Album from parent visit
In April 2005, Johan’s parents visited during a trip through South Africa. They visited Cape Town, flew to East London and then traveled back towards Cape Town. This album contains pictures taken by the parents (specifically Cape Town and surroundings) and more family type pictures from during the visit. Click here or on the image to see the pictures!
Album with pictures of the trip to Cape Town
We made our first holiday trip in South Africa: we drove on the famous Garden Route to Cape Town, visiting places such as Jeffrey’s bay, Plettenberg Bay, Knysna and Wilderness along the way. We then visited Cape Town for a few days, returning through the “alternate route” R62, which provided wonderful sights and a very relaxing experience. This album contains the pictures of this great trip as well as more details about the trip (including why I am on a Segway in this picture)! Click here or on the image to go the album.
For those of you who would end up in Cape Town or surroundings, here are some addresses we found very useful:
Vinolentia Liquor Boutiques sells an amazing range of Belgian beer including Westmalle Trippel, Rochefort 10, Geuze and Duvel. In fact, they have a whole shelf full of at least 30 kinds of Belgian beer. We never found any of those beers anywhere else in South Africa.
Contact information:
Shop 10
Delmar Centre
Panorama
Cape Town
Tel: 021 930 4374
zeroninethreetwo is the most incredible restaurant that started out specialising in Belgian food, but has now a wide range of foods, including Springbok, lamb, etc. This must be one of the best restaurants in the country.
Just a nice picture I took at the local (East London) beach:
Icecream on the beach
Lion Park Album
Only in Africa …
A bit outside of East London there is a lion park where you can actually pet lioncubs (if they have any, of course!).
When we were there, there were some very cute little 3-week old lions that acted just like cats. There were also some 3-month old lions that were very fond of each other.
However, the greatest moment of all was when we visited an area with 7 and 8 month old lions and tigers. The tigers were very impressive and large, but we were still allowd to approach them and touch. The scary part was that they seemed very interested in nibbling our toes (which were in sandals). When I bent over to pet one of them, he thought I might be food, or wanted to play with me, and jumped straight on top of me! What an experience!
Click on the image, or here to see the pictures!
A couple of weeks ago, I made a businesstrip across the country for a project I was working on. We didnt get to spend much time anywhere, as we made a trip from East London to Cape Town to Johannesburg and back to East London in two days. Most of that time was obviously spend at the office. However, I did get to have a first glimpse of Cape Town and Johannesburg:
Cape Town: It was quite fascinating to fly into Cape Town – you fly over impressive mountain ranges, but also see some lovely looking coast Line. Cape Town itself has a big mountain almost in the city Centre, which makes for an impressive sight. This picture shows the city from the freeway:
Capetown from the highway
And this picture picture shows the mountain range from a restaurant at Victoria Warf shopping mall. A very pleasant place to have a meal and get a feeling for life in this city.
Cape Town Waterfront
I am told that going up the mountain gives some very impressive views as you can see across the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean (they come together here) and Cape Town. Overall, Cape Town seems pleasant enough, although there is also much poverty and (I am told) crime. What surprised me is how much open plane there is next to the city. I always had imagined Cape Town to be in a small area squeezed between the mountain and the ocean, but in fact there is a huge area next to Cape Town with fields and open lands.
Johannesburg: The office in Johannesburg is outside of the city centre, but I am told you dont want to be in the city centre anyway. There really wasnt much to see in the areas of Johannesburg I saw. It reminded me a lot of some places in the U.S. with large highways, big cars on those highways and large billboards advertising products and services. In fact, there was so little to see in Johannesburg that I ended up not taking any pictures there.
Last week, I was asked to do an article for work describing how I had settled in, how I liked my role, etc. Here was my answer to the first question (I wont post the other questions as they could be constructed as confidential to the company):
Life in South Africa is great. The country is known for its high crime rates, there are risks associated with the political and economical situation and I was told that infrastructure is not as good as Western Europe and North America, where I had lived up till my move to Africa. However, once you actually live in the country, you discover the other side of South Africa: it is a beautiful and diverse country with a very pleasant climate, great people from many different cultures (there are 11 official languages in South Africa!) and a high standard of living. You learn quickly where it is unsafe to go and find that, although burglar bars are a standard feature on the houses, crime does not really affect you on a daily basis in East London. The great help from my colleagues at Johnson & Johnson South Africa has made the adjustment to the new culture easier and allowed me to settle down quickly.
I then published a picture with the swimming pool and the view from the patio. Since you already saw that picture in an earlier post (See also here), I replaced it here with a lovely sunRISE picture from our patio. As always, you can click on the image to get a larger version!
Sunrise over East London
Overall, my experience is that people here work hard during the day, but during at night and during the weekends it feels like being on vacation all the time! There are some lovely beaches around the East London area and the weather is very pleasant – warm but not too hot or humid.
I found Christmas in South Africa quite an adjustment as it falls in the middle of summer and therefore we experienced 30 degrees sunny weather, which is not what I am used to at that time of the year.
Last week, I participated in a “defensive driving course” at work. In line with similar courses in other countries, this course is focused on how to avoid accidents by driving defensively. A number of messages, such as scanning the road and looking at your rear view mirrors on a regular basis are in line with what I had learned before. However, there were some very “South African” messages in the course. The top 10 surprises for me were:
1. In case you were wondering, South Africa drives on the left hand side, similar to the UK.
2. You have to be very careful for people walking on the street, including (especially) on the highway! When you drive on a highway, you typically have a large number of people walking on either side of the road and regularly one of them decides to cross in front of a car that is driving at 120km (the speed limit). I am told that traditionally, the black population is not good at depth perception. The story goes that this is caused by being carried on the back while being babies and therefore not being trained on looking further away. Not sure how true that is, but either way regularly people get killed on the high-way because of collisions with cars. By the way, if you hit anyone, you are automatically charged with homicide until proven it is not your fault!
3. You want to keep your car door locked at all times. This avoids someone carjacking you while you are driving slowly or stopping in front of a traffic light.
4. It is an acceptable practice to drive through red traffic lights at nights … slowly and carefully of course. The reason for this is that you otherwise run the risk of being carjacked or otherwise attacked and by keeping moving that chance is dramatically reduced. This is much more common in large cities such as Johannesburg and Cape Town. East London seems to be very safe compared to the larger cities.
5. When there is a police road block, you want to be very alert to whether it is actually police stopping you. Apartently, there are occassions where a group decides to set up a fake police stop and then rob people when they stop! It is acceptable to ask for identification before opening your window or even pass the roadblock and report to the nearest police station instead!
6. You have to be careful for truckloads that are not attached very well. Regularly, there are loads that come apart and hit other cars.
7. Beware of the taxis! Taxis here are small minivans that pick people up along a route and drop them of somewhere else. They are one of the main form of public transport you find here and are almost exclusively used by the black population. The taxis usually are very crowded and seem to have their own driving style which does not take the other roadusers into consideration. So, it is not unusual that a taxi might suddenly stop in front of you or might suddenly make an unexpected turn.
8. Be careful for kids (or adults) on bridges that throw stones at cars. Again, this is not very common in East London, but particularly in the bigger cities kids sometimes drop stones onto cars. Sometimes just for fun, but sometimes also to stop the drivers so they can rob them!
9. It is acceptable in South Africa to drive on the shoulder (left of the yellow line) if you are a slow vehicle. However, the problem is that with all the people walking on the street (see earlier point), such cars cannot always stay there. That means that they are likely to suddenly jump out in front of regular road users.
10. As in so many other countries, there are some very aggressive drivers in South Africa. This includes suddenly passing on the left and jumping right in front of you. It also includes getting upset at other users and attacking them for their driving style. An important difference is that guns are quite common in South Africa!
All of this sounds probably worse that it is, but there are sure some interesting contrasts with other countries!
It was an odd Christmas this year. It was the first time we were in the Southern hemisphere for this holiday and it is amazing how the completely different weather influences the holiday. I worked on December 24th and we went and visited John, the company’s MD in the evening. On the 25th, with sunny weather and temperatures around 30 degrees, we relaxed, spent a lot of time in the pool and watched 24!
The weather with new year, and several days afterwards, was miserable – grey, windy and rainy with temperatures around 20 degrees. We stayed home on new years eve and … watched 24. On January 1st we visited some friends and watched some more 24!
Kariega Album
A few weeks ago, we had a business meeting at Kariega game park. The meeting was very productive, but we we also found some time for a game drive and a river cruise. Click on the image or here to see the pictures. The first page or so are mainly people pictures. On the next few pages you find some great pictures of the wildlife we saw.
Its been raining for the past 2 days. It was hot and very humid all weekend, we spent a lot of time in the pool. Then the rain came.
Officialy, we got 63mm (about 2.5 inches) of rain in the past 24 hours. Its not clear if that includes the heavy downpoor today. This is about the same as the average rainfall here in the entire month of December.
I found a strange wet place in the bedroom. No sign of where water came in, no window was near, no ceiling leak, no wall leak. Shelves above are dry. But one shelf got wet, and there is a bit of water standing below.
I went out to look for where it could have come from. There is some leakage in the covered area outside the guest flat. Nothing major. Then I walked towards the pool.
The pool is overflowing. A good wind puts a small amount of the water onto the deck. We had LOTS of rain! But behold, here on the steps going up to the guest flat, is a crab.
Crab
I went and got the camera. The landlord had said they found a crab once. Coming back, I found a 2nd crab, a bit smaller, but further up the walk! I can’t imagine WHERE they think they are going, or why. We are about 45 meters (yards) above sea level. The beach is about 1 mile away (1.5 kilometers). The estuary is much closer, but just as far down. I know nothing of crab behavior, but this strikes me as weird.
The ‘house tour’ project is coming along. Should be ready within a week!
Crab