Sunee Sees the World

Mind the (Communication) Gap

2012-01-30T21:11:00.000+02:00

When I packed for my three-week business trip to Tanzania, I had no idea what clothes to take. I knew it was going to be very hot, but I couldn’t go to work in shorts and a T-shirt. I still had to look professional in spite of the humidity and the fact that two of those three weeks would be spent at a mine site. So long pants and fancy shirts is what filled my suitcase. But I had one little problem – I only had enough clothes to last for one week. I reckoned it would be enough though, as long as I washed my clothes every evening when I got back to my room.

My friends and family know that I am about as far from being a domestic goddess as it is possible for one woman to be. After the first night of scrubbing my clothes in the sink, my hands were pink and stinging from the acidity of the hand wash detergent. After day three my knuckles were raw and bleeding. Dirty laundry was starting to pile up in the bottom drawer of my clothes cupboard while half-washed delicates were strung up on a line in the bathroom in the hope that water and some fanned air would miraculously clean them. If you can picture Nicole Kidman’s character in Far and Away doing her laundry that first week she stepped off the boat, you’d have some idea of my aptitude for this task.

When Saturday morning arrived I knew I had to make a plan and since I had literally not spent one shilling of my daily travel allowance up to then, I decided to send my clothes to Housekeeping to be washed. The blouses I like to wear to work are of the pre-crumpled variety, the type that you scrunch up after having washed them and do not iron. I knew from past experience that my domestic helper at home has a tendency to iron them flat if I don't specifically tell her not to, so I wrote in the limited space available on the slip: “Only iron pants” in the hope that they would not be ruined upon their return. I marked the slip with same-day delivery and went out to explore.

When I returned to my room that evening there was no sign of my laundry. I assumed they must have had another one of the daily power failures and the clothes would be back early the next morning. Sunday afternoon at lunchtime saw me still without the greater part of my wardrobe. I phoned Housekeeping to enquire about the whereabouts of my clothes and they assured me that they were almost finished with them. Sure enough, at around 2pm that afternoon a lady knocked on my door with the freshly-laundered items. A quick glance was enough to see that my wrinkly blouses were in fact still wrinkly, much to my satisfaction.

I was due to catch the bus to the airport at 4am the next morning, so at 7pm I started packing my suitcase. I noticed one of my pairs of pants still had a spot of mud on it where I had gotten out of a dirty car, which I thought was somewhat odd, but I rinsed it off anyway and continued packing.

The next morning at about 6am, while I was sitting around at Dar es Salaam’s tiny little airport waiting for my delayed flight to get a move on, I suddenly realised what had happened. “Only iron pants” is what the slip had specified and is exactly what the ladies from Housekeeping had done. My pants never got washed! All five pairs of office pants that I had brought along on this trip had not only not been washed, but the sweat and dust from long, hot, humid days had now been ironed and ingrained into the material. I now had two weeks to go without any washing facilities and without any clean clothes.

What could I do? I laughed and shrugged it off. It was all part of the adventure.

Big Cat Hunting

2012-01-22T19:27:00.000+02:00

“Elephants in the distance,” I say from the back of the game truck, but either the ranger doesn’t hear me or he chooses to ignore the first animals we’ve come across in the grey morning light just before dawn. A few minutes earlier his walkie-talkie had crackled and hissed in broken Tswana, a message he had translated as leopard spotted a few kilometres away. Which is why we now found ourselves speeding along the dust-choked paths of the Chobe National Park at a pace that would make me nervous had we been in a luxury vehicle zipping along one of Germany’s well-maintained autobahns.

I sit back and contemplate the scenery. It’s early August and it’s clear that the park hasn’t had any rain in a long time. Dust hangs in the air and the landscape is littered with dead trees and brittle underbrush. Good for animal sightings, when you’re not hot on the heels of an elusive leopard.

The vehicle slows down and the driver points to the ground next to us. I lean out and look at the tracks imprinted in the soft sand. My heart skips a beat. A big cat has recently been past here. Could today be the day I finally see a leopard in the wild?

We reach the spot of the alleged sighting, but there’s no one around. No big cat, no other game trucks carrying tourists with satisfied smirks. We had missed it.

As if on cue, the walkie-talkie crackles again. The only word I recognise is tau, but that’s all we need. The engine roars to life and we’re flying through the bush, if hitting every bump in the road while choking on dust can be described as flying.

And suddenly we’re not alone. Game trucks are swarming from all around us. We’re racing to see who gets there first, pushing past each other and vying to get the best spot. The truck lurches to an abrupt stop behind a bush, then reverses a few paces. All around us other vehicles congregate and an army of lenses the length of my arm are now aiming at a spot to the right. The zoom-and-click of a multitude of cameras are the only sounds we hear.

I grab my tiny pair of binoculars, twirling the wheel for better focus. “Can you see anything?” Gareth asks. I nod and hand over the binoculars so he can have a look too. In the distance, barely more than a tan-coloured blur against the greyish-brown sand, a lioness and her cubs are playing, oblivious to the hordes of paparazzi competing to walk away with the best trophy today.

New Year’s Travel Resolutions for 2012

2011-12-29T11:51:00.000+02:00

Image courtesy of Inspirationline.com

Now that the excitement of Christmas has passed, it's time to reflect on the year gone by and make resolutions for the year lying ahead. Let's have a look at last year's travel resolutions:

Have more local holidays. This resolution started off well, but then sort of fell by the wayside as the year progressed. We had a... memorable... experience camping in the Pilanesberg in January. In April, we camped in the Krugersdorp Game Reserve with friends, followed by a chilly, but fantastic, few days in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park. And I'm afraid that was the end of it. Oh, we did a few daytrips here and there, but nothing that could be called a holiday.
Improve the quality of holiday pictures. I think I'm slowly getting the hang of learning how to make the best of my little point-and-shoot camera. Having Photoshop to edit and touch up helps a lot, though.
Save more money for holiday purposes. We're lucky enough that our income exceeds our expenditures, so once again we've managed to pay off all our holidays long before we actually went on them.
Continue improving the quality of this blog. This one is a little debatable, perhaps. I love writing for this blog, but sometimes I either just don't have the time or the inclination to write long posts, resulting in shorter or infrequent updates.
Engage with more travellers on Twitter. The 34 people who currently follow me will know that I am hardly ever active on Twitter. I've decided that Twitter is a tool (a very effective one, I'll admit) for people with too much time on their hands. I'll continue tweeting my latest blog posts and discovering new bloggers on it, but I will not be using it much more than that.

Once again, it seems like I've managed to keep some of my resolutions, but most have not gone quite as planned. Nevertheless, and despite certain bloggers' recent advice to live life without goals, I still think it's good to have something to strive for. So, without further ado, here are my travel-related resolutions for 2012:

Save money for holiday purposes. As said before, this one will always be on the list. It might be a little trickier in 2012 however, since we will be starting to build a house as soon as the rainy season has passed, and I have also enrolled part-time at university for a postgraduate degree, so we might be a little strapped for cash this year.
Exlore more of South Africa. Gareth will be starting a new job in January, one where he won't have to work weekends or public holidays any more, so we might actually have the opportunity to go away more often. Now we just need to make sure we can afford it.
Be more adventurous in trying out foreign food. Whenever I read about the street foods of Thailand or the vibrant colours and flavours of Moroccan or Indian cuisine, I'm always disappointed that I didn't sample more local dishes while on my travels. Perhaps it's time to try something new.
Improve my travel writing. When I reread some of my posts I notice that an awful lot of detail is missing, things I remember but don't necessarily write down while telling the story. I was taught that all good writing includes the five senses, something I've been neglecting in my own hurried posts. Since the degree I have enrolled for is centred around English literature, I hope it will teach me to write better, more descriptive, prose.
Read more widely. Not necessarily a travel-related resolution, but I recenly realised that I've been limiting the genre in which I mostly read and I think it's time to branch out a bit more, perhaps into the history of destinations I intend to visit.

Let's see if I can do better in the coming year. What are some of your new year's resolutions? Do you make them? Do you keep them?

Mongoose Mayhem and Monkey Madness

2011-12-14T08:00:00.001+02:00

“Come look quickly!” Gareth called quietly, but urgently, from our porch at the Chobe Safari Lodge where I was taking a respite from the heat by reading my Kindle inside our air-conditioned room. I put my book down and went outside to be met by this:

A troop of mongooses were cavorting on the lawn, joined shortly thereafter by a mischievous group of monkeys and two warthogs snuffling the ground in search of tasty titbits. The mongooses were running back and forth, playing with each other, seemingly unafraid of the people who came out to watch and take pictures of their antics. I sat down to watch the spectacle, a huge grin on my face.

I kept a close eye on the monkeys. Earlier that morning, a disgruntled neighbour with a German accent had knocked on our door and told us not to leave any windows open, because the monkeys had gotten into his room and stolen some food. We assured him we would be careful. After all, we’ve had a run-in with long-fingered simians before and were well acquainted with their kleptomaniac tendencies.

While most of the monkeys were dangling from the treetops or grooming each other, one of them was sitting quietly watching the mongooses, who at that point were all bundled together in a big group. It took a tentative step closer to them, sat down and watched them for a bit, then moved closer and closer and then suddenly darted in and cheekily pulled the tail of one of the mongooses. The offended creature hissed loudly, but could do nothing but try to blend into the bundle better. This soon turned into a fun game for the monkey, who darted back and forth playfully pulling tails left, right and centre, while the mongooses squirmed and roiled and tried their best to maintain some semblance of dignity. It took quite a while before the monkey got bored and decided to leave them in peace.

And this is why I love Africa. Where else does one get the chance to watch these animals interact, sometimes in the most unexpected ways, right on your doorstep?

Three Nights at Chobe Safari Lodge, Botswana

2011-12-11T19:30:00.004+02:00

Gareth and I spent the first three days of our African Adventure 2011 holiday at the lovely Chobe Safari Lodge situated on the banks of the Chobe river in Botswana. We had a River Room at ground level and could watch small animals play on the grass outside while lying in bed, the blue waters of the river sparkling in the background. When we were first shown to the room, we were somewhat perturbed by the twin beds, but it didn’t take long for either of us to realise that separate beds meant lots of space – a luxury our queen bed at home doesn’t always allow. Although it sometimes seemed like the Chobe river was as busy as an intercity highway, we grew accustomed to the sounds of speedboats zipping past and paid them little attention.

We spent the larger part of our days relaxing by the pool, although a brief dip after a dusty game drive proved the waters yet too cold to swim in. If you’re up early you might be lucky enough to grab an unused lounger, but if not, there are many tables and chairs scattered along the deck and bar area from which you can watch the boats on the river. We saw elephants feeding in the long grass just across the way from where we were sitting every day, while monkeys played in the treetops above us.

Breakfast and dinner are served in the lapa, from where you still have a view of the river, and one of the friendly waiters takes you on a tour of the dining area the first time you come for a meal. Our holidays are usually spent camping or in self-catering accommodation, so whenever we stay in a hotel, I always look forward to breakfast (well, all meals, to be honest, but breakfast in particular). At home, my morning meal is usually limited to cereal, so when I get the chance to have something different, I go all out. The Lodge definitely didn’t disappoint! Fresh fruit, eggs, bacon, toast, sausages, mushrooms, muffins, croissants, scones – these are the stuff my gastronomic dreams are made of. Dinner was just as spectacular, and while Gareth raved about the stir-fry made on demand, I tried out such delicacies as warthog pie, ostrich steak and freshly caught fish. Oh, and don’t forget their homemade watermelon sorbet – it’s delicious!

There really isn’t all that much to do at the Lodge itself, but if you’re not content spending the day basking in the sun and waiting for the animals to come to you, the Lodge offers various excursions. We went on a morning game drive in the Chobe National Park, an afternoon game cruise on the Chobe river and a dinner boat cruise. My next few posts will have some photos from the first two activities, but the dinner boat cruise was really just a meal on a boat in the middle of the night. It was too dark to see anything besides the lights from hotels along the riverbank, and the food was pretty much the same as that served at the hotel, so I wouldn’t particularly recommend it. The game cruise, however, was definitely worth it.

We had a good time at the Chobe Safari Lodge, and I can recommend it to anyone spending a couple of days in the area. Bring a good book, your binoculars and some suntan lotion and you’ll have a wonderful time.

Mixing Pleasure with Business: Back from Tanzania

2011-12-07T21:18:00.002+02:00

It's been almost a week since my return from my first business trip. You might remember that I had set myself a clear mission for those three weeks in Tanzania - to find some free time to explore. Well, that proved to be more difficult than expected. In fact, I ended up working 5 days worth of overtime - 6 days, if you count Saturdays as double time - and rarely had time for anything other than working, sleeping and eating.During my first week in Dar-es-Salaam, the only sights I saw were the hotel dining area and the inside of the office building where I was working. It was very disheartening.

But when the weekend arrived, I decided that I needed to do something about this sorry state of affairs. Although a colleague had advised me not to go out exploring on my own, the thought of sitting in the hotel all weekend watching TV was just too unbearable. That impulsive decision turned into a memorable day out, which I will write about in the near future - it involved a whirlwind taxi tour of the city, an improptu Swahili lesson and a trip in a wooden dhow to an island just off the coast of Tanzania.

I'm very glad that I had the opportunity to do some exploring at least, because the next Monday I took a chartered plane to a mine site where I was stranded for the last two weeks without a chance to see anything else. I won't complain (too much!), because the point of a business trip is, after all, to work, so I'm grateful that I did manage to see something at least. Which is more than my colleagues who visited the other sites were able to do. And I can now say that Tanzania is definitely a country I would like to see more of in future...

Four African Countries For the Price of One

2011-11-16T19:53:00.000+02:00

When I booked our African Adventure 2011 holiday, I left all the little nitty-gritty details to the travel agent to arrange. So apart from the fact that we were going to Zimbabwe and Botswana, and a knowledge of the pre-booked activities we had chosen to do, we had no idea of the what, when and where’s of this holiday. I don’t usually do things like this. I like to be in charge of the details, to plan ahead – spontaneity is not one of my strong points. But this week I had the opportunity to just sit back and let others do all the work for me, and let me tell you, being in charge is highly overrated.

I knew that we would be flying to Livingstone in Zambia and then someone would pick us up and take us to our hotel in Botswana. When we finally made our way past Customs, a driver was waiting for us, lounging on a railing while holding up a little sign displaying our surname. He ushered us onto a big 36-seater bus and acted the tour guide while we drove through the streets of Livingstone, pointing out important buildings and sharing interesting facts. Once outside the town, he helped us spot zebras and giraffes while we sped along the highway that slices through the Mosi-ua-Tunya National Park on the way to the Kazungula border post.

To our surprise, the border post turned out to be a river crossing. It took us all of five minutes to have our passports stamped, before our suitcases were loaded onto a powerboat and we were on the Zambezi. The captain made a point of telling us when we had reached the exact spot where four countries meet – Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia – the only place in Africa to share so many borders. The journey took roughly twenty minutes and, despite my bad boating track record, we landed on the shores of Botswana without incident.

Amazingly, getting our passports stamped here took even less time than on the Zambian side, and before we knew we had loaded our twin suitcases into a 4x4 game drive vehicle and were off towards Chobe for the first three days.

A Ride on the Gautrain

2011-11-07T08:00:00.002+02:00

The flight that would take Gareth and me to Zambia for our African Adventure holiday was scheduled to fly out late on a Monday morning, which made dropping us off at the airport a little inconvenient. So we decided to take the Gautrain instead. We had originally considered taking one of the shiny golden busses to the station, but my mother really wanted to drop us off, and as it turns out it was lucky she did, because the Gautrain bus drivers were on a strike that day and no busses were running.

Since the Gautrain is South Africa’s first high speed train, it is still a novelty to most people and we’d heard that it could get quite crowded. I later found out that this is still true over weekends, but on that Monday morning after rush hour, the station was all but deserted.

The first thing we had to do was buy a Gold Card and this is where we had our second hiccup with their service – their credit card machines were offline and they could only accept cash. There’s no ATM inside the station, so I was left with the luggage while Gareth went in search of a bank. After he had returned with the money, we made use of the self-service kiosk to buy two Gold Cards and load them up with enough credit to get us to the airport. A single trip from Hatfield to OR Tambo costs R125 per person, and my miserly self cringed at the expense, but I decided to make peace with it and think of it as part of the adventure.

We scanned our Gold Cards to enter the station, went down the escalator and found the train ready and waiting for us. There were only a handful of people sharing the compartment with us, so we managed to get good seats from which to enjoy the scenery. As we sat there waiting to depart, I recalled the daily train ride I used to take from Penarth to Cardiff while still living in Wales. I loved taking the train back then. Even though I did it every day, the novelty never wore off. I had twenty minutes every morning and every afternoon in which to read my book or watch the countryside pass by. If the Gautrain station was closer to home, I would jump at the chance to do it again, but as it is it would take me longer to get to Hatfield during rush hour than to drive all the way to Centurion.

And then we were off. As I gazed out the window, I realised for the first time that Pretoria is actually a beautiful city. One never gets to appreciate the old architecture and the Union Buildings and the jacaranda trees while driving. I had a good look at Unisa towering over the highway, and in the distance the Voortrekker Monument beckoned.

We zoomed past the cars on the N1 at 180km/h and before we knew it we had arrived at Malboro, where we had to swap trains to head to OR Tambo. The 30 minute wait between trains went by relatively quickly and when the train swooshed into the station Gareth and I tried to see who could get the best picture of it (he won). Ten minutes later we were at the airport.

Although we’d spent our morning commuting, we’d already forgotten about work and left the stress of driving in traffic behind. Our holiday was off to a good start.

My First Business Trip

2011-10-27T18:51:00.000+02:00

After many months of envying colleagues sent to Australia, Dubai or the UK for work, I finally found out two weeks ago that I will be going on my first ever business trip this year. And as it turns out, it's an international trip. I will be gone for most of November, almost three weeks, and will be working onsite at one of my company's clients in Tanzania. The details haven't been finalised yet, but at this point it looks like I will be in Dar es Salaam the first week, followed by almost two weeks close to Shinyanga in the north. Which I've noted with barely suppressed glee is relatively close to the Serengeti National Park.

View Larger Map

So my mission is clear: find some free time to go out and explore.

I've heard from others that they rarely had time to venture further than the office and the hotel while on business trips, and I know that at the site I'm going to the regular working hours are from 6am to 6pm, and they work weekends. That doesn't bode too well for me.

I probably won't get the chance to see the annual migration of the wildebeest, or hike to the top of Kilimanjaro, or gaze upon the shores of Lake Victoria. But maybe, just maybe, I can satisfy a little bit of wanderlust and catch a glimpse of one of the African countries I've always wanted to visit.

Have you found the time to explore an interesting destination while on a business trip?

The Importance of Being Backed Up

2011-10-17T17:46:00.000+02:00

My 1TB hard drive joined the choir invisibile over the weekend. It contained all my music, games, videos and, most importantly, photos taken over the last five years. While everything on the drive is replaceable, the photos is what had me freaked out. I’ve been in the process of trying to find an online site to which I can backup all my pictures without having to pay an exorbitant amount of money or losing picture quality, but hadn’t really found the right solution for me yet. Now it’s a little too late.

Gareth, who manages a PC repair shop, told me I had two options:

Return the drive to the supplier and get a new one (it’s still under warranty) but lose all your data, or
Send the drive to data recovery specialists and pay roughly R2500 for a 75% chance to recover the data, but then void the warranty on the drive and have to buy a new replacement drive as well.

Neither of those options really worked for me.

And so I spent much of the weekend alternately berating myself for not being proactive about backing up my photos and wishing a plague on the houses of the suppliers of a product that will take no responsibility for the loss of your data, even if that loss was caused by their product biting the dust (for no apparent reason) within less than a year.

I had decided to go with option 2. Although the best pictures from the past three years’ holidays have been uploaded to Facebook and Photobucket and Picasa, I didn’t have any backup of our recent African Adventure trip. I had already deleted the photos from my camera and was busy editing them for the final selection when disaster struck. I couldn’t face losing all my memories and a 75% chance of recovery was better than nothing.

And then my brilliant husband had a brilliant idea. I never format the memory card in my camera, but rather just move the photos off it onto my PC, and he had access to a programme that can recover the deleted data on that card. To my huge relief, it worked! All the photos I ever took on that memory card was recovered! They’ve lost all of their metadata (date taken, location, etc.) but that is infinitely more acceptable than losing the photos themselves.

So now a lesson has been learned. I’ve decided to forgo looking for a site to use as backup location and will stick to good old writable DVDs and perhaps even a regular scheduled backup to a second hard drive. Now all I need to worry about is fire, flood or fiend…

How do you keep your digital photos safe?

Travellers x2: Spain 2010

2011-10-10T19:49:00.000+02:00

And so the Spain 2010 trip finally comes to and end, which means it's time to reflect on what we did right, where we went wrong and what we should never mention again! Although Gareth's parents joined us for most of the trip, the exercise is really to determine what the two of us thought of the holiday, so without further ado, I present you with some retrospection:

Gareth:

High Point: Seeing my parents again and spending almost two weeks catching up on two year's news. I also really enjoyed the trip we took up the Sierra Nevada, even though it was extremely cold!

Low Point: The weather didn't always play along and we had rain every second day.

Comments: I've always wanted to learn Spanish, but unfortunately didn't get round to it in time. It would have made this trip more enjoyable had I been able to converse more with the locals.

Anything Learned: When travelling independently, a GPS is a must, as well as a small umbrella.

Holiday Rating: 8/10

Suneé:

High Point: There were many beautiful sights to see on this holiday, but if I had to choose one high point it would probably be Seville. Not only did we get to see the third largest church in the world (and climbed to the top of its highest tower) in the morning, but we also spent the afternoon exploring the many magnificent rooms of an old palace, the Alcazar, and its lavish gardens.

Low Point: We returned to Mijas on the morning before we were due to board the plane back home for some last minute shopping, but a torrential downpour drove us back to our car and to the airport almost six hours too early.

Comments: I was never really drawn to Spain, but it has definitely been a pleasant surprise. I can now finally see why mother goes back year after year.

Anything Learned: Having a base as central point to explore from adds up to lots and lots of travel time going back and forth. I think we would do better in future to stay a few days in one place and then move on to the next, gypsy-style.

Holiday Rating:7/10

No idea which trip we're talking about? Check out these posts:

The Spain 2010 Series:

Planes, Trains and Automobiles
"Breakfast, por favor?"
"Ahead, Keep Right" - Driving in Andalucia
Wandering the Streets of Cadiz, Europe's Oldest City
A View to Remember from Spain's Sierra Nevada
Fast, Furious, FlamencoA Rainy Day in Mijas
Picasso: Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder
Malaga's One-Armed Cathedral
Malaga From Every Angle
The Best Idea Since Sliced Bread
I Want to Buy a House in Ronda
A Stroll Along the Costa del Sol
Of Castles, Memorial Bridges and Strangers in Need
Wish You Were Here: Marbella
Seville's Magnificent Cathedral
Scenes from Seville
The Real Alcazar, Highlight of Seville
Glimpses of Seville's Real Alcazar
Visiting Gibraltar was a Logistical Nightmare
A Slice of Britain in the Mediterranean
A Taste of Home in Spain
A Grey Morning in Granada
Planning a Visit to Granada's Alhambra
Admiring the Palace of a Holy Roman Emperor
Exploring Alhambra’s Alcazaba
The Exotic Beauty of the Nasrid Palaces
The Architect's Garden
Morocco: Not What We Expected
Watch Out, They Spit!
A Walk Through Tangier's Medina
A Traditional Moroccan Meal
A Magic Carpet
Cordoba: Mosques, Cathedrals and Guardian Angels

Cordoba: Mosques, Cathedrals and Guardian Angels

2011-10-07T08:00:00.002+02:00

On the last day of our Andalucían holiday, Gareth and I visited Córdoba, which turned out to be the city we liked best. We managed to find a free parking spot on the banks of the Guadalquivir river and set out on foot towards the old town. Our first view of the city was of the impressive Roman bridge that spans the river. We didn’t realise it at the time, but the bridge was originally built in the 1st century BC – just imagine all the history it has witnessed since then!

While walking across it we noticed a woman lighting a candle and praying at a statue of an angel. Apparently there are many such “Triumphs” dedicated to the archangel Raphael scattered all across the city. As the angel of healing, the people of Córdoba erected these statues of their guardian angel during times of great suffering or plagues. The one on the bridge dates back to 1651, while the statue situated in the Plaza de la Compania just a little further on was erected in 1736.

The real reason for our trip to Córdoba was to visit its famous Mezquita-Catedral. Nowhere else in Andalucía is the juxtaposition between the Christian and Muslim religions as prominently visible as here. The site was originally home to a temple dedicated to the Roman god Janus, after which an old Christian monastery was built, which was later destroyed to make way for the Great Mosque. After the Christian conquest in 1236, the mosque was consecrated and the centre of the existing structure was pulled down and replaced by a Gothic cathedral. Gareth and I roamed it’s gloomy interior, intrigued by the mosque’s pillared red arches and admiring the Renaissance beauty of the cathedral. A section at the far end of the mosque was set aside as a museum containing pieces from the original monastery.

Once we’d had our fill of religious artefacts, and after a quick stop to appreciate the beauty of the courtyard with its neat rows of orange trees, we wandered up and down the streets of the old city, ducking into curio shops, taking pictures of the colourful Calleja de las Flores and coveting the Flamenco dresses on display. We stopped for lunch at a dodgy little restaurant called 101 Tapas, which did indeed have a 101 items on their menu, from which we picked a few at random and had a thoroughly enjoyable meal, before heading back to our car.

We were sad to leave this interesting city behind us, even more so because we were due to return home the next day, and hoped that we would someday have the opportunity to return for a longer stay.

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

A Magic Carpet

2011-09-28T19:19:00.000+02:00

Our next stop was Ali Baba’s Cave of Wonders. Or so it seemed to me. I gawked at all the wonderful items for sale: the beautiful Moroccan lamps, the copper and leather goods, the silver jewellery sparkling from every corner. As soon as we’d set foot in the shop I knew I was going to blow the budget. But little did I know by just how much.

We didn’t get time to peruse the shop’s wares, but instead were ushered upstairs to the carpet showroom. Gareth and I looked at each other and smiled. Before we came on holiday I told him I wanted to buy a Moroccan carpet, if they were at all affordable. While walking through the alleyways earlier, our guide had asked everyone what they wanted to buy on this trip and Gareth had promptly declared we would be buying a carpet. I quickly stated that it depended on the cost, but I could see from the sudden twinkle in the man’s eyes that he had found his target for the day. He promised to get us a good deal, for a small commission, of course.

So there we found ourselves in the carpet showroom, listening to a man wearing yellow pointy-toed shoes explain how the rugs are made and that the designs are all uniquely Moroccan. He told us that they were duty free as well, because of a free trade agreement, and that they were magic carpets, because you buy them in Africa and then fly them across the ocean back to your home. The more he talked, the more my spirits sank. I knew they were going to be too expensive for us.

When his little demonstration was done and everyone was free to browse, the guide quickly introduced us to him. Before I knew it his helpers were unrolling carpets left and right and we were discussing colour schemes and the size of our living room. We found one that Gareth and I both really liked. I thought to myself: “R3000. That’s a reasonable price. Okay, maybe R5000, but that’s it.”

“Madam, because you are from Africa too and we Africans should stick together, I give you a good price. I will give you this lovely carpet, the one you picked out from all the rest, for the very good price of €5000.”

My first thought was, “Oh, that’s almost what I had in mind” and then I realised he was quoting me in euros and I had to multiply by eight. R40,000!! I think I might have gone visibly pale because he immediately assured me that it was only his starting price and I must tell him what I am willing to pay for it. He said the worst that could happen is that he’ll say no. I exclaimed in Afrikaans: “Dis te veel, dis te duur!” and to my surprise, the Moroccan merchant replied, “It’s not too expensive” and said that he understood some Dutch. And so the negotiations started. I knew from my previous experience bargaining in Thailand that I was no good at it, so I left it to Gareth to haggle with the man. As it turns out, he’s no good at it either, but he eventually managed to beat the price down to an amount that I could barely fit across both of my credit cards. Before I had a chance to intervene they had shaken on it and the deal was done.

My hands shook as I swiped the credit cards, hoping that I had enough credit left while wishing that it would be declined and I didn’t have to spend this ridiculous amount of money on a rug. Even one as beautiful as this one. But no, the sale went through. The carpet seller asked us if we wanted to send it home via courier and, after hearing that would cost another €400 and almost suffering another heart attack, I said no, we would take care of it ourselves. So he got someone to wrap it up in a waterproof canvas bag for us, for which we had to pay €20 and then asked for another €20 to give to the resident holy man so he could pray for our safe return home, which we handed over dazedly. He then took us downstairs and had me pick out three silver bracelets as a gift for myself and my mother and, as he gave us the wrapped carpet, thanked us profusely and assured us that we had made a good purchase and we wouldn’t regret it.

And then our guide came up to us and said he knows we got the carpet for a good price and it was because he put in a good word for us, so perhaps we should give him a little something for his effort. At that point, we only had a €50 note left, which is R400 and a very decent tip if you ask me, but he looked disappointed and shrugged as he ushered us to the next stop on our itinerary, which was the silverware shop. We had no money left, not even coins, and could do nothing more than look at the pretty jewellery. Because we had taken so long in purchasing the carpet, the other members of our group had already moved on to the next destination, so we went to join them at the apothecary shop, where we listened half-heartedly to the man explaining the use of traditional medicines and was glad when it was over and time to head back to the ferry that would take us back to Spain.

As we sat wide-eyed in the ferry, many people from our group came to congratulate us on buying a carpet, saying they really wanted to as well but couldn’t afford it, and we laughingly joked that it was indeed a magic carpet, because “it makes half a year’s pay magically disappear”. By the time we reached the continent however, we’d made peace with the expense and was happy and excited about our purchase.

And when we arrived home, the carpet was the first thing that got unpacked and put in its spot. And I absolutely love it! The merchant was right, I don’t regret it at all.

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

A Traditional Moroccan Meal

2011-09-12T08:00:00.002+02:00

The next stop on our whirlwind tour of Tangier was lunch at a restaurant that turned out to be surprisingly nice. Once again, I think this experience was created specifically for tourists, because the restaurant itself had normal Western toilets (to my great relief!) and the food, although very tasty, wasn’t all that strange to my inexperienced taste buds. I apologise in advance for the quality of the following photos – I had my camera on the indoor setting and didn’t realise at the time that it would be that sensitive to movement.

As I’ve said before, I’m not a foodie, so while Jodi from Legal Nomads would probably be able to wax lyrical about all the tastes and textures that were to follow, I’m just going to stick with saying it was delicious and I even cleared the crumbs off my plates.

The first course was a spicy but ice cold soup. Not much to look at, and a little weird because we are used to soup being hot. I think there was cinnamon in there, which I love, so cold or not I slurped it all up and was sorry when it was finished.

Next up was two skewered kebabs of what I think was mutton. We were a little disappointed at first, thinking that this was the main course (hey, it came straight after the starter, what were we supposed to think?) and nibbled on it for quite some time wondering if it would be enough to keep the hunger at bay for the rest of the day.

But, much to our delight, the main course turned out to be chicken with couscous and spicy but sweet vegetables. This was the first time I’ve tries couscous and I absolutely loved it! So much so that it is now a regular item on my shopping list back home. I’m not sure what the vegetables were – there was definitely some cinnamon pumpkin in there (delicious!), but the rest was unfamiliar. I enjoyed it so much in fact, that I completely missed the short performance by the belly dancer who apparently jiggled around the tables for a few minutes while I was oblivious to everything but the delightful meal in front of me.

Dessert followed soon after and consisted of crunchy syrupy-sweet cakes that reminded a lot of South African koeksisters, along with a glass of steaming hot mint tea. The tea is probably an acquired taste and Gareth and I both thought it was absolutely dreadful. We each had a bottle of Coke as well, which although branded in Arabic, tasted just like it does back home and was more than enough to quench our thirst.

If you watch the short 29 second clip below you’ll hear the band playing some traditional Moroccan music, which they kept up throughout the course of the meal, and see a little bit of the décor of the restaurant.

All in all, we had a great time and were looking forward to the next stop, which was to be a Moroccan carpet shop…

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

A Walk Through Tangier's Medina

2011-09-05T08:00:00.001+02:00

After our camel ride, the tour bus dropped us off just outside the walls of the old city of Tangiers. We walked through the twisting alleyways, trying to fend off the almost aggressive touts flogging copper ornaments, bangles and postcards. Although it seemed like the other members of our group, all Americans, didn’t mind the hawkers that much and some even haggled while keeping up with the brisk pace our guide set, Gareth and I felt harassed by the unwanted attention. We came to Morocco knowing theoretically what lay in store for us, but found ourselves avoiding eye contact and trying our best to ignore the men who kept pushing trinkets into our hands. I surreptitiously eyed some of their wares, careful not to let any interest show, and thought that I might have bought some of it had their sales methods been less intrusive. I don’t like being pressured into a sale, and I have absolutely no talent for bargaining, so I resolved myself not to buy anything at all. Little did I know what lay in store for me!

We suddenly stepped out from the maze of alleys, surprised by the unexpected sight of the ocean ahead of us. Our guide explained that the grey waters in front of us was the place where the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea meet. It was a cloudy day and we couldn’t see all that much, but he assured us that on clear blue sky days one could see all the way to Europe. Having had this vantage from Gibraltar only a few days before, we were sorry not to have good weather for this view too.

Then we were once more ushered back into the medina, once again dogged by touts until we were rounded up in a crescent moon shape around a pair of performers. I could hardly believe my eyes: we had happened upon a group of snake charmers. Now, I don’t know if this is something they do for silly tourists like us, or if it is an authentic form of entertainment, but I couldn’t care less. I was in Morocco, I had ridden a camel and now I was watching a man teasing a cobra for fun and profit. I had the presence of mind to remember that my camera has a video mode, so the 32 second clip below gives a quick glimpse of the madness.

After the obligatory collection bowl had been handed round the group, we were rounded up again and headed deeper into the city to go and experience a traditional Moroccan meal.

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

Watch Out, They Spit!

2011-08-22T08:00:00.003+02:00

Our day trip of Tangier in Morocco started with a bus tour through the newer parts of the city. As a port city so close to Europe, it consists of various regions in which expats from that continent flock together. We drove past the British section, peering through the mist rolling in from the ocean at nondescript white houses that didn’t resemble anything like we imagined a Moroccan abode would look like.

Our first stop was on the outskirts of town where a group of camel handlers were stationed. For a nominal fee of €1 per person, I had my first experience of riding on this iconic desert animal. While the camel was sitting with its legs bent in an awkward-looking position, I scrambled onto its back and held onto the two straps, one in front and one at the back of the saddle. As it lumbered to its feet, I held on for dear life, having been warned by its handler not to fall off while the camel got up. With the handler leading the camel by a rope tied around its head, we walked in circles for a few minutes. I really enjoyed the experience and exchanged smiles with other tourists as our camels passed each other. Dismounting was a little tricky as well, the animal plopping to the ground in a rush of bending knees as it first flopped forwards and then backwards.

While we waited for others to take their turns, we had a chance to observe the handlers’ treatment of their animals. They used the ropes to hit the camels when they didn’t want to get up, not savagely, but without any patience and with a definite lack of affection – to them, these animals were a means to earn some easy money, nothing more. I think had I seen how they were treated before I got onto one I would perhaps have decided not to take part. It wasn’t exactly animal abuse, but it did make me feel a little uncomfortable.

It didn’t seem to bother any of the other tourists, however, so perhaps I was just a little oversensitive. The camels were so cute, it was hard to imagine anyone being anything but fond of them, but maybe working with them day in and day out can be frustrating. What are your thoughts on these kinds of activities and using animals as tourist attractions?

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

Morocco: Not What We Expected

2011-08-19T08:00:00.004+02:00

Morocco was one of those places that I had always wanted to visit. I listened enviously to the stories of others who had already travelled there, my mind conjuring up exotic images of colourful spices, markets where you can buy everything from copperware to magic carpets to intricately-worked silverware, and dimly-lit alleyways between rundown yet classically beautiful Moorish buildings. I wanted to sip mint tea while surrounded by people smoking hookah pipes. I wanted to trek across the desert on a camel, sleep in a Bedouin tent at night and eat traditional food with my hands while sitting on a lavish pile of cushions and watching belly dancers sway to the sounds of ritual drumming. And I wanted a pair of pointy-toe shoes.

I’ll admit, my idea of Morocco was the combination of one embarrassing cliché after the other.

I laugh at foreigners when they ask me what it’s like living in Africa. Do lions walk in the street? Are there really no towns and do you all live in mud huts? Since you’re from Africa, you must have met my friend’s cousin who lives in Kenya… You can’t be from Africa, you have white skin. These are just some of the preconceived ideas about Africa that I have encountered while travelling abroad.

So even though I knew that my expectation of Morocco was probably completely wrong, I still jumped at the chance to take a daytrip to Tangier while in Spain last year. We joined an organised tour group who took us across the Strait of Gibraltar in a ferry, ushered us all onto a bus and herded us through the streets of the old town like a herd of sheep from one tourist trap to another. When I think of Morocco now it is with an overwhelming sense of trepidation, a memory of endless harassment by street vendors trying to force their trinkets on the rich tourists, of grubby streets and nondescript buildings, and of TV antennas stretching across the horizon.

No, Morocco wasn’t what I had expected. I enjoyed the various activities we did at the time, but my one glimpse of the country was disappointing in retrospect. Will I ever go back to see if I can find the magic I was hoping to find, perhaps in Marrakech or Essaouira? I don’t know, but I hope so.

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

Coming Soon: African Adventure 2011

2011-08-17T18:18:00.000+02:00

Regular readers may have noticed that there was no blog post last week and, although I know you were all undoubtedly devastated by this silence on my part, rest assured it was for good reason. Gareth and I spent the week in Botswana and Zimbabwe on what I have fondly christened our African Adventure 2011. We were only gone for 8 days, but it was by far one of the most memorable trips we've had thus far!

However, before I document this particular experience, I will be finishing off the Spain 2010 series, which has been dragging on for a very long time. If all goes according to plan you can expect the rest of August to be dedicated to Spain and from September onwards I will be regaling you with tales from our latest trip.

Some of the highlights of our African Adventure 2011 include:

Chobe National Park,
The Victoria Falls,
An elephant-back safari,
Walking with lions, and
An evening in the Livingstone Room.

I'm incredibly excited to share this wonderful experience with you all and I hope you will enjoy reading about it as much as I do writing about it.

The Architect's Garden

2011-08-02T21:30:00.000+02:00

Along with the Alhambra, the Generalife gardens and its palace is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The name is derived from the Arabic Jannat al'Arif, which means "Architect's Garden" and refers to Muhammed III, the sultan of Granada (1302 - 1309). It was used as a summer estate, a place of refuge, when the sultan needed a break from the day-to-day chores of rulership.

Gareth and I wandered through the gardens, enjoying the view of the Alhambra, stopping to smell the roses and admiring the elegant architecture of the palace.

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

The Exotic Beauty of the Nasrid Palaces

2011-07-26T11:52:00.000+02:00

When the time had finally arrived for us to enter the Alhambra’s Nasrid Palaces, a group of people were mulling around the entrance. We were all herded into the first room of the first palace, where everyone stopped dead and listened attentively to their handheld guides. The room was crowded and gloomy and Gareth and I quickly slipped past everyone and moved on to the next room where we were able to appreciate the rundown beauty of the Moorish architecture in peace and quiet.

I liked the colours of Seville’s Alcazar a lot more, and while that palace was better preserved (or renovated) than these ones were, there’s no denying that the intricate details of the stucco work on both walls and ceilings of the Nasrid Palaces are special. I can only imagine what it must have looked like in its glory days, when the Muslim emirs and the women from their harems roamed its corridors.

The palaces are named after the Nasrid dynasty (1232 – 1492) and consists of three separate areas: the Mexuar where justice and state affairs administration were conducted, the Comares palace which was the official residence of the sultan, and the Palace of the Lions which was a private area reserved for the emir’s family. Although there was no harem as we traditionally understand the word, the sultans usually had four wives, three who lived within the Palace of the Lions, while the favourite wife resided in the Tower of the Sultana, now called the Tower of the Captive.

All the rooms inside the palaces are unfurnished. I would have loved to know how the people had lived during those days. We’ve seen the opulence of European palaces, the rich tapestries and the gilded furniture, the family portraits and expensive china, but we have no idea what these rooms looked like when they were occupied. Mind you, the stucco work is so extensive and detailed that it probably wasn’t necessary to add much in the way of decorations. Most of the walls are completely covered in decorative inscriptions – poems in praise of God or the emir, texts from the Koran or simply the Nasrid motto, “There is no conqueror but God.”

In stark contrast to the Moorish architecture is the 17th century St Mary Church of the Alhambra, which was built on the site of the Great Mosque. It wasn’t open to the public, but we found it, along with the Palace of Charles V, an interesting example of the Christian influences of the area.

As with all the palaces we’d seen so far, there were various gardens and pools distributed throughout the buildings, places of respite from the oppressive heat in summer, no doubt. Even in the middle of winter, when we visited, the gardens were beautiful and well-maintained. We particularly enjoyed the Garden of the Partal, where we had a view of the exterior of the Nasrid Palaces, as well as the Church and other buildings of the city complex.

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

Travellers x2: Krugersdorp - Glen Reenen Breakaway

2011-07-20T18:33:00.000+02:00

When two people are travelling together, there are bound to be some things that the one didn’t enjoy quite as much as the other one. I think it’s a good idea to reflect on the trip afterwards, to learn from possible mistakes and to better plan for the next one. So… the verdict is out on our Easter holiday spent camping in the Krugersdorp Game Reserve and in Glen Reenen in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park:

Gareth:
High Point: The views in the Glen Reenen area.

Low Point: The rain in Krugersdorp and the wind in Glen Reenen. We could not even break in our new braai as the wind kept on blowing it over!

Comments: I would go camping with friends again - it was enjoyable.

Anything Learned: Don't camp in the Drakensberg in autumn. A campsite with power isn't always necessary and it keeps the noisy neighbours to a minimum.

Holiday Rating: 8/10

Suneé:
High Point: Camping with friends for the first time and realising that we can spend days just chatting about everything under the sun.

Low Point: Deciding that it was too cold up in the mountains to spend another day in a tent and coming home a day too soon.

Comments: Although the weather wasn't really ideal, it was a good break nonetheless. I would definitely camp with friends again, but for next year's Easter break I think staying in a cabana or guest house would probably be a better idea.

Anything Learned: Camping is best left for the warmer seasons. Put petrol in when the tank's half full. We can make delicious pizzas on the braai!

Holiday Rating: 8/10

No idea which trip we're talking about? Check out these posts:

My 100th Blog Post

2011-07-13T10:23:00.000+02:00

In February 2009, I posted my first blog post on Suneé Sees the World. Back then the blog was still called Wish You Were Here, a name I changed later on when I started learning a bit more about SEO and Google search ranks, and decided to start making things a little more personal. Although I still think the original name is valid (albeit somewhat cliché), the new name says exactly what this blog is all about.

Back then I still wanted to forge a career as a travel writer, and although I’d still like to get published, it’s definitely not as high on my priority list as it used to be. My first few posts were meant to showcase an ability to write feature articles, so if you venture back to Paris for All Seasons and Charismatic Cardiff you’ll notice that my writing style has changed a lot since then. It’s gone from being a more formal presentation to an open discussion of my own experiences while travelling, not quite diary entries, but still an honest account of my travels.

The Fond Memories series is still one of my favourites, although I haven’t done another instalment in quite some time. In these short, descriptive entries I try to evoke a specific memory or a specific point in time in short, concise yet descriptive prose.

If you have a look at the archives you’ll notice that I didn’t take the blogging too seriously up until about August 2010. I then realised that I actually enjoyed blogging immensely, especially when readers started commenting, and knew that if I were to capture and keep people’s attention a once-a-month random entry wasn’t going to cut it. At the time I was employed by a company that really didn’t have any work for me to do, so I started finding ways to keep myself busy during “working” hours. That’s when I realised that others are blogging about travel too and that there is a whole community of people out there sharing the same interest and passion as me. I was hooked.

Since then, and up until quite recently, I concentrated on getting two blog posts out in a week. Now that I’m working for another company, one where I have very tight deadlines to adhere to, I really don’t have as much time to devote to blogging anymore, and you might have noticed that it’s dropped down to usually one post a week, and sometimes I miss a week altogether. I’ve tried making up for that by putting more effort into these posts, so that when I do write something it’s at least something interesting with good quality writing (at least, I hope it is!).

While I watched the Stats page almost obsessively at first, I’m no longer too worried about how many hits a day I get. Readership is important of course, otherwise it’s more monologueing than blogging, and while I love that people from all over the world are reading and commenting, my blogging friend Joel from Freedonia Post helped me to realise that it should first and foremost be something that I do for myself, something that I enjoy doing, rather than letting it become a burden to write about what other people might like to read. It’s also the reason why I won’t take the plunge and move to Wordpress and get my own domain, because I’m no longer interested in making this a source of potential income, and if the blogging elite won’t take me seriously because my URL has the word “blogspot” in it, then so be it.

So today is my 100th post. Since the previous My 7 Links post was a little bit of a review of what I’ve written so far, I thought I’d have a more general look at how the blog has developed and what is in store for it in the near future.

There’s only one more post on our Krugersdorp-Golden Gate holiday left, after which the Spain 2010 series will continue. In August, Gareth and I will be heading out to Botswana and Zimbabwe for a week to visit Chobe National Park and the Victoria Falls, so expect to see lots of posts from that trip as well. After that, who knows? Perhaps I’ll finally get time to revisit our Zanzibar excursion, or the wonderful time we had in Malta before that. Or perhaps I can start planning for next year’s adventures…

As always, thank you for reading. I appreciate each and every comment, they are part of what keeps me motivated. If you have any feedback or suggestions, please feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment below.

My 7 Links - Favourite Blog Posts

2011-07-10T22:01:00.002+02:00

Heather Cowper's blog, Heather on her travels, was the first travel blog I started following once I realised a) there is such a thing as blogging and b) people were blogging about travel! So it came as a very pleasant surprise to find out that she tagged me in Tripbase's My 7 Links challenge. Thanks Heather! It's given me the opportunity to have a little review of my posts so far.

My Most Beautiful Post

It's very difficult to decide which post is the most beautiful. How is this beauty defined - the prose, the pictures, the topic, the combination of all three? In the end I decided on the memory of a beautiful day - A Visit to Stony Point Penguin Colony. Although it was the type of windy day you'll only find in the Cape, we had the most wonderful time walking along the ramparts, getting to see the penguins up close, smiling at their antics and taking loads of pictures of the scenery. Definitely an experience that I will remember for a very long time to come.

My Most Popular Post

Well this one is easy, seeing as it's the post with the most hits on my blog. In January 2010, Gareth and I went Camping in the Kruger National Park. It was one of the best short holidays I've had in a long time. We spent our mornings and late afternoons on game drives, our middays cooling down in the pool, and fell asleep at night listening to the sounds of the wild just a stone's throw away from our tent. It was bliss.

My Most Controversial Post

I don't really try to be controversial (although I have been known for the occasional rant), but my post about Why I Will Never Camp at Pilanesberg Again seemed to rub certain readers the wrong way. In it, I tell about the unpleasant experience we had while camping in one of South Africa's most popular game reserves and why we never pack beetroot anymore.

My Most Helpful Post

When I started writing this blog, I made a decision not to turn it into a smaller (and much less successful!) version of a Lonely Planet guidebook. I didn't want to write about train schedules, ticket prices and bus routes, but rather about my own thoughts and experiences at wonderful destinations. However, after having recently done the research while Planning a Visit to Granada's Alhambra, I thought I might as well share the knowledge and make it a little easier for others planning the same trip.

A Post Whose Success Surprised Me

Funnily enough, one of my most popular posts has very little to do with travelling. While the title, and SEO being what it is, might have something to do with it, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo seemed to amaze and outrage some people just as much as it did me. In this post, I describe the consequences of a rash decision I took while on holiday in Phuket, Thailand, more than ten years ago.

A Post I Feel Didn't Get the Attention It Deserved

I've been told that not everyone is as interested in history as I am. Hard to believe, but I suppose it must be true. That's probably the reason why my look at Malta's Historic Highlights has never drawn much attention. I like this post because not only did I get the chance to explore that wonderfully interesting little island's history, I also got the chance to reminisce about the week Gareth and I spent there and to link everything I learned while researching for this post with the sights we saw while there.

The Post That I Am Most Proud Of

This will have to be awarded to two posts discussing the same topic, one that makes my blood boil whenever I think of it. The first is a plea to Save Our Rhinos! In September 2010, South Africa had lost 210 rhinos to poachers who cut the horns from these majestic animals while they are still alive, and then leave them to die from the wound. My follow-up post, State of Our Rhinos Report, gives some feedback on how the country has been dealing with the crisis. I believe creating awareness to the plight of our endangered animals will go a long way towards helping people understand that there is a problem and that we need to do something about, even if it is only something as small as spreading the word.

And there you have it. Please let me know if you agree with my choices.

Next up, I nominate the following bloggers to also participate in the challenge:

Hiking Towards Mushroom Rock

2011-07-05T09:33:00.001+02:00

You might think with all the camping we do, that Gareth and I are real outdoors people. We’re not. In fact, over a normal weekend you’ll most often as not find us either playing on the PC, vegging in front of the TV, or quietly reading a book. Which is probably why we enjoy it so much when we do get the chance to be out in nature. We usually try and make the most of it, even if the weather isn’t always ideal.

So, even with the freezing cold temperatures and gale force winds (I’m exaggerating a little, of course) we experienced while camping at Glen Reenen in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park over Easter, we decided that we had to do what people come here to do: hike in the Drakensberg mountains. We put on our walking shoes, braved the cold and set out on a trail that would take roughly two hours to complete: Mushroom Rock.

Although we didn’t complete the trail and only walked for about an hour, we had loads fun. We hiked past a beautiful mountain stream, through fields of tall reed grass and up the steep incline of the mountain. The sky was a lovely deep blue colour, the air crisp and clear, and the view of our camping site down below was simply stunning.

However, the higher we went, the more the wind whipped around us, making it difficult to keep our balance. Once we reached the trail that snaked around the outside of Mushroom Rock, it had gotten dangerously blustery and, coupled with Gareth’s fear of heights, we decided to turn around and return to our tent.

The climb down was almost as much fun. We hadn’t realised just how far we had come, and with knees shaking at the unusual exertion, we jumped over puddles of mud and from rocky outcrop to rocky outcrop, all the while keeping a good eye out for snakes and other small animals. By the time we reached the bottom, other climbers had made it to the spot where we had turned around and we could appreciate just how high we had actually climbed.

I would love to go back there during warmer weather to complete the trail and maybe take on another short one. There are other routes that range from full day to five-day walks, which I think could be very scenic and would be a fun activity to undertake. Gareth wants to climb Kilimanjaro in the near future, but before then, I think we should get a lot fitter and practice a bit more – and these trails would be the perfect place to start.

Clarens: A Small Town with a Big Reputation

2011-06-30T17:45:00.001+02:00

On our second day camping in the Drakensberg mountains in Golden Gate Highlands National Park, we woke up to an overcast sky and decided to head to Clarens for the day. Only a quick twenty minute drive from our campsite, we arrived early enough to still find a good parking spot in this bustling little tourist town.

Well-known as an artist’s retreat, Clarens has a lot of hype to live up to. It’s become one of the must-visit villages for city-dwellers in search of some fresh air, beautiful scenery and small-town hospitality. Whenever I told people we were planning on visiting, they all smiled knowingly and assured us that it would be the highlight of our trip.

And maybe that’s why we weren’t all that impressed with it. It had been talked up too much, our expectations were too high. Or perhaps we’re just uncultured hooligans who can’t appreciate a good thing when we see it. Or perhaps our timing was just a bit off, visiting at the height of holiday season when prices were surely higher and the sidewalks a little too crowded for our tastes.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved walking along the circular road that ran around the central park, the only tarred road in town, ducking in and out of art shops and exploring antique stores. I loved the crisp, fresh air and the mountains in the background. I loved that there was a windpomp right in the middle of town and that people greeted me as I walked past them in the street. But somehow, it just wasn’t quite as wonderful as everyone had made it out to be.

Yes, there were many shops with artworks on display, but they were either outrageously expensive or not the type of quality I would have expected from a town with this kind of reputation. I did almost come home with the one (barely) affordable piece that I liked, but in retrospect am very glad that my stingy side won out, because I would have been paying that impulse buy off for many months to come. In the end, we resolved to just wander from shop to shop and enjoyed the town’s ambience more than the actual art.

We were also disappointed when dining out. Perhaps we were just unlucky in our choice of restaurants, but we were underwhelmed by both breakfast and dinner, although I have a friend who can go on for hours about the delicious meal he had had in one of the many sidewalk cafés. I would advise getting recommendations before selecting your mealtime destination, or be subjected to the luck of the draw, as we were.

For me, Clarens’ best feature lies in its location. Situated right on the edge of the Drakensberg mountains, it’s ideally located for outdoor activities such as hiking, horse riding, fly fishing, clay pigeon shooting and scenic mountain drives. The area also has an interesting history relating to the Basotho war of 1865 – 1866 and the Anglo-Boer War of 1880 – 1902, and for those who like their history to date back millions of years, there is a guided tour on a farm where dinosaur bones have been found. Clarens is also a good starting point from which to visit the neighbouring mountain kingdom of Lesotho. None of which we managed to do on this trip, but I might be enticed back during warmer weather to explore the region further.

If you’re coming for a daytrip however, a morning is more than enough time to discover all that this quaint little town has to offer. Come with moderate expectations and perhaps it will pleasantly surprise you.

Birthday Breakfast with the Birds

2011-06-28T17:12:00.001+02:00

Yesterday was my birthday and Claudette, one of my best friends since primary school days, treated me to breakfast at the Blue Crane restaurant inside the Austin Roberts Bird Sanctuary in Muckleneuk in Pretoria. We arrived there just as the restaurant opened at 7:30 and was ushered in from the cold to sit by the fireside, warming our frozen fingers on cups of tea while catching up on each other’s news.

The restaurant is situated on the banks of a large lake and as we enjoyed our meal (scrambled eggs on toast for me and fresh fruit and yoghurt for her), we were entertained by the sounds of water birds calling from the little island in the middle of the lake, as well as the antics of a kingfisher bird who came to sit on the veranda and peered at us through the glass doors as if hoping we’d ordered the salmon for breakfast and were willing to share.

After Claudette had to leave for work (in a moment of incredible foresight, I had booked the day off last month), I spent the rest of the morning chasing the rabbits roaming the parking lot and trying to get a good picture of the little duikertjie foraging by the park’s fence. Every time I put my camera up against the fence to take a picture of the little animal, it pressed its nose up to the lens, probably wondering what tasty titbit I was offering.

I also took a stroll along the wooden walkways to the Hadeda Hideout, a wooden enclosure where you can sit and watch the birds in their natural habitat (it’s also the only place where you can enter the park itself, as opposed to walking along the outside of the fence). Although there were mostly ducks, geese and hadedas to look at, I also caught a glimpse of three crowned cranes and three blue cranes in interesting poses, one foot in the air, head twisting in strange patterns as they listened to the sounds of cars driving past. We used to live in the area when I was much younger and I remember always looking out for ostriches when we drove past on the way to school. Sadly, I didn’t see any this time round, but I suppose they must have been on the other side of the Sanctuary.

The Sanctuary was established in 1958 and is home to around 170 species of birds. Birdwatchers and twitchers will probably be able to spend hours waiting and watching for the park’s more elusive residents. I certainly found my morning most enjoyable, even more so as I looked at my beautiful surroundings and thought about all the people back at the office, working hard and attending meetings, while I listened to the call of the kingfisher and watched the sunlight reflecting off the water of the lake.

A Drive Through Golden Gate Highlands National Park

2011-06-21T08:00:00.002+02:00

Our first day in Golden Gate Highlands National Park was icy cold, but had a bright blue sky that was perfect for exploring the mountains and the views offered by a drive through the park. Although part of the Drakensberg mountain range, we didn't get to see any really impressive peaks - I think those are mostly on the Natal side of the mountains. The Free State is known for being flat farmlands, so I guess any kind of hill in this area is exciting. We enjoyed driving the meandering roads up and down the mountains, looking at the gorgeous views and coming upon the odd herd of zebra or blue wildebeest, and (very fortunately) also had an encounter with a pair of secretary birds.

Camping in Golden Gate Highlands National Park

2011-06-18T13:28:00.000+02:00

The last four days of our Easter break this year was spent at the Golden Gate Highlands National Park, which is the closest bit of the Drakensberg mountains if you’re coming from Gauteng. It’s situated in the Free State and was about five hours’ drive for us, which is really not that far if you think about it (I spend three hours in traffic driving to work every day).

By the time I had booked, way back in January, there were no more electrified camping sites left, so we came prepared. We had a gas grill braai and an electric light that you hook up to the car at night. We didn’t want to plug our camping fridge into the car as well, for fear that it would drain the battery too much and we’d be stranded in the mountains (I can think of worse fates!), but as it turns out, the weather was cold enough that the already cold fridge stayed cool long enough to keep our food fresh for four days. We also had a steel crate that we locked when we went out during the day, just in case there were baboons again, but we had no trouble with our furry friends this time round.

Apart from the fact that we didn’t have electricity, we also didn’t have a braai (which was strange, since all other campsites we have visited in the past had their own braai facilities) or a water tap or a dustbin close by. The sparkling clean ablution and kitchen facilities more than made up for these small inconveniences, however.

The camping grounds are extremely picturesque. The sites are located in a valley at the foot of Mushroom Rock and while our previous few days camping in the Krugersdorp Game Reserve was wet, muddy and noisy, these last few days turned out to be cold, clear and quiet. We slept in most days, because the shadow of the mountain kept the sun from waking us too early, and went to bed after we’d gazed up at the Milky Way in wonderment. We were certainly well-rested by the end of the week!

Shattered Nerves on the N3

2011-06-09T20:49:00.000+02:00

The wet Easter weekend weather let up long enough early Monday morning for us to pitch our muddy tents and set out on the next phase of our holiday. We said our goodbyes to Franco and Lizelle, promising to do this again soon, and programmed the GPS for our next destination: Golden Gate Highlands National Park.

I had finally managed to get the hang of driving with a trailer (although reversing is a skill I will need to practice a lot more!) and the distance between Johannesburg and the Free State quickly grew smaller and smaller. We passed the first Ultra City only a few kilometres outside of Jozi without a second thought, singing loudly along with the radio and waving cheekily at traffic officers hiding behind bushes.

Image seen at The Crabby Cook

The countryside flattened out and the yellow fields of the Free State stretched for miles on end. Suddenly, a warning beep sounded. Another 80 km of fuel left. “It’s fine, we’ll find another Ultra City soon enough,” I reassured Gareth. We drove on.

As I watched the fuel gauge sliding deeper and deeper into the red, with nothing but endless farmland on the horizon, we started getting nervous. We had long since stopped singing and while I scoured the road signs for some indication of a petrol station, Gareth was fiddling with the GPS, trying to find the setting that shows where the nearest station is.

“Found it!” he exulted. “There’s a little town right up head, 5 km.”

Ten kilometres later, still no petrol station. “How can there be nowhere to stop on the N3?!” I raged. I started mentally preparing myself for the inevitable: we’d have to drink up that 2 litre bottle of water in the camping fridge so Gareth could have something to go and fetch petrol with. Would he be able to find somewhere within walking distance once our car had spluttered to a stop? Would it be safe for me to stay in the car on my own in the middle of nowhere or should I walk with him? Would the car still be here when we get back? Should I SMS my mother and tell her I love her?

I looked at the electronic gauge: 7 km worth of petrol left.

“There has to be something on the other side of this hill,” I prayed out loud. And then, when we reached the top, there it was. I could just imagine a break in the clouds and the light shining down as if to indicate the Promised Land: an Engen 1-Stop. We were saved.

Nuts for Cheeky Chipmunks

2011-06-02T19:08:00.000+02:00

Coming face to face with one of the Big Five when exploring a game reserve is always exciting, but sometimes it’s even more fun when you encounter the smaller denizens of the wild. The story is almost familiar: while driving around in the Krugersdorp Game Reserve, a car ahead of us has stopped and we can’t find what they’re looking at. As we come up closer to them, the car moves on and we stop in the exact same spot, convinced that they must have been looking at something. And sure enough, they were.

Two squirrels were sitting next to a hole on the side of the road, chattering at each other. One of them came up to the car and none of us could resist those pleading puppy-dog eyes. Even though feeding the animals isn’t allowed in the strictest sense of the word, we nevertheless obliged by handing out cashews and pistachios to the pair of them. They were extremely cute, with their fluffy tails and their cheeks bulging with stored nuts! In return, they kindly posed for photographs for a good fifteen minutes.

When we finally bade them goodbye, our stores of snacks severely depleted, we discussed why they were sitting in a hole in the ground. We were fairly sure that squirrels live in trees, so we concluded that the hole must be their cache where they store their extra stash. And it must be a well-stocked stash as well, judging by the amount of nuts we handed out. Their tactic was working brilliantly.

Food for a King

2011-05-30T08:00:00.007+02:00

Ten o’clock on a Sunday morning, instead of lying in a little later than usual, visitors to the Krugersdorp Game Reserve are already positioned in strategic places within the lion enclosure to get the best view of the animals being fed. The enclosure contains a few smaller camps and one large open field, each area housing a pride of lions.

We were parked in front of one of the smaller camps, watching a family of one alpha male, two juvenile males and about six or seven females playfully waiting their turn. Suddenly, they all sniffed the air and looked off in one direction and moments later the bakkie carrying their meal arrived. I set my camera on video mode and captured the whole spectacle on film, only realising after the fact that I never actually pressed Record. Typical. So we only have a few photos of the actual feeding.

When they said go watch the lions being fed, we all were all thrilled at the idea, not fully realising that the carnivores are actually being fed something. In this case, it turned out to be half a cow. It took three people to lift the carcass off the bakkie and drag it into the fenced off pen, the lionesses watching on the other side of the gate, their tails swishing back and forth and their yellow eyes intent. The workers then locked the gate again and opened the main gate. A lioness darted forward and in one fluid movement picked up the whole carcass by herself and put it down in the main enclosure. I was awestruck. It was such an amazing display of raw animal power and I suddenly gained so much more respect for these wild animals. As the rest of the pride tucked in, the big male came and stood before the gate and roared at the workers, making it clear that even though he was fenced off, he was still king of his domain.

With the smell of dead cow in our nostrils, we watched the lions feast. There were bone-crunching cracks and limbs being torn from the body. It was pretty gruesome, to be honest, but educational nonetheless. They are magnificent animals, and even though we sometimes think they’re warm and fuzzy and beautiful, they’re still predators that should never be underestimated.

Once we’d seen enough, we decided to drive through the rest of the enclosure and not far off we came upon the pride who were currently allowed free reign of the open field. Cars were parked in a circle around the little group and we had a close-up unobscured view as they devoured the other half of the cow.

I have mixed feelings about keeping wild animals in (relatively) small areas, but in the many years that we’ve been visiting the Kruger Park we’ve never seen lions this close-up before. It may not be ideal, but I do believe the animals are well-cared for and safe here, and it allows visitors to experience and learn about them, and perhaps gain more respect for them, and ultimately be more inclined to protect them. What are your thoughts on the matter?

Four Explore Maropeng

2011-05-19T18:03:00.000+02:00

The boat ride at Maropeng teaches you about the four elements: wind, water, fire and earth. And because the museum is interactive, part of the fun is to experience these elements – you get wet, you get windblown and then you get dried off with heat. While this is all very entertaining, it doesn’t really leave you very photogenic. As soon as you get off the boat, the resident photographer snaps pictures of you and your companions, first as a group and then individually. I’m giving you fair warning now so that when the time comes, you’re prepared and have managed to wipe your face and brush your hair before your dishevelled state is forever immortalized in print (see picture below).

Like the rest of the museum, the photos are actually quite fun as well, because you get various options of how you would like to have your individual photo displayed. The two most memorable options were a picture of the evolution from ape to man with your face as the last step, or your face on the cover of National Geographic with a quirky title I can’t remember the wording of, but was something like “Famous Explorer Discovers the Cradle of Humankind”, or something like that.

The photos cost R30 each, which is exorbitant if you ask me, but nevertheless a good memento of the trip.

Following in the Footsteps of Mrs Ples

2011-05-11T21:58:00.000+02:00

As someone who’s not only extremely fond of travelling and seeing the sights, but also interested in archaeology, I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that this Easter holiday was my first time visiting the Cradle of Humankind. This World Heritage site is situated less than an hour’s drive from my hometown, Pretoria, so there’s really no good excuse for not having explored the region before. As it is, we didn’t get to see that much of the area, apart from getting a little lost on our way to the museum at Maropeng. In our defence, we’d seen two caves in the past year or so and couldn’t quite scrounge up enough enthusiasm for stalagmites and stalactites so soon again, and the weather was fairly miserable, so we wanted to be warm and indoors as much as possible.

Those of you who have already heard of the world-famous Mrs Ples will be interested to know that she (or he, as it may be) was discovered in Sterkfontein in 1947 and was thought to be the Missing Link between humans and our ape-like ancestors. Although the real skull isn’t on display, we did get to see a copy of it while our tour guide (whose real name is also Maropeng, funnily enough) told us a little bit more about the significance of the skull and other important discoveries made in the area.

The museum at Maropeng is located inside a strange-looking burial mound called the Tumulous building. The entrance fee is quite hefty at R120 per person (although children, students and pensioners get discounts), but the price becomes apparent once you’re inside. Your journey through time starts with a spiralling walkway leading into the bowels of the earth, important events highlighted on a timeline spanning across millions of years. A leisurely boat ride, in which you discover the elements that are the building blocks of our planet, and a dizzying re-enactment of the Big Bang later, you emerge in one of the most fun-filled interactive museums I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting.

Granted, the exhibitions and activities are aimed at younger kids, but those young at heart with an enquiring mind can have just as much fun as the little ones. We wandered from display to display, dialling extinct animals to learn more about them, pushing buttons, twiddling knobs, turning dials, watching lights go on and off and learning all about the history of mankind through the ages. It was loads of fun!

As we left the building and walked back towards the car, we passed several cement casts of famous people’s footprints and made light-hearted jokes about Thabo Mbeki’s shoe size and the little impression Jacob Zuma made.

This long-overdue visit to the Cradle of Humankind didn’t disappoint and I’m sure we’ll come back to explore the area, and the historic caves underneath it, in earnest in the near future.

Camping in the Krugersdorp Game Reserve

2011-05-05T08:00:00.000+02:00

This Easter weekend, Gareth and I, along with our friends Lizelle and Franco, camped inside the Krugersdorp Game Reserve at the Ngonyama Caravan Park. Since our friends only had the long weekend off and didn’t want to travel far, they had suggested we try this site out and I jumped at the chance to finally explore the world-renowned Cradle of Humankind (more on that later). I was a bit dubious about camping inside a game reserve again, particularly one where the logo features two monkeys pilfering a picnic basket, especially after our recent baboon incident, but although these monkeys did try their luck, they were only a mild nuisance and actually quite entertaining to watch.

We were impressed with the campsite at first, although a few annoyances during the course of the weekend eventually led us all to agree upon a rating of 6 / 10. The stands were large and ours had tall shade trees which would have been perfect had the weather played along. As it was, the rain turned our spot into a muddy quagmire and the trees kept the sun from drying our tent out. Had we known it would be such a damp weekend, we would have pitched our camp on the lovely green grass outside the trees’ shade.

The site was assigned to us, which was both a good and a bad thing. Good because I was one of the first people to book in January this year, which meant we got one of the best spots with lots of shade and just the right distance from the ablution block. Bad because that spot turned out to be right next to the kids’ play park – not ideal if a) you don’t have kids and b) you’re looking for a bit of peace and quiet. If we’d had the choice, we’d have picked one of the sites next to the fence where we would have had less chance of being disturbed by exuberant youngsters and would have been able to watch the wildlife pass right by our doorstep.

Our biggest gripe with the caravan park was the ablution facilities and is the ultimate reason why it didn’t get a much higher score from the four of us. There are 48 stands with a maximum of 6 people per stand, which means on a weekend as busy as the Easter weekend, there are roughly 280 people who all have to make do with only one ablution block. That is 2 showers and 4 bathtubs for the ladies (and children) and 4 showers and 2 bathtubs for the men. As you can imagine, getting some shower time turned out to be a bit of a logistical nightmare. While the guys in our group didn’t complain about the availability of the showers, they weren’t too keen on the men’s open-plan arrangement in which they had nowhere to put their stuff while in the shower and had to get dressed in front of everyone else in the room. And due to the mud caused by the rainy weather and perhaps the unavailability of cleaning staff over the public holidays, I’m afraid the toilets were soon a mess and ran out of toilet paper at about 18:00 at night, only to be restocked after 10:00 the next morning. Now, I know we’re camping and supposedly “roughing it”, but a well-kept and well-designed bathroom can make or break a place for me.

All these little grievances aside and despite the unseasonably wet weather, we had a great time. We sat and talked till late at night, we went to Maropeng and got lost in the Cradle of Humankind, we watched a pride of lions feast on half a cow, we learned how to paint with light, we caught Miss Scarlett committing suicide with the Rope in the Hall, we concocted pizzas on the braai and, most importantly, we learned that the company of good friends makes any experience twice as special.

Lessons Learned from Camping

2011-05-02T14:44:00.000+02:00

Today is the last day of our 11-days-off-for-the-price-of-3-days Easter break. Gareth and I have returned from a cold, wet and windy but totally awesome week camping, first in the Cradle of Humankind near Krugersdorp in Gauteng, followed by a few days high up in the Drakensberg mountains on the Free State side in Glen Reenen. It’s funny, but even as I sat there in our tent, freezing my toes off at 2 degrees Celsius in the middle of the day, I couldn’t be more happier. There is such a sense of freedom while being on holiday, being outside in nature, even if the weather is less than ideal. While Gareth was busy making hot drinks on our gas stove to fortify ourselves with against the cold, I knew that there wasn’t anywhere else I’d rather be at that moment.

But now we’re back, just about ready to face reality again, and we’ve had some time to reflect on the week away. Here are some of the things we learned while camping the past week:

The problem with public places is the public. We usually take our holidays outside of school vacation periods and on this trip we remembered why we do this. Screaming kids and mud-caked bathrooms equals two unhappy campers.
Good company makes any type of weather bearable. It’s the first time the two of us have gone camping with friends and we thoroughly enjoyed it. While it was raining cats and dogs outside, the four of us hardly noticed as we wiled away the hours chatting and playing board games.
Never forget to pack shower sandals.
If it looks like a wet weekend ahead, forgo the shady spot under the tree and rather pitch your tent on the grass where it will be relatively mud-free and more likely to dry out before you need to pack up again.
If you think you have just enough petrol left to get you there, fill up now.
You can never take too many warm blankets.
Some items are non-negotiable and should always be packed, even if you think you won’t need them, like a universal sink plug or a roll of toilet paper.
Blue skies in the morning does not mean your towels hanging out on the line won’t be soaking wet when you return in the afternoon.
Going to bed at sunset and rising again at dawn gives you 12 hours of sleep, leaving you fully-rested and ready to face the working week again.

I’ll use the next few posts to document this trip while it’s still fresh in my mind. The Spain 2010 series has been going on a lot longer than anticipated, and there’s still a lot to tell, but that will continue after I’ve regaled you with tales of cashew-eating squirrels, dialling dodos, the food in Clarens and the beautiful vistas from the top of the Drakensberg mountains.

Exploring Alhambra's Alcazaba

2011-04-18T08:00:00.001+02:00

There isn’t much to see inside the Alhambra’s alcazaba, but we had fun nonetheless walking along its walls and exploring the foundations of what used to be the military barracks. The soldier’s quarters seem very small to me, but if you look carefully you’ll see one of them, probably the commanding officer’s house, was large enough to have the luxury of an indoor pool.

As per tradition, we climbed the highest tower in the fort, known as the Vela Tower, to have a look at the city of Granada from above. Row upon row of white houses stretched as far as the eye can see. We liked this view of the city a lot more than we did when we were walking its streets earlier that morning. We could even get a clear view of the cathedral, which was impossible in the built-up city where the tall buildings next to it obscured its towers. But from the top of the four-storey tall bell tower, the vista was wide and beautiful.

On our way out, we walked through the Adarves gardens, which I thought was typical of what I’ve seen of Moorish architecture thus far – even their soldiers were given a respite of the heat and a place to appreciate the beauty of the city. On one of the walls in the garden there is an inscription in Spanish which Google Translate tells me means:

Give him alms, woman,

as there is nothing worse in life,

as the pain of

being blind in Granada.

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

Admiring the Palace of a Holy Roman Emperor

2011-04-11T08:00:00.001+02:00

I can’t tell you how much I loved walking towards the Alhambra’s entrance. On the one side, the wall of the fort is at least two storeys high, rough-hewn stones and mortar tantalizingly hiding the history behind it. On the other side, the lush vegetation in autumnal hues let a dappling light fall on the path leading to the gate. Unseen crickets chirping in the vegetation was the only sounds disturbing our thoughts. When we finally passed through the gateway, it was strange to see the bustle of so many people on the other side.

We arrived a little too early for the time indicated on our tickets to enter the Nasrid Palaces. Luckily for us, there’s still plenty to see while you wait. In particular, the Palace of Charles V, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire from 1519, and also known as Carlos I, king of Spain from 1516 until his voluntary retirement in 1556. He had the palace built as a royal residence fit for an emperor in what was called the “Roman” style , a stark contrast to the Moorish architecture surrounding it. Ironically, he never lived in it, since the palace remained unfinished until 1923.

The building is square-shaped, but strangely enough has a large circular courtyard in the middle. Gareth and I took turns taking pictures of ourselves in the middle of the patio, as did most of the other tourists. I often get asked by random strangers to take their picture in front of well-known sights and this time was no exception – a lady with an unfamiliar accent quickly showed me how to work her camera before she and her partner also posed for a photo.

We then climbed up the stairs to get a better view of the roof and the columns of the courtyard and found the entrance to the Fine Arts Museum, which at the time was exhibiting works from the 20th century classical French artist, Henri Matisse. Although the entrance fee was nominal (and free to EU citizens), our visit to the Picasso museum in Malaga was still fresh in our memories and we decided not to go in.

The Museum of the Alhambra is located on the ground floor and houses a collection of archaeological artefacts, as well as Nasrid and Islamic works of art. We opted not to visit it and left the palace behind in search of something to eat. A stall in front of the entrance to the alcazar was selling chorizo rolls and we sat down on a bench to enjoy our lunch, while feeding bits of sausage to the stray cats roaming the grounds and marvelling at the view of Granada.

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

Planning A Visit To Granada’s Alhambra

2011-04-04T21:52:00.000+02:00

Our real reason for visiting Granada was a trip to the Alhambra. I know, it gets confusing. We visited the Alcazaba in Malaga, the Alcazar in Seville and now the Alhambra in Granada. Here’s the quick and easy translation: alcazaba comes from the Arabic for citadel, alcazar means palace and Alhambra literally translates as “the red one” and is the name of an alcazar with its own alcazaba. It’s a grand fortress complex consisting of royal palaces, soldier’s quarters and beautiful gardens, with too much to describe in just one blog post, so I will be spreading it out over several entries.

Take my word for it, if you enjoy Moorish architecture, history and museums, then a visit to the Alhambra is a must-do. It was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1984 and, more recently, one of the finalists for the New Seven Wonders of the World. As such, the amount of daily visitors allowed into the Nasrid Palaces (the main complex area) are limited, so it’s best to book tickets in advance. It’s especially important to take note of what time slot you want to enter the Nasrid Palaces, as you will only be admitted within that half hour, although you then have the rest of the day to explore. We paid €13 per person, which included entrance to the Nasrid Palaces, the alcazar and the Generalife gardens.

The Alhambra is situated on top of Sabika hill overlooking Granada. It’s one of the stops on the red Hop-On-Hop-Off bus’ route (which costs €18 per person), but you can also take the city bus 32 or 34 (which costs about €1.20 per person). If you’re driving yourself, there is lots of parking space at the entrance, with prices starting at €2.35 per car and adding around €1.50 per hour on top of that.

Although we didn’t, I would definitely recommend getting a hand-held audio guide. If I remember correctly, they are €4 per person, but I’m sure the information provided would be worthwhile. I ended up buying a book (which I’m yet to delve seriously into) and would have appreciated learning about the history while actually standing in the midst of it all.

I would recommend bringing your own refreshments, however there are vending machines outside the bathrooms next to the ticket office where you can buy overpriced snacks (and a delicious cup of hot chocolate). Once inside the citadel, there are one or two shops selling food and drinks as well, but no coffee shops or restaurants for a proper meal. There is also a four-star hotel within the complex, but I don’t know if it has a restaurant to have lunch at.

Finally, allow yourself lots of time, a whole day if possible, if you like this kind of thing. Although you can only enter the Nasrid Palaces (and the Generalife afterwards) in your timeslot, the alcazar and the Palace of Charles V (housing temporary art exhibitions) are open all day.

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

A Grey Morning in Granada

2011-03-31T08:00:00.003+02:00

When we arrived in Granada, the GPS directed us to the nearest (and probably most expensive!) underground parking garage in the area. It seemed a little dodgy to us at first. The walls were sprayed with graffiti and a boisterous group of teenagers sporting hoodies and tattoos congregated around the exit. We avoided eye contact and tried to look as un-touristy as two people carrying backpacks and cameras and wearing comfortable clothes with sneakers on a weekday morning could look. As it turns out, our fears were unfounded. We were parked right opposite the city’s university, next to a skateboard rink.

It was another grey, drizzly day and the old buildings looked sombre and washed-out in the dull light. With no map to guide us around the unfamiliar streets we were soon lost, but spotting a bell tower between the buildings, we managed to eventually find our way to the heart of the old town. As we approached the cathedral we were once again harassed by gypsy women trying to force branches of rosemary into our hands. A firm “Nee, dankie” spoken in Afrikaans while avoiding eye contact seemed to be the best way of dealing with them.

On entering the Catedral Metropolitana de Granada, I was happy to find that the entry fee was only €3.50 per person, less than half the price of the others we had visited so far. But we soon realised that the price is proportionate to the grandeur of the cathedral and found this one spectacularly uninspiring. While both cathedrals in Malaga and Seville allowed photos inside, this one didn’t and I think it’s because they know there’s not much to take pictures of in there. To say we were underwhelmed is an understatement.

Just outside the cathedral is the Real Capilla, the mausoleum housing the remains of Spain’s catholic monarchs. The entry fee was also €3.50 per person, which I paid gladly for the chance to see the tombs of Isabella and Ferdinand, the king and queen responsible for the creation of the notorious Spanish Inquisition. The chapel also includes a museum containing relics and 15th century portraits and religious paintings, but none were particularly interesting to us.

The red Hop-On-Hop-Off bus was waiting for us outside the chapel. At €18 per person it was quite expensive, but we’ve found that it’s the easiest way of seeing the sights of a city, and very convenient as well, because it takes you exactly to where you want to go and lets you get back on again after you’ve seen what you wanted to see. And luckily for us, the route included a stop at the top of the hill to visit the Alhambra, which was our primary reason for visiting Granada. So we sat back and let the bus driver battle with the traffic while ooh-ing and aah-ing at the appropriate moments. By the time we reached the stop for the Alhambra we’d decided that Granada is a grey, bleak town perhaps better explored in summer.

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

A Taste of Home in Spain

2011-03-28T08:00:00.002+02:00

The only things my father wanted us to bring back for him from Spain was a leather belt and Cajun spices. So wherever we went, we kept our eyes open for exotic spices (although we later found out that Cajun is actually a mixture of various spices, which we ironically found in a pharmacy back home). But before we found that out, we scoured all the market stalls without success.

We visited the Moorish city of Granada on the fourth-last day of our Spanish holiday. It was a cold, blustery day and I was starting to feel a little homesick by then. But, as I perused the wares of this particular stall, my heart soared at the hint of home displayed so prominently amongst its more unusual wares...

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

Feathered Fun at Montecasino's Bird Gardens

2011-03-21T19:20:00.000+02:00

If you're planning a visit to Montecasino, do make sure to set aside two or three hours to visit their Bird Gardens. R45 per person gains you entry into the park - pricey, but well worth it in my opinion, and if you're looking for an entertaining day out for the kids, look no further.

Our day started off with a tasty breakfast under the trees at the Café Flamingo, watching other people's kids play with the geese that had escaped their enclosure. We made sure to stay upwind from the flamingo pool while eating and laughing at the antics of the sparrows and weaver birds stealing crumbs and packets of sugar from the tables. We finished our meal just in time for the 11:00 show and made our way to the amphitheater, where bird tamers tried their best to coax exotic and indigenous birds onto the stage for the kids' enjoyment and education.

After the show, we wandered around the gardens. There are walk-in cages where you can get close to bright little birds, called rainbow lorikeets, tame enough to come eat from your hands. Next stop was the reptile room. For someone with an acute fear of frogs, I managed to spend quite a bit of time in their stuffy little room, admiring the bright colours on Amazonian frogs and trying to spot hidden tree dwellers. Back outside in the fresh air, I admired South Africa's beautiful national bird, the blue crane, and tried to get a group of lemurs to move it, move it.

My favourite part of the gardens however, are the parrot playpens. A dozen or so blue and red macaws, one white and pink cockatoo and two of the yellow-crested cockatoos are perched together in an open air area where visitors brave enough to come within reach of their huge beaks can interact with them. When we arrived, three of the blue macaws promptly climbed off their perch, waddled over to us and untied the laces on Gareth's shoes. So cute!

Another fun attraction is the walk-in aviary, which houses over sixty species of birds, as well as cages containing large snakes, bats and smaller primates. Here, you not only have to watch where you step, but also where you stop, since the birds high up in the trees aren't too particular what (or who) they poop on. While you can walk around on ground level, chasing red ibis or twitchy-looking guinea fowl, raised walkways lets you appreciate all the inhabitants from above.

Just outside the aviary, a glass enclosure is a home to a small meerkat colony, including one lookout sentry who takes his job very seriously.

As you make your way to the exit, you walk past more cages with such interesting inhabitants as three-toed sloths, kookaburras, tamarins and sleepy owls.

I thoroughly enjoyed our outing, so much so that we went back the next weekend as well. It's a great way to escape city life for a few hours, learning about and interacting with local and exotic bird and animal species. Bring the kids and make a day of it.

Italy for the Travel-Challenged

2011-03-16T08:00:00.000+02:00

I twirl the spaghetti around my fork as I watch a stream of humanity pass me by. The fountain splashes merrily and the dulcet sounds of the street performer singing well-known arias set the mood. The sky is that exact shade of topaz blue that lovelorn poets write about, glimpsed between two rows of Tuscan buildings from which a line of washing is suspended. I sit back in my chair on the sidewalk of a trendy ristorante and sigh in contentment. “Ah, la dolce vita!”

Where am I? Rome? Venice? A lesser known village somewhere in Tuscany? No, guess again. Assisi, Napoli, Sienna… Milan? No, all wrong. I’m having lunch in the heart of Fourways in Johannesburg at a casino complex called Montecasino.

Okay, I’ll admit it, it’s lame. The sky is a perpetual sunset painted on the ceiling, the buildings are the fake façades of shops and the twinkling lights of the slot machines are never far off. The soloist on the piano gets paid by the hour and the man selling balloons is probably not called Marcello, or even Luigi or Mario.

But if you can let your imagination go for a bit (and if you’re desperately longing for the real thing) you can pretend that the cobblestone streets date back to Roman times, that the stork nesting in the chimney above has just returned from a delivery and that the pasta you gobbled down was cooked from scratch by a little old lady dressed all in black.

My mind wanders back to fond memories of Italy. I remember a night spent in a campervan in a field of sunflowers. The bells of the Cathedral of San Rufino tolling in a square in Assisi. That first sweet taste of fresh cherries from the market in Sienna. Giggling at the strange outfits worn by the guards on duty at the Vatican City. The feeling of gloom as I gazed upon Mount Vesuvius from the forum in Pompeii. Tourists posing with outstretched hands holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. My first ever Italian pizza. The views from the Amalfi coast. Practising the lingua while shopping for souvenirs in Venice. Images upon images flash before my eyes, and before I know it, the nostalgia is replaced by a bittersweet melancholy.

Montecasino may not be authentic, but the longing for Italy it inspires definitely is.

A Slice of Britain in the Mediterranean

2011-03-14T08:00:00.003+02:00

Image Courtesy of Mail Online

Gibraltar was a definite highlight of our trip to the south of Spain, mainly because we had opted to take a bus tour and had a wonderfully witty guide who managed to keep me entertained all day. While he expertly navigated the narrow streets of this small island city, he kept up a continuous narrative about the sights along the way, pointing out landmarks I wouldn’t have noticed had we travelled independently, and giving some insight into what life is like for the inhabitants of this quirky British Overseas Territory.

Because there is so little land available, property prices are sky high and most of the people who work on the island actually live in nearby Spanish towns. The locals we encountered were mostly expats with noticeably British accents and the streets we walked through were dotted with red post boxes and pubs offering fish and chips for lunch. Gibraltar is as British as British can be, with the exception of bright blue sky and a hot Mediterranean climate. The olive-skinned teenagers talking to each other in a strange mixture of Spanish and English, a unique vernacular called Llanito, seemed a strange contrast.

The first stop on our way up the Rock was at a lookout point that offered views of three countries on two continents: we could see the rest of Gibraltar around us, Spain to our left and the hazy coast of Morocco in the distance. The wind tried its best to obscure my view by whipping my hair into my face the whole time, but perseverance paid off and I managed to capture a few photographs of the bay that didn’t have strands of hair spoiling the scenery. The Strait of Gibraltar is notoriously rough, because it is the meeting point between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Huge cargo ships were bobbing just outside of the harbour, ostensibly to avoid paying the taxes anchoring inside would incur.

The Rock is apparently a warren of tunnels used during World War II to house military headquarters and a hospital, but unfortunately our tour did not include entrance to them. Instead, we went up all the way to the top and visited St. Michael’s Cave. I have to admit, unless you’re an avid geologist, if you’ve seen one cave, you’ve seen them all and this one wasn’t as impressive as South Africa’s own Sudwala or Kango caves, in my opinion. However, what I did find interesting was seeing what the interior structure of a fallen stalactite looks like – almost like reading the rings on a very old tree. The cave is also home to an auditorium that can seat more than 100 people and is used for concerts, plays and other cultural events.

Once I elbowed my way past the tourists hovering inside the curio shop to where the bus was waiting, the real stars of Gibraltar made their appearance: the Barbary Macaques. We’d been warned by our guide not to feed them as they can be aggressive and we were even asked to leave our bags inside the bus, since the monkeys have been known to grab them in search of food. However, he was playing and talking with the monkeys as if they were old friends, every now and then slipping them bits of hard macaroni. He gave me a piece as well, which I offered to a monkey. The furry creature took it quite daintily from me and I could feel how soft its hands were – I wondered what secret moisturiser it was using that I didn’t know about.

When everyone had had enough monkey business, we got back onto the bus and, while laughing at one of the monkeys who was hitching a ride on the side mirror, made our way to the centre of town. Gibraltar is a duty-free shopping district, although you have to pay tax once you cross over into Spain again if you’ve spent more than a certain amount on various goods. After buying a huge strawberry smoothie from a stand operated by a friendly ex-Kiwi and her daughter, Gareth and I walked through the main street, comparing prices and pointing out high street fashion brands we remember from our time living in Wales.

All too soon it was time to get back on the bus that would take us home to Fuengirola. We tried our best to get a good picture of Gibraltar, but the sway of the bus combined with the palm trees next to the road made it impossible. But I won’t need a good picture to remember the huge Rock jutting out of the ocean at the southern tip of Spain.

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

Visiting Gibraltar was a Logistical Nightmare

2011-03-07T19:40:00.000+02:00

Visiting Gibraltar turned out to be logistical nightmare. Because I’m travelling with a South African passport, I needed to get a visa. There was a slight chance that Gareth’s parents wouldn’t be able to join us for our Spain 2010 holiday, in which case we considered making a quick stopover in the UK to see them while we were in the northern hemisphere. So, knowing that Gibraltar is a British overseas territory, I thought it would be simple. Get a UK visa, kill two flies in one go. Not quite.

Before our trip last year November, I wrote about my passport and visa troubles, but I didn’t elaborate on this particular part of the drama. I applied for a 6-month UK visa and paid the R840 fee. A week later I received my passport back, along with a letter in which the official kindly noted that my application made it clear that I wanted to visit Gibraltar, but because I had applied for a short-term UK visitor visa, that’s what he’d given me. However, one can visit Gibraltar on a UK visitor visa, but it has to be the 2-year or longer variety. He recommended that I submit another application specifically for a British Overseas Territory visa.

So, pressed for time, I went ahead and did as asked. The visa itself cost R576, on top of which the administration centre charged a R780 handling fee. What could I do? I’d already spent money on the first visa and I would probably not get another chance to visit Gibraltar again. I paid the money. In the end, the visa for a daytrip to Gibraltar cost me R2196! (That’s roughly US$320 or UK£197 or €228 for my overseas readers.)

After my visa was sorted, it was time to plan the trip. Since we’re mostly independent travellers, we had initially planned to visit the Rock on our own, but after stumbling upon a very convenient tour online, I went ahead and booked and paid for our excursion. Satisfied that all my arrangements were in place, even if only in the nick of time, I got onboard a plane and flew to Spain a few days later.

It was the first holiday I took my laptop along with me and it’s very fortunate I did! When I checked my email there was a message from the local tour operator, stating that unfortunately South Africans needed a visa for Gibraltar, so he’s booked the tour for three people but I would have to stay behind, sorry. Emails went flying back and forth, and about three days later I managed to convince the guy that I did have a visa and would be able to join the tour. What a hassle!

When the day of our trip finally arrived, I was very excited. After all the trouble and expense I’d gone to, I would finally be able to visit this quirky British island just off the southern coast of Spain. As our bus stopped at the border, I opened my passport at the visa page and smiled at the sour-faced customs official who had boarded the bus. He gave me the most uninterested glance imaginable, not even noticing that my passport was green instead of red, as all the other passengers’ were, and walked on by without even checking my visa! I felt cheated. Disgusted. Totally annoyed by the fact that I’d gone to all of that trouble and could just as well have flashed a grocery list for all the attention the man had paid. I consoled myself with the fact that even though he hadn’t done his job very well that day, I would have been in trouble if he had been more attentive and I hadn’t had the necessary documentation.

As it turned out, Gibraltar was worth the trouble, but more on that in my next few posts…

Image Courtesy of The New York Times

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

Dude! Surf's Up!

2011-03-05T17:21:00.001+02:00

The tiny little holiday town of Cape St Francis is one of our yearly holiday destinations. It's the ideal place to kick back and relax, to get away from the crowds and get back in tune with nature. Although the town is better known for its waves (it's about a 30 minute drive from the well-known surfing hot spot, Jeffrey's Bay), we once had the chance to surf the sand dunes instead.

I'm not much of an adrenaline junkie and the thought of skiing down a dune at top speed terrified me, quite frankly. But as you can see from the videos below, both Gareth and I gave it a go, and had a great time!

Gareth makes it look easy:

Suneé, as usual, turns out to be the comic relief:

And if adventure sports isn't quite your thing, the dunes are just as good for building sandcastles or taking soul-soothing walks...

Glimpses of Seville's Real Alcazar

2011-02-28T08:00:00.003+02:00

Last week I wrote about our visit to Seville's Real Alcazar. Here are some more pictures of this interesting palace and it's beautiful gardens.

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

The Real Alcazar, Highlight of Seville

2011-02-24T08:00:00.002+02:00

The Real Alcazar, or royal palace, in Seville was one of the highlights of our Spain 2010 trip. While the Cathedral was bustling with tourists, the Alcazar was strangely deserted when we visited, even though the two sights are only a stone’s throw away from each other. Perhaps the €7.50 per person entry fee is to blame, but the moment we passed through the Puerto del Leon into the palace grounds, I knew it was worth every cent.

It was my first encounter with Moorish architecture, and I was simply blown away by it. It is completely unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Where the palaces of Europe are sumptuously decorated with luxurious furnishings, rich tapestries and classical artwork, the walls and ceilings of the Alcazar have no other ornamentation save for delicate stucco work, here and there replaced by intricately patterned tiles. I wandered from room to room admiring the exquisite workmanship.

A particularly pleasing trait of Moorish design is the practice of building rooms around courtyards, gardens designed to be a respite from Seville’s oppressive summer heat. There are usually one or more fountains or rectangular pools at which to sit and appreciate the surroundings. I also noticed channels of flowing water running throughout the palace, filling the whole complex with its soothing sounds.

Although we didn’t get hand-held guides, I think this is one of those places you could only benefit from hearing its history told as you explore each room. The original walls date back as far as 913 AD, but the palace was built over centuries, first by a succession of caliphs, then a series of Christian kings up until the 16th century, and finally underwent major modifications in the 18th century. Rooms of particular interest to me include the Audience Chamber (where Ferdinand and Isabella received visitors and the first known painting of Columbus’ American discoveries can be seen), the Courtyard of the Maidens (which commemorates the Moorish rulers’ yearly tribute of a 100 virgins from their Christian vassals) and the subterranean baths named for the mistress of Pedro I (1350 - 1369), Maria de Padilla.

As much as I enjoyed the interior of the Alcazar, I loved the gardens even more. Gareth had fun playing with the ducks at the Pool of Mercury, while I chased peacocks through hedges and past orange groves. While no one was looking, Gareth picked an orange and had a good whiff of its fresh citrusy smell (we took it home and his father had a few bites of it for breakfast, before declaring it totally inedible).

Taking a moment to enjoy the serenity of the gardens while sitting on the edge of a fountain, I found it hard to believe that we were in the centre of one of Spain’s busiest cities. If it were this peaceful now, what must it have been like during the days of the caliphs? What wouldn’t I give to be able to go back in time and experience the Alcazar in its glory days?

The Lion's Gate (photo by Gary Jones)

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

Traffic Rules 101 of the Pilanesberg

2011-02-21T19:19:00.000+02:00

Although our stay in Pilanesberg earlier this year ended in disaster, we had some very unique experiences inside the game reserve itself. One of the most memorable was an encounter with a family of four kudus, a mother and three youngsters. We first spotted them walking alongside the road and we slowed down to keep pace with them. As they neared the road, one of the youngsters bounded across it. The mother then headed the other two off and stopped by the side of the road, in front of our car. She looked at us expectantly. Gareth and I simultaneously waved her on with a polite “After you”. To our extreme delight, she looked both ways and then crossed the road at a sedate walk, leading the other two younger kudus safely across. Which just goes to show, even in the animal kingdom, mothers teach their young to look left and right before crossing the road.

Have We Become Internet-Obsessed Travellers?

2011-02-16T10:53:00.000+02:00

Image seen at One Girl Ideas

Our satellite dish was struck by lightning during a thunderstorm last Saturday, which means we’ve been without Internet access for four days now. At first, it was highly annoying. I missed an online appointment with some friends, I couldn’t read my email or pay my bills using online banking and was unable to update my Facebook status (gasp!). I also couldn’t do the research I wanted to do for my next blog post, and I couldn’t update my blog.

Then it downscaled to a little annoying. “Who’s the author of that book again? Let me Google it quickly. Oh wait, no…” I still can’t read my email at home or work my way through my list of Google Reader blogs, but that’s okay, I can do it from the office. Patience is a virtue.

When I got home yesterday, instead of turning the computer on first thing like I normally do, I never even set foot in the study. In this time that we’ve been disconnected from the world, I’ve managed to finish a book and am well towards halfway with the next one, chores that I’ve been putting off for days (in some cases, weeks) have been done and I even managed to add another 500 or so words to my long-ignored attempt at writing a novel.

What has all this have to do with travelling? Very little, to be honest. Except that when I look at my Twitter feed, there are literally hundreds of daily tweets from a very small group of travellers, who somehow manage to find time to not only tweet every ten minutes or so, but also to read (I assume) hundreds of articles worth tweeting about. Not to mention writing content for their own blogs as well. And update their Facebook pages. And comment on others’ blogs. How do they do it? How on earth do they find the time to do all of this and still travel? Are they actually travelling, or just sitting in front of their laptops admiring the view from the hostel’s swimming pool (or the inside of the Internet café)?

I took my laptop with me on holiday for the first time in November last year. Yes, it definitely came in handy as a means to stay in touch with family on the other side of the world, or for convincing the tour operator via email that it was still possible for me to go on the pre-booked tour even though I needed a visa for Gibraltar and Morocco. But that was it. The rest of the time, the laptop was locked up in the hotel safe, only to be taken out to write a quick update for my blog twice a week (which, frankly, could just as well have waited until I got back home).

I understand that long-term travellers would want to keep abreast of what’s going on in the world and that the Internet is the most convenient way of doing it. But isn’t part of the appeal of travelling to get away from it all and immerse yourself in a foreign country and culture? Do you really need to spend so much time online?

You won’t lose your readers if you don’t update every day, or tweet your every move and thought. Instead, you’ll have time to go out and experience something interesting, to see and do things worth writing about. And it will be quality content for which the rest of us will make the time to read.

State of Our Rhinos Report

2011-02-10T15:17:00.000+02:00

In September 2010 I wrote about the 210 rhinos South Africa had lost to poaching. The final number for the year was 333 dead rhinos (and that’s just in this country – the rest of Africa are also losing their rhinos at an alarming rate). All for the sake of little men and supermodels who need a boost in their love lives, something they most definitely do not get from consuming ground up rhino horn, which is made of keratin, the same stuff human hair and fingernails consist of.

If you’d like to see what a rhino looks like after its horn has been removed by poachers, have a look here (not for sensitive viewers).

At the end of January 2011, we’d lost another 21 animals, but at least 31 arrests have also been made in that time. Some of the accused were veterinarians, which I find utterly deplorable. Park rangers have since taken an aggressive stance and since the start of this year, five poachers have been killed and two wounded. However, with the price of rhino horn valued at R400 000 (roughly $55 217) per kilogram, while gold is valued at R300 000 (roughly $41 412) per kilogram, I don’t see an end to the crisis anytime soon.

Conventional methods to prevent poaching include safely dehorning the animal, which is less than ideal, because it then has no means of defending itself and the horn will grow back eventually anyway. Microchip tagging and tracking devices have proved to be ineffective as well. Game owners are now experimenting with injecting the horns with pesticide, a practice that is safe for the rhinos but which would mean consumers would be imbibing a toxic chemical that, although not lethal, should cause considerable discomfort and will hopefully act as a deterrent for future use of the product.

Rhinos are an endangered species. Current figures estimate that there are globally roughly 18 000 white rhinos and less than 4300 black rhinos left. The unfortunate Javan rhino is clinging to existence with an estimated population of between 40 – 50 individuals. I’m sure I don’t have to explain why it’s necessary for us to prevent the extinction of this beautiful animal. You can help by spreading the word of our rhino’s plight or making a donation with the WWF or the International Rhino Foundation.

Next time you’re in the Kruger Park or another private game reserve and a rhino saunters across the road, think about a world in which these creatures may only exist in pictures or memories. I don’t know about you, but that world seems pretty bleak to me. And if you haven’t made it to Africa yet, let’s hope you won’t be too late…

Scenes from Seville

2011-02-07T16:02:00.000+02:00

Over the years it's become tradition to climb the highest tower in a city (usually that of its resident cathedral or the local castle) to have a birds-eye view of the scenery. In Seville, we climbed to the top of La Giralda, before exploring the area around the cathedral on foot. This is what we saw:

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

Seville's Magnificent Cathedral

2011-02-03T08:00:00.003+02:00

The Seville Cathedral, locally known as Catedral de Santa María de la Sede, is the third largest church in the world. With my penchant for Catholic churches, it was inevitable that it would feature as one of the two main attractions when we visited the capital of Andalucía. An earthquake in 1356 badly damaged the city’s mosque and the then Christian rulers made the decision to build “… a church so beautiful and so great that those who see it built will think we were mad…” on its remains. It is indeed a spectacular Gothic masterpiece and I was in awe from the moment I laid eyes on it.

Ducking expertly past the gypsy women aggressively trying to foist bunches of rosemary off on any passing tourist, we waited in the long queue to enter the cathedral, admiring the architecture and the statue of the saint. We had promised Gareth’s parents, who had decided to stay outside, that we wouldn’t be longer than 30 minutes. But once we’d paid the €8 per person entry fee and was ushered into the cathedral, we knew we couldn’t possibly be there for less than an hour. In fact, I think it turned out to be closer than two hours.

The first thing that struck me was the sense of space. It’s not as big as St Paul’s in the Vatican, but it’s BIG. And every inch of it is decorated. I hardly knew where to look. There were beautiful oil paintings, gold and silver relics, inscriptions on tombs on the floor, a breathtaking golden altarpiece (the largest in the world) and colourful stained-glass windows. An angled mirror placed in the main sacristy allows you to get a better view of the intricately worked dome above. And the pièce de résistance (for me at least) was stumbling upon the tomb of Christopher Columbus, which I hadn’t known was there before we came.

And, also according to tradition, I had to make my way to the highest point in the cathedral for a view across the city. That meant climbing to the top of La Giralda, the original mosque’s minaret which has been converted into a bell tower and now serves as the symbol of Seville. Unlike other towers, this one was moderately easy to climb, because it has a series of 35 ramps wide enough to accommodate two guards on horseback instead of stairs. I was still winded when I finally reached the top, though. Gareth had a wonderful time taking pictures of the bells (“the bells, the bells!”), which started ringing while we were up there. It was with great reluctance, and legs that still felt a little like jelly, that we decided we’d been keeping his parents waiting long enough now and made our way back down the tower, smiling encouragingly at red-faced people still busy making their way up.

We made one quick stop to appreciate the Patio de los Naranjos (or Courtyard of Orange Trees) on our way out, a haven of tranquility among the bustle of tourists coming in and out of the cathedral. I absolutely love that Spanish churches and mosques all have these courtyards filled with orange trees. In fact, the streets of big Spanish cities are all lined with orange trees (someone told us that the fruit were not fit to eat though, and are only used to make marmalade from).

Blinking in the bright Spanish sunlight, we left the courtyard behind and stepped back onto the busy streets of Seville. You can easily forget about the outside world, completely engrossed by the beauty and the history of this magnificent cathedral.

(PS: I love that you’re allowed to take pictures in Spanish cathedrals. I’ve been to many cathedrals all over Europe and can’t remember what any of them look like inside, but Spain I will remember. Unfortunately, I still need to learn how to play with the settings on my camera, so many of the photos are a little too blurry to share here. It’s a learning process.)

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

Wish You Were Here: Marbella

2011-01-31T08:00:00.002+02:00

On our way back to our hotel in Fuengirola on Spain’s Costa del Sol, we stopped one afternoon at Marbella’s marina to see all the expensive boats at anchor. This luxurious resort town is known for its popularity with the rich and famous and has been called Spain’s answer to St. Tropez. Although it’s the place to be seen if you’re into the clubbing scene, we visited on a quiet Sunday afternoon, strolling past the yachts and enjoying the sea, sunshine and solitude.

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

Why I Will Never Camp at Pilanesberg Again

2011-01-27T08:00:00.002+02:00

The Manyane camping ground at Pilanesberg Game Reserve is one of those places where nature gets right into your face. Or, in our case, right into your tent. Don’t get me wrong, I love getting close to nature, but in this case, up close and personal is just a bit of an understatement.

We already knew that baboons are a problem at Manyane, since we watched them upending our neighbours’ dustbin in search of food the first morning we arrived. Although their pillaging is inconvenient, it’s not unexpected – most nature reserves have problems with monkeys. The difference is that while monkeys are mischievous, baboons are aggressive and dangerous.

At first, we were quite enamoured with the wildlife that seemed to roam freely through the camping ground. A small herd of impala grazed right next to our tent most days. A family of warthogs were next to stroll past, the tusks on the matron large enough to make us wary of getting too close to the little ones. And while I was leisurely reading my book one afternoon, a neighing sound made me look up to see that our latest visitor was a zebra without any issues against close human contact. Although this was pretty amazing, I started wondering what exactly was to stop hyenas or lions or leopards from entering as well?

On our last full day at Pilanesberg, we decided to have a final drive through the game reserve. Knowing that the food stores in our tent might be of interest to the baboons, we zipped it up and locked it, just in case they figured out how to open zips. We left early morning and only returned at 18:00 that evening to utter chaos.

Our tent had been ransacked! I looked at the rips and thought that thieves had gotten in, using a knife to slash the locked rooms of our tent open. But on second glance, I realised that the valuables (the camping fridge and Gareth’s portable DVD player) were still there, but that the contents of the crates containing our food were scattered all over the place, that everything had beetroot smears over it and that puddles of pee were collecting in corners. Apparently the baboons had had quite the party inside my suitcase, because my clothes were smeared with bits of food, and the bottle of tomato sauce (which they had thankfully not managed to pry open) was covered in primate saliva. It was a mess.

At that point Gareth and I decided to pack up and go home a day early. We had no food left, no clean clothes for the next day and we weren’t going to spend a night in a tent with gaping holes at a campsite that clearly couldn’t keep wild animals outside where they belonged. And then it started to rain.

While we were hurriedly trying to sort out what we could keep and what should be tossed away, the security guard on duty that day came to explain what had happened and apologise. He said he’d been called to the office and by the time he started patrolling again, the baboons had already done the damage. Along with another guard, he helped us take down our tent in the pouring rain and then told us to go speak to the camp manager, who might be able to arrange alternative accommodation for the evening.

The manager apologised profusely for the inconvenience and offered us a night’s lodging in one of the camp’s permanent executive tents. I explained to him that we had no food or clean clothes left and that all we wanted to do is go home and shower. I asked for a refund, since we would be going home one day early. He offered credit instead, which he said we could use at a later stage for one night’s stay in a cabin if we were willing to pay in the difference. We agreed, too tired and fed up to bother with any further arguments.

And so we set out back home, in the dark, disappointed that our first outing in this brand new tent had ended in disaster and vowing to never camp at Pilanesberg (or anywhere where baboons might pose a problem, for that matter) in future again.

Of Castles, Memorial Bridges and Strangers in Need

2011-01-24T08:00:00.003+02:00

Much to my delight, Fuengirola has a castle. It’s called Castillo Sohail and was conveniently located along the seaside on our walk along the Costa del Sol. Naturally, we had to climb the somewhat steep hill, past fenced-off archaeological excavations, to explore the history it had to offer.

I thought I was clever when I announced “Dos, por favor” at the ticket office, only to feel like a complete idiot when the woman asked me a question in very fast, very incomprehensible Spanish. My blank-eyed stare and muttered “Non comprendo” made her smile and she repeated her question in perfect English – did we want tickets for the morning or afternoon? I replied sheepishly, paid the €3 per person entry fee and glared at Gareth, who was having trouble keeping a straight face. Well, at least no one could say I wasn’t trying…

I quickly forgot my embarrassment once inside the castle. Although the interior is bare and paved over, with built-in seating for the open-air concerts held here in July and August, the sense of history still lingered in the air. We walked along the ramparts, enjoying the view of the sea and the city, touching the grooves in the walls where arrows probably caused damage and posed next to the canons dating from the 16th century. The castle’s original inhabitants must have been a lot smaller, since the guard tower’s door only came up to shoulder height, much to our amusement. I wanted to climb up the tower, as always, but the steps of the curling staircase were so tiny that metal handholds had to be embedded into the walls with which you can pull yourself up and down a space so narrow that my claustrophobia immediately kicked in and I decided against it.

After we’d had our fill of the view from the walls, we walked along the outside perimeter of the castle before taking a shortcut over the grass back to the promenade. We were accosted by a man looking a little rough, his clothes were dirty and his hair unkempt. Normally I would try my best to avoid someone that looked like he hadn’t seen a shower in three days, but he spoke the Queen’s English and seemed genuinely happy to find someone who could understand him. Apparently his car had been towed by the police for being parked illegally and he needed €7 for taxi money to the station. I gave him a €10 note. He asked my address or telephone number so that he could pay me back once he’d found an ATM, I told him not to worry about. I figured if he was really in need, then my money has helped him out. If not, his conscience will take care of the rest. Do you think we were scammed?

We made our way to the suspension bridge spanning the Fuengirola river we had seen from atop the castle. From what I could gather with my limited Spanish, it seems like the bridge was dedicated to the memories of those who had died when the Spanish Armada sailed against England. Before continuing our walk along the Costa del Sol, we took a moment to appreciate the view of the castle from the bridge, awed by the confluence of so much history in a single gaze.

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

A Stroll Along the Costa del Sol

2011-01-20T08:00:00.003+02:00

During our recent trip to Spain, we stayed in a town called Fuengirola on the Costa del Sol, which literally means Coast of Sunshine. It’s aptly named, because even though we visited at the end of November, the skies were blue and the temperature was mild. Sure, we had rain almost every second day, but it showered down and was finished, leaving the rest of the day warm enough to walk around in T-shirts and shorts.

Before we arrived in Andalucía, I kept telling people we’d be staying in a little village on the coast. Turns out it’s actually quite a big town with an interesting history (it was even the site of a battle in the early 19th century). Apart from the beach, some of its main attractions include a castle, a harbour and a zoo. Because I’d thought it was small with nothing more than hotels and a nice beach to recommend it, it didn’t feature very prominently on our itinerary. After all, who’s interested in a beach town in the middle of winter, right? Wrong. That will teach me to do better research next time.

So our experience of Fuengirola is mostly limited to a bus trip into town to look for bargains at the weekly flea market (on Tuesdays at the fairground, come early). But on the Saturday morning after we’d made the long trip to Seville and back the previous day, Gareth’s parents took the car into town while the two of us decided to go for a walk along the world-famous coastline.

I can see why the Costa del Sol is popular in summer, but I think we were lucky to come during the winter. White, soft sand stretched as far as the eye could see, while the waters of the Mediterranean Sea lapped gently on the shore. Here and there a sand-filled dinghy, just ready for a beach barbeque, or a dust-covered pedal boat gave us a glimpse of what it must be like when the crowds descend en masse to enjoy their summer holiday in the row upon row of package deal hotels lining the promenade. But we were content to have it all to ourselves for now.

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

I Want to Buy a House in Ronda

2011-01-17T08:00:00.006+02:00

I’ve always imagined myself retiring to a little chateau in the south of France one day. Somewhere where I can cultivate vineyards (even though I don’t drink wine) or breed horses (even though it’s been years since I last fell off a horse). My family are the descendents of Huguenots and as such, I’ve always been rather fascinated with France and its history and culture. I’ve even gone so far as to learn the language, here at the bottom of Africa, where there’s very little opportunity to converse with anyone in French.

And think about it – if I lived in France, I’d be centrally located in Europe, close to all the history and culture and sights that I love.

So it came as no surprise that when we stood beside the husk of on old burned-out house overlooking the valley of Ronda in the south of Spain, I immediately fell in love. I fell in love with the view, with the idea of buying the ruins and renovating it, with the thought of running a guest house in my own little corner of Europe. That would definitely be living the dream.

Gareth loves the idea as well. He gets excited about the thought of creating something beautiful from the debris. He wants to lay bricks, design room layouts, build cupboards and plan the garden.

Since we’ve been back, we’ve been toying with the idea of working towards this dream. We’ve tried finding the property on the internet and thought about how we would get the money together to turn it into a reality. So far, it’s been nothing more than a dream, but I think if we really wanted to, we can make it happen.

The view below would be ours. That alone will make it all worthwhile…

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

2011-01-13T08:00:00.002+02:00

Now, I’m not saying Stieg Larsson named his bestselling novel after me, but I sported a dragon tattoo long before Lisbeth ever did.

When you’re 18 years old, getting a tattoo seems like the best idea ever. However, I was a bit wary of getting a permanent one – what if it came out wrong, or I didn’t like it anymore 10 years from now? So when I spotted a henna tattoo stand on the streets of Patong in Phuket, I jumped at the chance to get a tattoo that would only last three months. It was the perfect compromise, I thought. This way I’d get the tattoo I’d always wanted and my mother wouldn’t freak out too much. And it doesn’t involve needles.

I’ve been thinking about that long-forgotten tattoo quite a bit again this week. This weekend I tried colouring my hair again. The last time I went in search of vibrant, multi-faceted colour in exotic shades of chocolate mocha, my head swelled up so much I ended up looking like someone with Down’s syndrome. I learned my lesson and was smarter this time, I only had a small test patch done to see if the chemicals that cause this allergic reaction have left my system yet. They haven’t. I now have a burning red patch of extreme itchiness on the side of my head, which after four days seems to be spreading instead of abating. I’ll probably have to go and visit the doctor again.

You see, what they don’t tell you in Thailand is that they use something called “black henna” to ink the tattoos with. The upside of this is that it lasts much longer than natural henna does. The downside is that it contains a synthetic coal tar dye called para-phenylenediamine (PPD), which is extremely dangerous and to which I am now sensitized for the rest of my life. This means I can never again try to colour my hair, use hairspray or certain brands of sun lotion or makeup without having a severe allergic reaction.

I was all the rage when I went clubbing in the three months that I had that tattoo. But if I knew then what I know now, I would never have gotten it. I will have to suffer the consequences of it for the rest of my life now and one day, when I’m old and grey, I’ll think back on that ill-fated decision with nothing but dismay.

The Best Idea Since Sliced Bread

2011-01-10T07:35:00.002+02:00

Along with paella, tapas is probably the most iconic foodie delight in Spain. Before we went, I had no idea what tapas was and was under the impression that it was a specific meal indigenous to the country. What it is, however, is the best idea since sliced bread and I personally think it should become a worldwide phenomenon.

Exploring the streets of Malaga is hungry work. We stopped for lunch in a square not too far from the cathedral, in a little restaurant called Café Madrid. At first, I was a little reluctant to eat here, because the name somehow suggested “franchise” to me and I imagined it would be full of tourists eating sausage, egg and chips. Much to my delight, there wasn’t a single English-speaking soul inside and the menu was as unintelligibly Spanish as it could be.

Somehow we managed to convey to our waiter that we were interested in tapas for lunch. He showed us to the bar area, where they had a large variety of foods on display behind a glass counter, from paella to sausages to cheese platters to tuna mayonnaise. I shook my head in confusion. “Tapas?” I asked again, convinced that he must have somehow misunderstood me.

“Si, tapas,” he nodded and pointed to where someone else was sitting with five small dishes of a variety of meals. And then the penny dropped. Tapas isn’t something specific, like cordon blue or wiener schnitzel. Tapas is a small helping of whatever you’d like. And because it’s small (and very cheap) you can go crazy and try out everything you fancy. Plus you get to see what you’re ordering, which is very handy when all you understand is huevos and patatas and neither of those appear on the menu!

I ordered my usual chocolate caliente and Gareth had a glass of San Miguel as we tucked in and set about discovering the joys of tapas.

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

Malaga from Every Angle

2011-01-06T08:00:00.002+02:00

If there’s one thing I love more than cathedrals, it’s castles. I love everything about them. I love imagining myself back into times when they were occupied, walking through dilapidated buildings and seeing the ghosts of soldiers, peasantry and royalty in my mind’s eye. I love thinking about the history of the place, thinking of besiegers and burning pitch and arrows flying through the air. I know, I’m a little strange like that. I’m probably at my happiest climbing the steep steps up guard towers, or squinting through arrow slots, or strolling along ramparts. Let me loose in an old castle and you probably won’t see me for the rest of the day.

All the big cities in Andalucía have their own alcazaba, a Moorish fort or palace, and Malaga is no exception. Although we decided to save our money for the palace in Seville, we took the red city sightseeing bus up the hill and visited the Castillo de Gibralfaro instead. Not much is left of the castle. There’s a one-room museum containing an interesting display of old maps and armaments and a little restaurant at which to enjoy a cup of coffee. The real attraction is the gardens and views of the city from atop the walls.

And what a view! On one side, you have the harbour, sunshine reflecting off the blue waters of the Mediterranean, an enormous cruise liner waiting to depart. And on the other side, the city, including a bird’s eye view of the cathedral and the local bull ring. The walls are dotted with tourists taking snapshots of the scenery, ooh’ing and aah’ing as they discover new angles from which to capture their memories.

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

Malaga’s One-Armed Cathedral

2011-01-03T08:00:00.002+02:00

I love cathedrals. There is just so much to see in every cathedral, that I gladly pay the upkeep fee and can spend hours wandering inside, gawking at the magnificent stained glass windows, the ornate ceilings, the embellishments of each nave or beautifully grand organ. I suppose it comes from a Protestant upbringing, spending each Sunday morning in church listening to the sermon with only white walls and unadorned windows to distract my attention. I suppose that’s the idea, but it has left me with a particular appreciation for the lavishness of Catholic churches.

So, whenever I find myself in a new town, a visit to their cathedral is mandatory, and Malaga’s was no exception. Built between 1528 and 1782 on the site of a former mosque, the cathedral is known locally as La Manquita, the one-armed, because it only has one tower. The interior is a mixture of Renaissance and Baroque opulence, with tall pillars leading the eyes heavenward to the colourful stained glass windows depicting further Biblical scenes.

In keeping with Spain’s theme of being a country under construction, I also noticed that a net spanned across the interior of the cathedral, just below ceiling level. Bits of rubble were caught in it and a sign advised that it was there for the protection of visitors, since the ceiling was starting to fall down in places. I understand the practical reason for the net, but it did make it a little awkward to appreciate the architecture fully.

We never bother to hire audio guides when visiting cathedrals. You spend ten minutes listening to the narrator drone on about the history of a particular painting in one nave, and by the time you’ve moved on to the next you’ve already forgotten everything you’d just learned. What I liked about the cathedral in Malaga is that each item of interest had a signboard next to it, briefly describing why it is important in various languages. This allowed us to read the detailed descriptions of the pieces we found interesting, while merely glancing at the ones we did not. We were especially intrigued by a painting of the beheading of St Paul (having seen a relic of his wrist bone in a church in Malta once, we have since often noticed artwork relating to this particular apostle).

Malaga’s cathedral is located in the centre of the historic area, only a five minute walk from the Picasso Museum. It’s definitely worth visiting if you are in the area, but if you find the €5 per person entrance fee a little too pricey, I would recommend holding out for Seville’s cathedral instead.

For more posts in the Spain 2010 series, click here.

New Year’s Travel Resolutions for 2011

2010-12-30T08:00:00.002+02:00

Image Courtesy of Inspirationline.com

It feels like I just blinked and 2010 flew past! So now it’s that time of the year again when we do what Janus did and reflect on the year gone by and the year ahead. Let’s start off by looking at the travel-related resolutions I made this time last year:

Have more local holidays. We had two local holidays this year (Panorama-Kruger and Hermanus), which is admittedly not much, but was two more than previous years. I will obviously have to keep working on this one.
Take more pictures when on holiday. I would say the 600-odd pictures taken on our Spanish holiday qualify! Quantity, check. Quality… needs some more work.
Write more travel articles. Well, this one didn’t happen at all. I’ve found all the creative outlet I need at the moment in writing for this blog and although it would still be nice to be published in a magazine, it is somehow not that important to me anymore.
Improve a foreign language. Embarrassingly, nothing much happened with this resolution either. I didn’t even make the time to learn Spanish, as I had intended.
Save more money for holiday purposes. I got this one right, at least. Spain 2010 was paid off long before we went, even with all the unforeseen passport and visa drama.

Hmmmm. It seems like the majority of my resolutions didn’t last quite as long as I’d hoped they would. Gareth has been saying that he won’t make any resolutions for the new year, because he has no intention of keeping any of them. However, I think even though I know many will fall by the wayside, it’s still good to have something to strive for. With that in mind, here are my travel-related new year’s resolutions for 2011:

Have more local holidays. Since we decided that our next overseas trip was going to be a big one, we are going to take things a little slower this year and save up for 2012. So this year we will definitely spend exploring South Africa a little more. My parents gave us a huge tent for Christmas and we’re both very excited to put it to good use soon.
Improve the quality of holiday pictures. My recent review of Brendan van Son’s e-book on how to take better pictures with a point-and-shoot camera has highlighted the need to improve my photography skills. I’ve learned some rudimentary basics of Adobe Photoshop, but it would be nice to have good pictures to work with from the start.
Save more money for holiday purposes. This one will always be on the list. Travelling is a priority for us, having debt isn’t.
Continue improving the quality of this blog. Blogging is still pretty new to me and coming up with something to write about on a frequent basis can sometimes be a bit daunting, especially when it’s been a while since my last trip. I’d like to improve the quality of my writing as well as the content and would appreciate your comments and advice on the matter.
Engage more with other travellers on Twitter. I’ll be honest, Twitter is overwhelming. The sheer number of tweets generated hourly by the 20 or so people I follow so far is almost too much for me to keep up with. But the few times I have used it to connect with others have always been very rewarding so far, not only in the amount of traffic coming to my site, but in the ability to socialise with other like-minded people from all over the world. I’d like to expand that community.

Let’s see if next year’s resolutions are easier to keep than this year’s turned out to be…

Happy 33rd Birthday, Gareth!

2010-12-23T08:00:00.001+02:00

Today is my husband’s 33rd birthday and I thought I’d take this opportunity to say thank you for not only being my best friend, but also the best travel partner a girl could ask for. I’ve dragged you into numerous cathedrals around the world to gawk at stained glass windows, I’ve made you taste weird food, hauled you up mountains in cable cars when I know you’ve got a fear of heights, and had you traipse along as I dart in and out of curio shops in search of the perfect memento of our trip. Although we’ll probably never live in a huge mansion or drive a fast Ferrari, at least we’ll always have the wonderful memories we’ve made while seeing the world together. Love you lots!

In 2010, Gareth was seen …

...exploring the waterfalls of the Panoroma route...

...camping in the Kruger Park...

...stalking a dassie in Hermanus...

...wearing a funny hat at the Oktoberfest...

...sniffing an orange in Spain...

...harassing the monkeys in Gibraltar...

...and sampling a Coke in Morocco.

Here’s to many more adventures together!