Archive for the ‘South Africa’ Category
Gotcha, Bitch!
Monday, February 16th, 2009
We procrastinated and ended up delaying our departure from Cape Town until two days before our flight to Nairobi. Kenya was going to be a whole different ball game, now that we were to wander the African bush without our trusty zoologist, so we decided to do a practice run to revive the old skills, on what grew to be familiar soil.
Madikwe National Reserve wasn’t on our priority list, but it is said to give great Kruger (which we didn’t find exceptionally great) a run for its money, so we gave it a shot. It didn’t disappoint. Elephants red from the soil, suckling wildebeest calves, and horny whydah bird males who demonstrated their ability to fly far and with ease never mind a long, heavy, tail – thus proving themselves as strong candidates for mating. The otherworldly creatures of Africa passed by us and I realized, with a smile, that the old trigger finger, though just a tad rusty, still works, and the trained eye, though spoiled by late mornings and days in front of the computer, is still sharp and misses nothing.
It was going to be just a successful rehashing of the old game drive so essential for our little project, but it became a triumphant last hunting expedition, the kind they always have in Discovery Chanel films where only on the last day they find that which has eluded them for months. In our production it was the evasive wild dog, and we got it! A whole pack of them! Fresh after a kill, they were rowdily and eagerly devouring their catch, though strictly in their pecking order, and then set off again in search of their next target.
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Cape Town Kite Surfers
Friday, January 30th, 2009
Oh, the boys… the men! It’s our own fault for staying in a surfer’s hostel and for the past month I’ve watched nothing but perfectly tanned chiseled bodies walking up and down the halls. It’s a good thing my husband is not a jealous man, and it does help that one of these bronzed hunky bods belongs to him. And I… well I have no problem mentioning once or twice a week that I also am his.
Cape Town is a kite surfing heaven. Nobody here goes to the beach to take a swim – never mind where you’ll be entering the water, if the waves don’t crush you down a surfboard will. Wind surfers hate kite surfers and vice-versa, so when our kite surfing bunk buddies asked me to take some action shots of them on the beach, I tried to keep winders out of the frame, but with little luck.
Cape Town Kite Surfing Gallery
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an End to the Columbus Era
Sunday, January 25th, 2009
The story of our 4×4 named Columbus finally came to an end. When the company that was supposed to buy it back from us had disappeared, we left it in Cape Town with our new police woman friend, Carla, to deal with the situation upon our return from Madagascar. Since the company that owed us money had evaporated, we wanted to have a little polite talk with their business partners that run their website full of promises and guarantees. As life has it, talking politely to people who owe you money never works. Sure they were polite back, but claimed they have nothing to do with the people they directed us to for the buy-back deal, and whatever agreement we had with the fugitives – has evaporated just as they have.
Unfortunately for our impartial friends, we were not planning to give up that easily. Lucky for us, we had what other victims of the same scheme didn’t – time. We set up camp in Carla’s backpacker (hostels are called “backpackers” in southern Africa) and for a month played tag with the directors of the company, emailing back and forth, but to no avail. It was always the same old “terribly sympathetic, but nothing we can do” until… It looked like there was nothing left but to count our losses and do our best to warn the rest – so is our duty. In less than a day Shurik whipped up a very polite and strategically named website describing our experience and listing everyone involved. He even went the extra step and listed their interconnections, other internet properties, business relationships, personal and business ID numbers – just in case anybody needed a helping hand if they found themselves in a similar situation. I, in my turn, wrote it all up in travel forums.
It didn’t take long for the impartial to take notice. They are not internet dummies and found the website just two days after its launch. They called us for a meeting in their offices, but we were so frustrated with the whole ordeal by that time, that I didn’t feel like being too polite any longer. I told them to be so kind and come instead to our office – the backpacker’s bar.
We talked. I chain smoked. They fidgeted, but actually turned out to be rather nice guys and even kinda cute. They promised to buy back Columbus on the same terms we had with their good-for-nothing partners, and a few days later they put a notice on their website saying they will be honoring all the buy-back-deals-gone-wrong and are out of the buy-back biz all together.
Today we checked our bank statement and the money is in. We are free now to pack up the tent and continue our African expedition. Next stop is probably Nairobi. We’ll have just enough time to zoom through Kenya and meet Vova in Ethiopia in mid Feb.
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Africa and AIDS
Friday, January 16th, 2009
I’ve said before how AIDS is one of the first things that pops to mind when you think about the black continent. Truth is, not nearly enough people, in first world or third, know the right facts about HIV and AIDS. We’ve been cautioned by our Harvard educated friends to watch out for mosquitoes as they too transmit the virus, and an ocean away, the current leader of the most developed country in Africa, South Africa, publicly admitted that he wasn’t at all worried about having unprotected sex with an HIV positive woman because he simply took a shower afterwards.
We are asked if we see AIDS on the streets of Africa. We haven’t. I’ve been to places where AIDS literally walks the streets in its skin-and-bone devastating triumph over the human body, and we don’t see it here. We see poverty, we see disease, but we don’t see HIV and AIDS. It’s not even spoken of. The visibly sick don’t leave home and their family and friends are ashamed to speak of it. Asking and talking about it is rude.
Ridiculous myths like intercourse with a virgin being the ultimate cure, and simple lack of education, are the strongest allies of the virus. Its biggest enemies are condoms and knowing the facts. African television is plastered with ads calling for frequent testing (only $2.5) and fidelity (like the hip little ad below), but the peculiar mix of African tribal culture and strong religious influence from the colonizers have created a world where having multiple sex partners is a thing of the ordinary, but sex itself is shameful.
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The Great African Zoo
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008
Being a member of the humankind, I can find enough good reasons to justify our control-hungry parasitic need to grab the land for our crop and cattle, shoving animals out of their dwellings, and shooting at them for trying to come back. We then incarcerate meek and mighty flora and fauna for their own preservation.
When it’s done in vast national parks and spacious private reserves where the inhabitants live more or less in the wild, I can rest easy and even enjoy visiting these animals in these protected areas, respectfully keeping to the safety of a vehicle (most of the time). What I can’t do though, after witnessing the cruel but necessary circle-of-life – the fascinating and endlessly enlightening way of coexistence in the animal kingdom, is to find an explanation and need for an African zoo.
Conservation projects – sure. Breeding programs – of course. Africa doesn’t lack quality organizations with truly profound and concerned projects open to the public, doing what they do, and how they do it, for good reasons. But zoos, for the sheer sake of profit from voiceless hostages, many not even close to being natives of the continent? Absurd and depressing to say the least, and some of the reserves we’ve visited around Johannesburg were pretty much that.
I have decided not to photograph non-African nature in Africa. In my archives, but not in the photo gallery online, you might find a west-African pygmy hippopotamus, sadly grazing next to a cement pool, but there is no trace of the Bengal tiger who nervously paced behind bars, nor of the mortified-looking black jaguar cub miserably crying over a tin bowl of milk that will never come close to replacing its mother’s tit.
Families torn apart. Parents in cages – crazy with boredom. Their crying children incarcerated only a few kilometers away because human parents would pay for the chance to have their own precious offspring photographed with a white lion cub. Cuteness to die for.
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Swimming with Sharks
Saturday, November 22nd, 2008
If there was anything that could make us forget being duped by the kind of sharks that had sold us Columbus, it was swimming with the real sharks.
We’ve missed out diving with them once before due to bad weather, and for a second there, it looked like we’d have to pass it up again. The sea had been frowning with waves for three days before we arrived, but luckily, the day of the dive turned out to be nice and sunny.
In her dive briefing, Raffa instructed me not to have the strap of my camera tied around my wrist. In fact, she said not to wear it at all. Apparently, sharks enjoy robbing divers of their photographic equipment. They especially like strobes, because sharks can sense the powerful electromagnetic fields generated by the firing strobe. So I just have to be careful not to let go of my camera accidentally, and be ready to part with it if I don’t feel like parting with a few fingers.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to spend as much time as we wanted in the water with the tiger shark. For such a dangerous fish, it is quite shy and does not enjoy splashing two-legged visitors blowing bubbles in its swimming space, so it took off as soon as we got into the water. The rest of the sharks seemed to be used to aquatic tourists and didn’t even mind the bubbles. They came close enough to touch, and sometimes we needed to shove them away, gently, by the nose. Somehow, these sharks were ignorant of the concept of personal space.
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Let’s Go
Friday, November 21st, 2008
I wish I could say our return to Cape Town was bitter-sweet. I wish I could confess that even though we had so much trouble with Columbus it all worked out in the end, and we have nothing but good things to say about his real parents who welcomed him back with open arms and with a light slap on the bumper sent him to his room to think hard about all the trouble he gave us. We all would laugh together over a bottle of fine South African wine sharing funny stuck-in-the-mud-lions-around-failed-starter stories and then part ways as best friends if only… ( If only we could find the bastards! )
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Ostrich Run
Thursday, November 20th, 2008
“If you are ever chased by an ostrich,” said the farmer, “never run. Instead just lie on the ground and just cover your head. This way, it might jump all over you, even break a few ribs, but it will not kill you. But if you are standing, a kick from an ostrich could easily kill. Can you see its feet?” I looked down at its prehistoric-looking toes: one small – for balance, and one enormous – tipped with a big black claw. Occasionally, throughout this trip, I feel like I’ve been jerked back a few million years to the time when dinosaurs ruled the earth.
I walked through the farm trying to avoid the lingering thought that every majestic bird I saw here was farmed to be killed for its feathers, meat, and skin. I picked up a fallen feather and stuck it on the side of my hat. The feather was brilliant white and soft. I could see how one would pay a lot for it, but struggled to understand how one could kill its bearer in cold blood. I guess it’s a question that can be brought to any farmer, but first of all to me, the consumer, who likes her drumsticks and never even considers giving them up.
The farmer fed us breakfast. One ostrich egg is equivalent to twenty four chicken eggs. We three barely finished quarter of an egg. Ostrich eggs are incredibly strong, you can even stand on them, which I tried, and the ostriches themselves are no puny fowl either – to entertain the crowd on an ostrich farm tour special jockeys ride an ostrich race.
ostrich chick
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The Good Life Behind Bars
Monday, November 10th, 2008
In Tenikwa – a wild cat rescue center, life is nice and safe when there is nobody to hunt you down for eating a sheep or a chicken. In the past, the center tried to rehabilitate and release. But after a caracal named Frodo was killed shortly after being placed back in the wild with a radio collar, they only receive and care for animals that need their help.
cheetah cub
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Marine Mammals
Sunday, November 9th, 2008
I love the sea. Sea sickness, on the other hand, I could do without. When we reach a place with yet another whale-watching tour to review, I feel like hurling at the thought of the long hours I’ll have to spend looking thought a tiny viewfinder, trying to balance a heavy 500mm lens in the wind.
This time we were expecting humpbacks, but got killer whales. Apparently they had just eaten a dolphin and were in such good moods that, after splashing around a bit, decided to mate. If you look carefully at the gallery pictures you just might see Willy’s willy.
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