Summer must be coming up … today I managed to swim for the first time this summer. The water temperature was 22 C (72 F), which is not that warm, but warm enough for a short dip in the pool. It was lovely! Cann´t wait for the warmer weather!
In the next few days, temperatures will be in the lower 30 C (86 F)´s so we may be able to do some more swimming. Usually, the weather gets cloudy and cool in the afternoon, though, so it may not be combinable with work.
Tiger at Lion Park
Remember our visit to the Lion Park where we petted lions and tigers? Turns out that this is actually not as safe as it may seem. A 17 year old girl was attacked by one of the tigers during such a visit forcing the park to ban visitors from petting the tigers. I guess we were lucky that we still were able to pet the tigers before all this happened.
Poster Handful of Keys
Although East London is a small town, there are some good cultural activities now and then. The latest show we went to was “A handful of keys” – a very good South African show in which two good pianists combine humor and music in a show with a variety of music.
The show basically consisted of two pianists and two grand pianos …. the musicians played a variety of piano music including classical, jazz, broadway and pop music. Probably the most impressive song was a great version of “Funeral for a friend” by Elton John. They also played an impressive medley of broadway music throughout the ages – in twenty minutes or so they went through more than 100 musicals from 1931 until now. Throughout their great musical performance, there was a good amount of humor both in terms of the dialogs between the songs as within the songs themselves.
Overall, this show is definitely worthwile and highly recommended. It is a South African show, so not that likely to show up in other countries although this show has had performances in London and Australia.
To and From Kruger Park Album
Part of the fun of our trip to Kruger Park was that we drove there all the way from East London – approximately 1500km/950 miles! We stopped over in Bloemfontein, Gold Reef City (an amuzement park close to Johannesburg), Graskop and Johannesburg. This album contains the pictures of the trip itself – See also the “Kruger Park” album for pictures from Kruger park.
Kruger Park Album
We made a trip to the world-famous Kruger National Park. As Kruger National Park is in the north-east of the country and we are in the South of the country, we needed to traverse quite a bit of South Africa to get there (about 1500km/950 miles). We visited some places on the way to and from Kruger and I will post the pictures of the trip separately. In the mean time, you can see the pictures of the actual visit to Kruger Park by clicking here or on the picture above.
We spent about 4 days in Kruger, partially driving around ourselves and partially participating in organized game drives while we stayed for a couple of nights at Tinga Private Game Lodge. The accomodation at Tinga was lovely, but we were extremely disappointed by the level of service provided for the price they charge (list price 6050R/$972/Euro775 per person per night! – we paid less, but still very expensive). We had our own private lodge, which was large, private and had a lovely game viewing deck including heated pool. There are some pictures of the lodge in the album. However, the lodge was operated like a “packaged tourist place” where everything had to be done on their schedule. Some examples of this include:
* When we arrived, we could not get a quick lunch because the person at reception had to give us a full tour first that took an hour and could not be changed to meet our schedule!
* When we decided not to go on the game drive the first evening, but instead get an early dinner in order to get up early the next day, this could not be organized as dinner is only served after the game drive is back (19:30).
* When we enquired about a walking safari this was seen as an unusual request, even though it is mentioned on their website, and could not be arranged because there were not enough rangers available.
* When we had a “private dinner” the second evening at the managers suggestion, this was poorly organized – the crew moved our deck table indoors, and told us it was considered dangerous to sit out, at night (the general manager contradicted this to us the next day); dinner was served after 20:30 because they hadn’t taken our order before we left on the game drive and when they finally brought dinner (really not much more than room service) they forgot water and wine. It took them half an hour to bring the drinks!
Overall, I would not recommend staying at Tinga unless they improve their levels of service dramatically. What we experienced was unacceptable for a 5 star place, which is what Tinga claims to be and charges for.
In Kruger we saw the “big 5” (Leopard, Lion, Buffalo, Rhino and Elephant) as well as many other mammals (antelopes, giraffes, hippos), primates, birds and reptiles. The phrase Big Five Game was coined by game hunters and refers to the five large mammals that were originally most sought in Africa based on their difficulty to hunt.
We bought a high quality lens (Canon 100-400 IS L Series Lens) for the occasion and got great pictures which you can see in the album.
You would almost think we live close by a beach or something … It turns out that the beach is one of the most pleasant and safest places to go for a walk. It is also a great place to take photographs. Here are a couple of such recent photographs from Quenera beach, which is about 2km from our house. As usual, click on the picture for a bigger version.
August 9 is a holiday in South Africa … National Women´s day celebrates the contribution women make to the South African society. You can find a pretty good description about the holiday and where it came from here.
To celebrate this holiday, here is a nice recent picture of a local (probably Xhosa) woman in deep thoughts on the beach:
Woman in deep thoughts on beach
The weather in South Africa is really odd …
Here we are, in the middle of winter (i.e., August) with relatively cold weather at 16 degrees (Celcius) daytime temperature and about 12 degrees night temperature when suddenly a shift in wind brings very warm weather from the north, resulting in temperatures of 32 degrees during the day and around 20 at night! This change happened in about 2 days and lasted about just as long. At the end of the two days, which happened to be weekend :-), temperatures dropped back to 16 degrees daytime temperatures.
In general, July has been a very pleasant month with comfortable daytime temperatures around 24 degrees and chilly night time temperatures around 12. It has been very sunny and dry. So dry, in fact, that “veld fires” have been a very common occurance with several fields going up in flames a day. We witnessed a specatular fire on Saturday where several houses across the valey from us caught fire, seemingly independently, and at least one of them burned down completely! The trees also caught fire, resulting in what looked like a volcano erupting on the dune. Here are some of the pictures (click on them to get a larger version):
How weird …
Just when you expect things to get all nice outside (after all, it the beginning of June!) the weather starts to get cold and wintery. This bothers me tremendously this year for two reasons:
1. This whole “opposite” season thing is really odd. It is still hard to remind yourself that July and August are the middle of winter here when it is summer in Europe and the US. In fact, it seems much more appropriate now to put up a Christmas tree than it did in December!
2. It is actually not that cold … usually about 24 degrees celcius during the day and 12 degrees celcius at night. However, we have been so acclimatised in the mean time that 20 degrees feels chilly and 18 degrees feels cold! To make matters worse, houses here have no heating, so even though the daytime temperature may be very pleasant outside, the inside temperature can be “cold” most of the day.
When we moved here, I was concerned I would really struggle with the summer because of the heat and would find winter very pleasant. In fact, the opposite is happening: I did not have any issues during the summer and winter does feel unpleasantly cold!
… How weird!
About 150 km from East London is a small village in the mountains called Hogsback. Lonely planet describes it as a “magical resort high in the beautiful Amatola Mountains”. It is also in Hogsback that Tolkin is said to have been inspired to write the Hobbit.
All this seemed like a good reason to visit the place on a daytrip on a hot May day. We enjoyed the forests, the streams and the views during a walk in the area, a visit to one of the local eateries (“The edge”) and a bit of driving around. What struck us the most is how it has a completely different atmosphere from the area around it, which is dry and without much vegetagion. Hogsback is a very pleasant place for walks and to get “away from it all”.
Oh, by the way, one of the locals confirmed that Tolkien could not have written the book based on Hogsback, as he was too little when he left South Africa. Possibly, he based it on what his grandmother told him about the place.
Click here or on the image to see the pictures from this lovely day trip!
