We’ve arrived back in Pretoria safe and sound following our African Christmas adventures. I’ll have some great stories and photos up sometime in the next few days, as soon as I find time between report writing, uni applications, and journal articles! I will also be trying to fix the things on this site that have broken (for instance, the google map).
I hope everyone is having a wonderful New Year.
I’ve been really really really busy the last while, but that’s really really no excuse for not posting… but this is:
I’m leaving this morning for Zambia! In about an hour in fact. And I just stayed up all night doing university stuff. 
South African cell phone: +27 72 704 8631
We will pick up a Botswana sim card when we’re there.
Rob and I will be following this itinerary:
Dec 14th: Nationwide Airlines flight CE204, from Johannesburg to Livingstone
Dec 14th to 17th: Jollyboys Backpackers, Livingstone, Zambia (+260 3 324229), www.backpackzambia.com
Dec 17th to 20th: Okavango River Lodge, Maun, Botswana
Dec 20th to 23rd: Visit Shadrack at his place in Central Botswana
Dec 23rd to 29th: Unstructured travel, eventually ending up in Mozambique
Dec 29th to 30th: Fatima’s Place, Maputo, Mozambique (+258 21302994, +258 21303345), www.mozambiquebackpackers.com
Dec 30th to Jan 5th: Fatima’s Nest, Tofo, Mozambique (+258 21302994, +258 21303345), www.mozambiquebackpackers.com
Jan 5th to 6th: Nelspruit, Mpumalanga, South Africa
Jan 6th to 8th: Swaziland
Jan 8th: Return to Pretoria
Have a merry Christmas! I’ll have a ton of photos when I get back. 
This past weekend was spent on an incredible journey to Lesotho and a pony ride up into the mountains to spend the night in a remote little village. For those of you too lazy to read, the photos tell some of the story, but the experience was much more than that. If you think that I’m too verbose, these six word stories from authors including Margaret Atwood may appeal to you a bit more.
Click the link at the top right corner of the post to see a Google Maps location for Malealea. And please, if you have something interesting (or really anything) to say, leave a comment! (no need for real names if you so choose)
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A little background
Lesotho is a little country stuck smack in the middle of South Africa. Pronounced Le-su-tu, the entire country is higher than 1400m above sea level, making it the highest independent state in the world. The country is quite poor, and its economy is highly integrated with that of South Africa. With no other significant natural resources, a quarter of export revenue is derived from the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, whereby Lesotho sells water to South Africa to quench the thirst of the Johannesburg / Witwatersrand area from enormous dams financed by the World Bank, among others. Excess hydroelectric power generated by the scheme is also sold to South Africa. The rest of the economy is mostly driven by manufacturing, agriculture and migrant Lesotho labour, with child labour a significant problem. According to the CIA World Factbook, 86% of the population is engaged in subsistence agriculture, giving an idea of how little development there is in the country. As with all Southern African countries, Lesotho is currently battling the HIV/AIDS epidemic, having an estimated 29% of adults infected with HIV. Life expectancy at birth has dropped more than 10 years since 2001 and now sits 34.4 years on average, making it third from the bottom of 226 countries. Only 0.3% of the population is non-black, and I can’t recall seeing any whites outside of the lodge.
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The journey south
The car that we’d booked had mechanical problems at the last minute, so we were sent a brand new silver Corolla from Johannesburg (mixed blessing). Leaving CSIR around 2:30pm, we stopped for groceries before heading out on the freeway south to Joburg. As a sign of our excellent organisation and preparedness, we immediately took a wrong turn and ended up having to drive through a fair chunk of residential Joburg, dodging crazy drivers and pedestrians alike. Finally through the city an hour later, we sped south towards Bloemfontein in the Free State, racing to make the most of the fading light, and stopping only once for food.
As darkness fell, things became interesting. Two out of every three cars were flashing their brights at us despite the fact that we had our headlights on and our brights off. We were so confused and slightly disturbed by this phenomenon that we asked the manager of the gas station at which we stopped for food, to which he responded that the only thing he could think of was that since the car was brand new, the headlights were unusually bright and everyone thought we were being jerks by blinding them. I became less and less impressed with all of it and started flashing my brights back to show oncoming traffic that indeed I have brights and this is what they look like! Well, this resulted in a few angry flashes and a couple of horns, but overall nobody decided to exact physical revenge for my insolence.
We turned off the main highway to cut diagonally towards the major border crossing into Lesotho, hurtling down narrow rural highways in the dark, with an impressive lightning storm for show, and not much gas left to weigh us down. Incidentally, when we turned into little towns looking for a gas station, we got creeped out by all the dark houses and lack of people (it was only 9pm). After a couple of these fruitless detours, I decided that we probably had enough left in the tank to get us across the border and into the capital city of Lesotho, and therefore I needn’t risk being caught alone in the dark in an unfamiliar, unlit, deserted rural South African town with only Rebecca and Rob for protection (read: human shields).
It was raining a bit when we finally pulled up to the South African side of the Maseru Bridge border crossing, parked, and got out of our car to fill out the necessary paperwork and passport stamps. After a bit of trouble extracting a pen from the lady behind the bulletproof glass we got our stamps and proceeded across the bridge, paying the toll and parking again at the Lesotho border post. Same rigmarole and we were through, with a Shell station appearing out of the darkness like a beacon for lost souls. After getting the tank filled, Rob decided he needed to visit the loo, and hopped out and round the corner, following the directions of the pump attendant. Passing a couple of loiterers, he got into the bathroom just fine, but upon exiting, his way was blocked by one of the shady characters, who told him that that would be two Rand. Not wanting a confrontation, Rob gave into the extortionist and payed him off before hopping back in the car. We peeled off in a cloud of burnt rubber.
Wandering around an new unfamiliar country in the dark, when the roads aren’t clearly marked (they may not have had names) and you aren’t sure of distances or landmarks, probably isn’t the best idea. But that was our approach nonetheless! To hell with logical planning!
I must say that poverty in the dark is much more sinister than poverty in the light, which is mostly a combination of depressing and moving. Ramshackle tin shacks and tiny worn-down mud-brick buildings loomed out of the darkness at us from either side of the road as we turned down off the main highway towards the lodge. Pavement gave way to dirt after a few minutes, and dirt gave way to potholed dirt as we wound our way up to Paradise Pass (2001m) and down the other side. It was probably a good thing that Rob and Rebecca couldn’t see the cliff that we were driving along as the road twisted down into the valley.
After a few minutes a barbed wire chain-link gate appeared in front of us, with a sign indicating to honk for service. By this time it was 11 o’clock and by the looks of the area, nobody had much electricity, so it wasn’t much of a stretch to assume that everyone inside the compound was asleep. We glanced around, taking in the mangy-looking dogs roaming about sniffing at scraps of garbage, the terrible looking road heading off to the right, the worn-down shacks scattered at the edge of the light, and decided that we probably didn’t want to sleep in the car for the night. Horn it is.
A face appeared at the gap in the fence almost instantaneously, looking at us with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation before swinging the gate open just wide enough to allow the car to pass without scratching the paint. Once inside, the fellow who’d opened the gate approached the car and inquired as to what we needed. When we told him that we had huts booked, he looked at us funny, indicated that we should follow him in the car, and walked off into the darkness with his wind-up flashlight. Trees, a few buildings and a couple of cars were all that could be made out in the moonless night, and we waited at the car while he went to try to find us space. Our booking had never made it from the contact number in Bloemfontein, 300km away, where they have phone service, to the lodge in the depths of Lesotho, where they have neither phone service nor reliable electricity. Nonetheless, once one of the managers was woken, we were found a few beds in the “forest huts” and were promised a pony trek in the morning.
Malealea Lodge
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Trekking, pony-style
Morning dawned and we set off on our horses (or ponies), led by our new guide Vincent, with the bulk of our overnight stuff carried by a packhorse. We turned east on a pitted dirt track, passing through the village of Malealea, past the handicrafts centre, where an NGO worker sat discussing what appeared to be strategy with a portable white board in front of a group of women, past the mud hut that constituted the community centre, past the mud hut that made up the preschool, past the little cinderblock school where the boys played soccer in a dirt patch while the girls danced nearby.
Saddling up; and the village community centre
Rebecca’s horse was acting up, stopping to eat and then wandering off into the schoolyard, and had to be roped to the back of the packhorse, which in turn was lead by Vincent on his own horse. Rob and I followed the three-horse train as we walked slowly down the track and across plowed dirt fields, waving to the cowherds and saying “hello” or “dumela” (the same in Sesotho) to everyone in sight.
Run-down village dam donated by the German Embassy
We came to a steep river valley and made the slow, rocky, and seemingly treacherous descent to the water below. We forded the river beside a new-looking pedestrian bridge, its bright green paint and concrete pillars completely incongruent with the narrow dirt track leading to it from either side. Climbing the other side, we were followed by a group of young boys for a short while. They cut straight up the valley wall every time we had to take a switchback, and stood waiting for us among the boulders and bushes.
Down and through the river
The highland villages through which we passed were never more than a few kilometres apart, and usually a collection of a dozen or so round huts and small brick tin-roofed buildings. Little kids would either wave to us from afar, or come running out at us in excited chaos. “Sweets” or “some sweets” or “please some sweets” was the usual first refrain. The guidelines back at the lodge had indicated that it was bad practice to give out any sugar since the kids have no regular access to dental care. Alternatively, the kids would shout “bye bye” in greeting, as their English vocabulary was quite limited. “What is the time?” might be followed by “what is your name?”.
Between villages, the incredibly folded landscape was a patchwork of plowed but mostly unplanted fields, terraced and covering any vaguely non-vertical surface. The rolling hills and valleys were spotted with cowherds, each tending to a dozen or so cattle, of which two or three usually sported a bell. The occasional herd of goats (also wearing cowbells) competed for space in my developing stereotype of Lesotho. Hardly ever were we out of range of the bells, the organically rhythmic clang seeping into my subconscious; memories of Lesotho forever infused with a rich undertone of cowbells.
All of the herdsmen, and most men in general, wore what is known as the “Lesotho blanket”, which is usually wrapped over one shoulder, around the body, and pinned at the other shoulder, forming a gap out of which the hand that holds the oft-present stick can reach. They’re worn in sun, rain, sleet, hail, snow, hot, cold, dry, and humid weather, forming a protective barrier against every element. Ironically, Lesotho blankets were never really made in Lesotho, but were originally a British introduction in the 19th century and are now mostly machine-made in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Boys also sometimes wear blankets, but the patterns and meaning change with the completion of coming-of-age rites.
Cowherd wearing a Lesotho blanket
Stopped for lunch
Riding through the hills
Village children as we pass by
After a stop for lunch and countless villages and cows, we gradually descended into our valley of destination, the clouds closing in and flashes of lightning visible over the range of peaks that formed the far side of the valley. As we passed through another village, Vincent paused and then dismounted, looking at the sky behind us in doubt.
“I think about this better. We stop here for rain.”
Another long look at the sky: “I think about this better. We get off the horses.”
Rebecca shook hands with a couple of little kids who had wandered up to us. Vincent stood with a troubled look on his face before adding, “I think about this better. We take the bags off the horses.”
Rebecca with the village kids; piglets scattering at the sound of thunder
Shouts from huts further up the hill drew the kids away, and a couple of older men wandered up to us, pointing at the sky in the direction from which we had come and saying that we should take shelter under the tin roof of an empty brick house. Not more than a few minutes later, the rain and wind ramped up, followed quickly by the most intense hailstorm I’ve ever experienced. As soon as the hail hit, the horses panicked and disappeared uphill at a gallop. The sound of hailstones on the tin roof was deafening, drowning out our excited shouts. The storm only lasted a few minutes, but after it passed, it took Vincent and a couple of villagers another twenty to round up the horses. We said goodbye to our new friends and set out for the last half hour of our journey.
Wall of water approaches; horses graze following storm
After following and then crossing the river, and six hours out of Malealea, we climbed one last hill up to the little village where we were to spend the night. We rode through to the far side where a little mud hut stood vacant but for a pile of thin plastic mattresses, a gas stove on a table and some pots and dishes. As we had travelled from Malealea, the villages gradually got poorer and poorer, with our destination being the poorest of them all. After unloading our horses, Vincent let them wander off to do their thing, which for the packhorse turned out to be fending off the advances of a horny stallion that came galloping down out of the hills. She kicked him in the head a few times, but this didn’t seem to phase him and he kept chasing her. A couple of village men went sprinting along the hillside to try to dissuade the stallion, and one, the village chief, got some bruised ribs care of the stallion’s hooves. They eventually corralled the offending beast into a stone-walled pen, where he stood snorting and looking crazy-eyed for some time.
Kid goats in our doorway; crazy-eyed stallion
The late afternoon sun had come out full of rich yellows and oranges, and I tentatively wandered back into the village, past the women brewing Lesotho beer in a big metal drum over a fire, greeting a few people but not getting much response. There seemed to be an air of mistrust: a first for us in the highlands. I tried talking to a group of little girls, but the language barrier was too much and they were quite shy. Rebecca and Rob followed, and as we kept wandering, a boy in a torn hoodie approached and introduced us to another first: “five Rand?”; and then upon receiving a no, “two Rand?”
Our new village
Fortunately, the village ice was broken when a woman called to us from a hut further up the hill, gesturing for us to climb up to her. Her English was decent, and after a half-hearted attempt to sell us some (painstakingly) imported South African beer, she sat down against the outside wall of the hut, holding her baby, and we got to talking about where we were from and what we were doing in South Africa. All of the village kids slowly accumulated around us, and as soon as a digital camera appeared, they all became really excited, posing and wanting all sorts of photos, then crowding around to look at themselves in the LCD screen. This photo shoot went on for quite a while before Rebecca started playing some sort of hand game with some of the girls, and the boys became entranced by Rob’s facial hair and hairy arms.
Villager photos: click on them for slightly better descriptions and the full experience
Sleeping goat; solar-powered boombox outside the local ‘bar’; sun-drenched valley; dusk over the village
Getting hungry, we said our goodbyes and made our way down towards our hut, pausing to greet other villagers and for Rob and Rebecca to display their dorky dancing skills for the kids. Supper consisted of rice and instant Indian food, followed by a cup of wine under the stars.In the morning, we set off on foot to find a waterfall further upriver, lead by a local guide. A few stray donkeys eyed us as we followed a dirt track up the valley, following its folding contours. Passing into the morning shadow below the waterfall, we doffed our shoes and waded up the icy stream, climbing along the rocky streambed. Thankfully, Lesotho doesn’t have the same freshwater Schistosomiasis that exists in South Africa (tiny parasitic flukes that burrow into your skin and multiply in your bloodstream), although we were only 100% certain of this once we’d gotten back to the car and checked the guidebook. After a few minutes soaked by the spray, we headed back towards the village where Vincent was waiting for us, having already saddled the horses.
Cow in morning sunlight; village from afar; stray windblown donkey
Various waterfall photos; out guide in Lesotho blanket; village from afar; the men heading out for the day; an exodus of goats
The second day was full of sun, cattle, sheep, little villages, and happy children. We took a different route back, following the river down the valley instead of climbing over the ridges as we had, coming in the day before.
In the early afternoon, a little girl in a dress came running down through the fields from a lone house in the valley, slowing only once she was alongside Rebecca’s horse.
“Hi. Please some sweets?” To which Rebecca responded with a no.
“Hi. Please some pencils?” To which I apologized that I had none.
“Hi. Please some paper?” To which Rob answered in the negative.
Now pencils and paper are something that I would feel good about giving to Basotho children! She was the only kid who asked for anything other than sweets or money. Now I know what to take into the mountains with me: fruit, pencils and paper. Then the kids will love me forever.
Landscapes of the Lesotho highlands, including a village at the confluence of two rivers, and a highland bar/cafe
My relaxed enjoyment of the ride was shattered as we forded the river again below the green pedestrian bridge. Water levels were higher after the previous day’s rain, and my horse wandered off course into a deeper bit of stream. Pulling to the left and giving the commands that we’d been taught, I must have done something wrong, as the horse became agitated and started pawing that the water, splashing me and soaking my pants! I got to feel like a stupid rich Western tourist. While it had been impossible not to feel like a terrible tourist on horseback in the mountains, towering over the locals, I hadn’t yet dipped into the ’stupid’ category.
We have an audience at lunch beside the footbridge
Finally out of the river, we stopped for lunch before climbing out of the steep valley for the last time and heading across hot, parched fields towards Malealea. The horses were excited to be nearing home and rest, and were trotting with little encouragement, eager not to be left behind by the others. Vincent gave the go ahead, and the three tourists trotted off ahead while he brought up the rear more slowly with the packhorse. Climbing a small rise, the horses jostled for position, trotting more quickly and finally breaking into a canter, at which time Rebecca began to call for her horse to slow down.
Rob and I were enjoying ourselves, and therefore encouraged our horses even more. We were galloping down the road in wild joy and I gained a slight lead on the others before my horse randomly veered off through a field. I had to pull sharply to the left to get her heading back towards the road, at which time I noticed Rebecca’s riderless horse stopped in the opposing field. Evidently as she clung to the saddle and galloped down the road, her grip slowly failed her and she slipped sideways off the saddle, eventually clinging to the horse’s neck and one stirrup until the horse decided that it didn’t like galloping with such an unbalanced load and pulled up by the roadside. Rebecca slipped to the ground, physically undamaged, but quite shaken. Rob and I pulled up beside her and helped both her and her horse calm down a bit before Vincent rode up behind us, saying that all he had heard was Rebecca yelling “No! Stop!”
Once Rebecca had remounted and her horse was roped again to the packhorse, Rob and I were given the go ahead and trotted off towards the village. We passed a funeral procession that appeared out of nowhere, and once out of sight, we sped back up to a gallop and raced down the road. My saddlebags flew off to the left and I had to catch them with one hand behind my back while holding onto the horse with my right hand and contemplating how in the hell I was going to reign the horse in at a gallop with one hand behind my back without falling off. I eventually managed to wedge the saddlebags under me and slow the horse down, shortly before the road curved sharply up to the right and deteriorated into a stony and pitted surface. We’d made it back to the lodge all in one piece!
Lonely tree; gardens at Malealea overlooking broad valley
Following showers and a beer at the bar, we wandered down to the handicraft centre to look over the local merchandise, and then sat around the on-deck fire-pit with some post-dinner beers, chatting with other tourists. After a few hours, I went back to the hut to get some sleep for the long drive in the morning, while Rob and Rebecca followed a while later.
A few beers around the fire; Harry Potter visits Lesotho
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Something rotten…
Driving back up north in the morning, we decided to stop in at the capital, Maseru, in order to ask at Visitor Information whether it was feasible to visit the massive Katse Dam as part of our last day in Lesotho. As we drove into the city from the south, people streamed up and down both sides of the road while kombis and little white taxis crowded for space and stopped randomly. The low commercial buildings lining the road were the most rundown structures that I’ve ever seen in any city, most with windows or walls missing, and not one recognizable as being operational. Regular speed humps slowed traffic to nearly walking pace every hundred metres or so, while pedestrians dodged vehicles to cross the road despite the presence of crosswalk markings at every speed hump.
Following the little map in the Rough Guide, we found our way westward to Kingsway Ave, the only part of the city with real office towers (although I think the Post Office may have been the only tall building if memory serves). Before rioting and civil war in 1999, Kingsway Ave had been a fairly well-developed commercial area of shopping centres, banks, and restaurants, but a number of buildings were burned or destroyed during the riots, leaving empty lots that were quickly lined with tin vendor shacks and booths converted from old rail crates. Being that it was Sunday, not many of the shops were open, but there were still a fair number of people around. After failing to find the info centre, we decided instead to grab some food and head north along the highway to the craft-rich town of Teyateyaneng. We wandered around in the Kingsway area trying to find a little bakery mentioned in the guidebook, before turning left down a narrow side-street and curving round to miraculously emerge in front of the shop.
As I got out of the car, a middle-aged man approached me and offered to watch the car for me, to which I answered positively, as this had been standard practice in South Africa. He then warned me that we’d unwittingly come in the wrong entrance to the parking lot and that I should be careful that I don’t get a 200 Rand fine from the police. I thanked him for his advice and went into the shop to buy some tasty-looking baking. I made note of the two policemen standing down the street, speaking with a few people at the bus stop, but thought nothing of it.
Evidently, I should have paid off the ‘friendly’ man, as the policemen were standing behind the car when we emerged from the bakery. I dropped my food on the driver’s seat, and they signalled for me to approach. In broken English, one of them asked me which entrance I had used. I feigned confusion and indicated the correct entrance to enter. The policeman laughed and asked me again, and if I were certain. I pretended not to completely understand, but admitted the truth. After informing me that there was a fine for driving the wrong direction. Stalling, I asked to see the sign, and gestured for Rob and Rebecca to follow. The sign turned out to be a generic red circle with the horizontal white line, but was nearly impossible to see the way we had come. On the way back to the car, I surreptitiously pulled two hundred-Rand bills out of the wallet inside my pocket.
The policemen told us that such a traffic violation is usually a R700 fine, and that we would have to wait until tomorrow to pay it, as the magistrate wasn’t open on Sundays. In the meantime, they would have to take us down to the station, take our passports, and hold me there overnight. Foreigners can’t simply come in and flaunt all the local laws, and it is their duty as policemen to uphold the law. When Rob asked if there were any other way to pay, such as by mail from South Africa, they only laughed. The ‘good’ policeman indicated that the magistrate might lower the fine to as little as R400 considering that we were first time offenders and foreigners to boot. He emphasized that they are not oppressors… people think that they are, but they’re simply doing their job. He said that they really wanted to do us a favour and settle the matter right there, but that they wouldn’t be doing their job and could get in serious trouble. Rebecca nearly threw a fit at this, and we had to have a quick three-way meeting a short distance off, where I told Rob and Rebecca that I would offer them R100.
I casually laid out our case to the policemen, saying that in light of the fact that we were new to the city, hadn’t seen the sign, hadn’t meant any harm, and were first-time offenders, that I thought a fine of R100 was more reasonable. To this, the ‘bad’ policeman gave me sinister look and said that he thought he’d seen me somewhere before. I again repeated my offer, and the ‘good’ policeman said that I should pay what my conscience tells me is appropriate compensation for the crime, as this was more in the spirit of atonement. I replied that my conscience indicated to me that R100 was appropriate, and he tentatively accepted. Rebecca was on the verge of tears at this point, and noticing this, the ‘good’ policeman said that we shouldn’t do anything that we didn’t feel good about (he wouldn’t take a bribe if we weren’t happy to bribe him?). After Rebecca assured him that she was just fine, I handed the hundred Rand bill over in a movie-style bribe-shake, to which the ‘good’ policeman responded with a limp handshake of his own, making sure that the money was there. Shaken, we got in the car, making sure to buckle our seatbelts and drive out the correct way, waving to the policemen on the way by.
We got out of Maseru as quickly as possible, heading north to Teyateyaneng, where we stopped at a few weaving studios, and Rebecca picked out a hanging for her future apartment. In each town through which we passed, the signs of extreme poverty were everywhere. The rundown and abandoned feel of the buildings was exaggerated by the fact that many of them were closed for Sunday. Each town had a kombi stop its centre, with people milling about and encroaching on the road.
A solar-powered weaving studio made out of old aluminum cans. Local women work on massive looms in the back workshop, making hangings, rugs and coasters out of mohair.
We crossed back into South Africa at the northern border crossing of Caledonspoort, having our passports stamped and steeling ourselves for the four hours back to Pretoria, mostly through the Free State (almost identical to southern Saskatchewan farmland). Soon after crossing the border we were stopped at a police/army roadblock where the officers were nothing but purely professional in checking my licence and the boot of the car. It was quite a relief at this stage to be back in South Africa where we knew the dangers and (mostly) how to mitigate them.
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In retrospect
Lesotho was an incredible experience. Nearly everyone in the highlands was massively friendly and welcoming, and the children were inspiring, if a bit hung up on “some sweets”. It was an overwhelming experience to stay in the village for the night and meet everyone. The wonderful richness of landscapes and people was a new and powerful mixture. I can only hope that my experiences in the next few months do not pale too much in comparison. And now I know how to bribe a policeman….
I’ve just uploaded a few photos from the past couple of weeks to show that I’m still alive. The first photos are from a costume/dress-up/ housewarming party that a colleague threw a couple of weekends ago. It’s just a little proof that us housemates are getting off-campus every once in a while.
Costume/housewarming party
I took some photos of a couple of interesting spiders that I found in our house (for all you spider-huggers out there, I took them outside and let them go). One of them was carrying a big egg sack, ready to burst forth with thousands of little baby spiders.
Spiders in glasses! (spiders in glasses… something for the Tickle Trunk shopping list)
The past weekend was our most lively since Kruger Park! Friday night was spent out at Hatfield Square, the students’ hangout, ringed with bars and clubs. Although it wasn’t the most sophisticated social scene, a few beers and good company helped to pass the evening enjoyably.
Beers at Hatfield Square!
Saturday dawned bright and clear, and the three housemates plus Nikki and her roommate headed into Joburg to spend the day at the Gold Reef City theme park. Although the place is advertised as being a good way to educate yourself about the gold mining history of this area (Joburg is essentially built on top of mines), the surface section of the theme park is essentially comprised of the usual assortment of theme park rides (ferris wheel, several roller coasters, log ride, river tubing experience, whirly-gig, pendulum boat, etc…) with a superficial layer of gold mining tackiness layered on top. They do offer tours of the old mine on which it’s built, but we decided that it would be much more worthwhile to take such a tour at a mine that wasn’t a theme park. It was all good fun though, and I even got a few photos on some of the rides (I really wanted to go back and get one on the roller coaster, but we ran out of time!). There were a fair number of school groups there, even a pre-school group, and definitely a smaller proportion of white people than in east-end Pretoria. All the kids and smiling faces simply added to the excitement and carnival feel.
Fun at Gold Reef City!
Around five o’clock the place shut down, and all the crowds made their way out the gate, exhausted but elated. As we were making our way to Nikki’s car, we passed a couple of minibus taxis that had their doors wide open and African popular music cranked up on decent stereo systems. The vans were rocking and the young men and women sitting in the back were in full dance mode! What followed can only be described as a spontaneous ten-minute parking lot dance party, with the teenaged boys most competitive with eachother. It was amazing to see this burst of colour and music bloom around us as we passed through. A few minutes later and everyone drifted off to their cars, taxis and buses.
Sunday was spent preparing a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner for our new friends from work. It was all generated and organized by Rob, on the basis that we should introduce South Africans to some Canadian customs. I cycled to the grocery store in the morning and spent two and a half hours trying to find some hard-to-come-by ingredients while Rob and Rebecca cooked and prepared salads. By the time six o’clock rolled around, we’d been so efficient that dinner had to be warmed up when people wanted to eat. The nine or so guests brough appetizers, wine (which we managed to finish before dinner), and desert, and we all dug in to a wonderful meal, prepared from an assortment of Canadian and American recipes. All in all a great success, and Rob is still eating the leftovers.
Turkey dinner!
On a random note, my bike’s having some serious issues and I think the seat may fall off before I can get my hands on some Allen keys. I also really really regret not bringing my hiking boots, as there are so many places to hike, and boots are the one thing you can’t borrow from someone!!!
I hope things aren’t too cold in Canada yet! I’m sure I’ll miss the snow for a minute (maybe two) this winter at some point.