underberg to buy some supplies. It seems a popular place for people from Pietermaritzberg to have a holiday house. There were several blocks of new shopping centres and even one that had been finished but not tenanted was up for sale. Many of the streets had B & Bs or guesthouses and there were several eating and drinking places. It certainly had a holiday feeling about the place.

We had originally wanted to go up the Sani Pass which has the border post to Lesotho but as Lil's new passport has not arrived we will try to go to Lesotho later. However we booked into a lodge at the start of the pass and spent some time there looking at it and hiking around the area. It was pretty cold being so high up and we were supplied with hot water bottles to keep us warm in the night.

Looking towards Sani Pass and Lesotho.

While on a hike we came over a rise to see this well dressed man with a trilby style hat, suit jacket and trousers, wearing highly polished brown leather dress shoes. He was carrying a tartan patterned suitcase. He was sitting on a rock eating his lunch of flat bread wrapped in newspaper. We didn't expect such a scene in the middle of nowhere and as he didn't speak any English we were unable to chat to find out his story.

There were lots of hiking trails starting at the lodge and like all backpackers here they also run tour offices. We could have done a 4 day horse trek into Lesotho to stay in a local village, or 4x4 tours, river rafting (in season), as well as any combination of the above.

The lodge also had a dairy business making cheese and yoghurt and we got fresh milk everyday. They also ran a 'tea garden' which we would call a coffee shop or cafe. From this they sold home made produce in jars, cakes and biscuits, dried meats, and trout. You could also buy several African crafts. This lizard made from wire was covered in beads and used as a wall light.

It was a nice place by the fire in the evenings to chat to other travelers and get information on places we want to go to. We met a French family who have invited us to visit them if we make it to France. The couple had been traveling with their 9 year old daughter for 7 months. Most of the travelers here were French as well.

More Drakenbergs, South Africa

Have had to contact the rental company to see if we can extend the time we want to rent our little car. We have had word that Lil's passport is on its way to Pretoria and the NZ High Commission so we will head in that direction to pick it up.

Headed south along the Drakensberg to Giant's Castle. Stopped in the picnic area for lunch along with a few other families and a mini bus full of boarding school kids. There was a sign warning us to cover our wipers as a local crow had a fetish for them. Only one person heeded the warning and wrapped them in a towel. We would liked to have done a walk here but we had a long drive in the dusty conditions that were quite slow so we headed off. There were kilometres and kilometres of dirty dusty roads with some of them being reduced to half their width because there were piles of rock and gravel waiting to be crushed and used to repair the road.

There was not much traffic on the road so that made the journey more bearable in the heat and the dust. Some of the places on our map never appeared where they should have while others appeared in their place and were not on our map.

A soccer game near Loteni.

We drove into Loteni Camp and there was no one in the office so we pitched our tent and had a hot shower. There was no electricity but there were gas heated hot showers and toilets.The board with the chalet bookings was full of names and there was only one family of 4 in the camp site.

The father spoke English to the 2 boys while the mother spoke German and they lived not far away and regularly camped here with their boys. The boys had left clothes in the showers so John returned them and chatted away. The father complained about how hard he had to work to earn 9,000 Rand per week to enjoy a reasonable lifestyle. He had worked in Germany for 4 years and the UK in construction, also for 4 years. It was interesting that such a subject came up after such a short encounter.

There was a concrete pit for the ubiquitous braai so we used it to start our multi fuel cooker. Unfortunately the whole cooker caught on fire and now is useless. We had to work quickly to stop the grass around the fireplace catch on fire. Fortunately I had already cooked the meal and we were just reheating it else it would have been a cold night for us. Now we have to look for an alternative cooker somewhere. The good old optimus had been so faithful for so long!

Saw a few bucks and zebra but not much else. There were a few private lodges with exclusive rights to fish for trout in the river in the park and being a holiday weekend the lodges were full.

We had planned to do a small hike but the trails were covered in mist and not having maps and not knowing the area and not being able to see anything ,we decided to move on.

We met a lot of traffic as people were heading home from their holidays and we were covered with dust inside and out. The poor car is starting to rattle quite a bit now as the screws loosen from the bumpy roads.

Headed for Sani Lodge Backpackers near the Lesotho border.

Drakenbergs, South Africa

The next day we drove to the Golden Gate Highlands National Park. It was quite a warm day so we stopped for a short 2 hour hike and had lunch in the park watched by a sole baboon from a distance. Saw a few duiker but like all the other parks there was a lot of blackened burnt grass and maybe the animals had moved on. Saw a few zebra on our way out. Echo ravine

Drove on to Inkosana Lodge in the Champagne Valley inland from Winterton and the central part of the Ukhahlamba World Heritage park. The lodge is a beautiful B & B/backpacker's place that Vera Ann recommended. We were lucky to get the last double in the place and stayed in a rondavel with an ensuite. There was a shared kitchen nearby and in a separate part of the complex were dorm rooms with another shared kitchen. The common area was a huge room with a fire and lots of seating and views of the hills. The owner Ed was a great host and managed to change some of his bookings around so we would not have to camp as it was really cold at night. We saw Ed's staff putting thick blankets on the tall flowering aloes to protect them from the frost. The second night we spent in a Zulu style rondavel and it was very comfortable and warm.

While cooking one day in the shared kitchen we met Connie and Rupert. Their children were at boarding school and all three had been selected to sing with the Natal Childrens' Choir- not surprising as Connie is a music teacher. The children had a concert nearby so they were able to see them and listen to them. Rupert told us about his cane farm in New Hanover and invited us to visit him and check out life as a cane farmer.

Ed had some maps of the trails in the national park and gave everyone advice on the trails. We drove to the Monk's Cowl entrance to the Drackenburgs, which was not far up the valley. On the way we passed a beautiful golf course which had time share holiday places all around the entrance and it looked full being a long weekend.

We decided to do the 11 km hike to Blind Man's Corner and return via the Keartland Pass. we climbed 600metres above the car park to 2100m with some good views of Champagne Castle, Monk's Cowl Peak and Cathkin Peak.

On the way we chatted with an accountant from Johannesburg. He had had too much wine at Easter time and agreed to climb Mt Kilimanjaro with his son so he was getting himself fit. He looked older than us and didn't want to walk on a part of the track that had small stones in case he slipped so we began to wonder how he would do on the mountain.

We arrived at Breakfast Creek to find a couple and a scout patrol who invited us to join them for lunch. We chatted away and discovered that Claire and Greg knew our South African friends Stuart in NZ, Evan, Fiona, Derek, Colleen and Gill in Calgary. They knew them through the Mountain Climbing Club at university. We couldn't believe it.

We passed several small groups of young people who were going to camp the long weekend in the hills near the streams so it is a popular place for this.

The walk up was enjoyable and were the only ones on the pass down. It was a steep step path and all the area was black from the grass burning and not so interesting to look at. Even though it was a warm day we had to pack warm clothes, raincoats, and a torch, and sign in and out at the park office. Part of the fee you pay to enter the park is used for rescue teams if needed. Like all high mountains the weather is changeable. Other than a few skinks we never saw any other wildlife.

We had to wash all our clothes again because of the ash from the burnt grass and luckily it dried in the Zulu rondavel we were in. The roof was woven like a giant basket and was held up a single central pole. The solid mud walls seemed to release the heat that it had stored during the day so we were really cosy.

We were able to get a pretty good internet signal so we were able to catch up with our daughter. She has had to find tenants for us and when she advertised she had 15 applications for the place at the beach and now has to sort through for the best one.

Kestel, South Africa

Stocked up on supplies for our trip to the Drakenburg mountain area as we would be staying in places a long way from shops. We drove up Olivierpass and at the top were several people selling souvenirs. They had bottles filled with coloured sand and pretty patterns. We had seen these before in Jordan, but there they displayed camels and complicated desert scenes in the bottles. We cannot buy and carry such things so left this young boy oranges instead.

The pastureland we drove through was pretty dry and only the irrigated farms provided a bright green contrast.

We booked into a backpacker place in Kestel run by Vera Ann before we left Pietermaritzburg. Along the way Vera Ann rang us to tell us that we would be sharing the place with about 18 young Americans and hoped we wouldn't mind. We thought that was very caring of her and of course we didn't mind.

Vera Ann is like many other other South African parents who have children overseas. Some of her children are in Germany and the UK. She tries hard to get to see the grandchildren whenever she can save enough money.

She moved from Johannesburg to Kestel which is a tiny village with an enormous brick church featuring a huge steeple in the centre. She doesn't fit in with the community because she is not religious and lives a lifestyle that they think is too alternative for the conservative residents. She has ducks and chickens wandering in the yard along with a couple of cats and dogs. She had been busy putting a load of manure on to her vegetable garden so she could be self sufficient. The almonds trees were in blossom but they didn't produce much else as the frost affected them. Vera Ann makes all kinds of jams and sells them to restaurants, stores, and to backpackers who pass through. At this time of the year she cannot keep up with the orders as there is not much growing in her garden and she tries to produce organically grown jams.

With a group of local women Vera Ann has started a smocking business. She has taught the women how to smock and they make girls' dresses which they sell under the fair trade campaign. The fabric used in the dresses is cotton and features traditional African patterns that the women wear everyday and would look great on kids any where in the world.

We learnt a lot about life for Vera Ann in South Africa. She worked as a secretary when she left school and some of her earnings went in to a retirement fund. With the change of government she can no longer get any money from the fund so she has to find ways to earn an an income and save for her old age by herself.

There was a lot of roadworks going on in the streets around the backpackers and Vera Ann told us that the local parliamentarian owned a brick factory so he was paving all the streets. She saw this as a waste of money as she was not on a main thoroughfare and there were dirt streets near the town centre that needed attention before her one.

We passed a lot of farm land as we headed for the northern end of the Drakenburgs. Some places were irrigated by giant irrigators and the fresh green grass was a huge contrast to the old dry yellow clumps on most of the farms. It was pretty hazy and smoky as the farmers burnt all the dry pasture and all the sides of the roads were charred tufts.

The youngsters at Vera Ann's were in two vans and had stayed with Vera Ann last year. They are on their summer holidays and are part of a group that come to Africa to do some voluntary work. The youngsters came from different socio - economic backgrounds and had to do a lot of planning themselves. They stayed at the backpackers after spending time in Lesotho helping to construct a road for the locals. When they came in it was dark and Vera Ann was worried about them being so late. When they left Lesotho the border guard discovered that the registration on their vans had expired and told them they had to pay a fine of 600 rand or they would all go to jail. They had to call their embassy to get advice and were told to pay it. The border guards on the South African side were not bothered by the registration papers even though it was a South African vehicle. The group leaders were very upset at the way they were treated after having helped out the local villagers. They also discovered when they had a flat tyre that the van's spare was flat as well. They were going to take that up with the rental agency too. All in all they had a rewarding time and enjoyed the experience of manual labour and helping the locals improve their roading.

It was pretty cold at night and each bed in the backpackers had a hot water bottle so it was a cosy night's sleep. As Vera Anne's was not too far from the Royal Natal Nature Reserve we did a day trip there and headed out early.

We parked in the Sentinel car park at 2400m above sea level. This was another place that we could use our national park 'wild card' and not have to pay an entrance fee. We hiked to the chain ladders

and then walked onto the Tugel Waterfalls. The walk was graded as challenging.

There was quite a bit of smoke and not such a clear view because they were burning the grass. At one point we had to walk through the flames as they burnt the grass on each side of the trail and it was too boggy to go off the path.

We bumped into several people on the trail and they all had guides and we were the only ones without one as Vera Anne had told us we wouldn't need one. She knew of accommodation places that told their guests they had to have them and then organised their tour desks to find guides for the guests. There were a couple of Dutch guys and an English couple on honeymoon so we sat by the waterfalls and watched a couple of gliders flying above us in the thermals over the falls. The only birds we saw were a couple of crows who swooped on an apple core that someone had abandoned near us.

We passed below the summit at 3165m asl. The river leading to the falls had a layer of frozen ice on top of it and there were lots of patches of snow in the grass and a huge pile at the bottom of the falls that would have made a thunderous noise as it fell from above.

We returned via the gully and expected it to have a bit of vegetation but it was stony and there was no sign of ice. Some of the rocks had a turquoise blue fleck in it. It took us 6 hours to do the hike and we spent a bit of time yakking to the other hikers as well. It's a pretty spectacular place.

Back at Vera Anne's we were able to wash and dry our laundry in front of her wood stove as our socks and pants' legs were black with ash from the grass. The Americans had left so we had the place to ourselves.

Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

From Durban we took a toll road to Pietermaritzburg to visit our friend Stuart's brother Rodney and his wife Elaine. Outside of Durban we saw the cell phone towers that are disguised as either palms or pine trees.

Rodney and Elaine have a cosmetic outlet store and were gearing up for a busy time as the upcoming public holiday is Womens' Day, so they were expecting a rush on gift sets. Elaine is a talented artist and we enjoyed seeing her art in the house. Rodney is in training for an international masters' hockey tournament so he is pretty fit. We had a lot to chat about and enjoyed our time together and felt we had known each other for years rather than hours.

Elaine supports a group that helps children who have been left homeless by their parents having died from AIDS. The group fundraise to get funds to give the children what they need.

We have met quite a few of Stuart's family so we were able to catch up on their news and look at some photos of family events from the family albums.

The poinsettia in Elaine's garden

I am not a dog lover, but I was taken with Elaine and Rodney's little dog, Rusty. Their son bought a car from a lady who was going overseas and she asked them if they would also like her two dogs as well as the car. Rusty stands on his back legs and waves his paw at you. He also has a cute habit of pointing one leg behind him rather than his tail. Sometimes you could even swear he smiles as he curls his lip up to show some of his teeth.

John was able to get an optician appointment and have the glaucoma in his left eye checked. It all seemed healthy although the pressure was a little high so he was able to report to the ophthalmologist back home.

We were able to get some advice on places to visit in the Drakenburgs from Rodney and Elaine, so have made some plans to stay and hike in different parts of the mountain area. We have heard these mountains talked about so often by our South African friends- Sue and Stuart, Colleen and Derek, Evan and Fiona, and Gill and Choc - that we cannot visit Africa without visiting them.

Durban, South Africa

Drove along the coast, rather than take the fast toll road, to Durban. Just a couple of streets back from the main beach roads there are villages of rondavels in which the locals live along dusty unsealed roads. There were simple street stalls set up at intersections where they were selling bags of oranges.



The main beach roads had large houses with security fences and many looked like they were only used as holiday homes.



We were lucky enough to find a map lying around a hostel that gave us a lot of up to date detail about the roads we would need to get to Durban and onto our hostel near The Point. The hostel was a huge converted warehouse building not far from the CBD, the beach, and uShaka Marine Park. It had a huge parking garage at street level so we were able to leave the car there for no extra charge. The main common area was enormous and rather impersonal but very clean and tastefully decorated. On the rooftop was an outdoor area to overlook the harbour and a bar and TV area. There were signs everywhere telling guests to conserve water and electricity. We washed some laundry but couldn't find any where to hang it and when I asked at reception they told me to put it in the dryer. I couldn't let that pass by telling the receptionist that the sunshine could dry it for free. I couldn't understand why there was nowhere to hang washing in the sun when the country is in a drought.



In the evening we wanted to go to an Indian restaurant for Lil's birthday dinner but it was blowing a gale and the wind was very cold and the only Indian eating places at nearby uShaka were outside. We were keen to try the Bunny Chow, a loaf of bread filled with curry, that Durban is famous for. We had to settle on a fish place that overlooked the harbour and served a seafood potjie, a stew served in a black cast iron three legged pot. It was very tasty.



Someone told us that the sardines were running along the coast so we contacted the sardine hot- line, a local radio station with a recorded message, but the weather was too windy and rough and no sardines were being washed up. When they do run, the whales, dolphins, and the sharks chase the sardines up onto the beach. The locals catch the sardines in large crates and sometimes there are thousands and thousands of them. They can beach anywhere along the coast at this time and unfortunately we couldn't see it happen.



We did a bus tour of Durban in an open air double-decker bus. It was good value and showed us lots of the interesting sights that we could visit later. The soccer stadium was pretty impressive with its sky bridge over the top. You could walk up the bridge, bungy from it, or take the sky car up to the top. It was a pretty hazy when we saw it so decided against any of those options.



In Durban, 60% of the population is Black African, 30% Indian, and 10% Coloured and White, making up the 4 million residents.



In 1994, the new government brought in a policy of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) to redress the inequalities of apartheid by giving previously disadvantaged groups; Black South Africans, Coloureds, Indians, and Chinese, economic opportunities that they hadn't had before. This means that businesses have to consider the ethnic background of job applicants instead of their qualifications and experience. This has contributed to the 'brain drain' of South Africans.



Durban July is a big horse racing event and we saw many people dressed in brightly coloured extravagant race day attire. Some of the young people at the hostel decided to go to the races too. They were told the day had a floral theme so they were off to find some flowers to feel a part of the festival.



We contacted Karen who is a friend of our South African friends in Canada and NZ. Karen picked us up and took us to Phezulu Safari Park and Cultural Centre. She drove us by the One Thousand Hills Valley which was very smoky as the grass was being burnt on the hillsides. We were able to see the Montsee (I think that's how it is spelt) cliffs where our South African friends did their rock climbing apprenticeships. We saw a Zulu group dance, a demonstration of how the fortune teller/healer worked with bones and herbs, visited a traditionally made house and were told about the protocols, tasted sorghum beer, and were shown how they smoked marijuana through a cow's horn in the olden days (it is illegal now). We also saw dozens of crocodiles and lots of the local snakes, including the mambas and spitting cobras, in the reptile area. For lunch we had springbok and wildebeest salad.

Traditional healer

There is a really good bus service about the city from uShaka Park called The People Mover so we caught a bus in to town and visited the herb (mutti market) market. This market has stalls full of bulbs, leaves, bark, snake skins, bones, feathers, dried fish, baboon feet, and dozens of parts of unrecognisable animal parts that are used for traditional healing. Photos were not allowed so we didn't take any so as not to upset anyone. It was pretty noisy as there were lots of men using heavy pipes to crush bits of wood and bark inside steel bowls. Women were chopping and dicing all kinds of plants getting them ready to sell.



We spent some time at the Kwa Muhle Museum which has a large display on apartheid and showed how the Black peoples' movements were controlled by the use of an identification book called a Pass. Exhibitions on how the Blacks were treated in the United States was also included.



We could see that a lot of work had been done on the beach promenade area especially for the World Cup soccer games and has left the city with a wonderful asset. We were told that the area where our hostel is used to be full of brothels and drug dealers, but now it is a safe, well lit and busy area leading to the tourist complex at uShaka.