Yet more odds and ends - Cape Town, South Africa

Stinkwood trees - we first heard of these when we were in Kaui, Hawaii. We thought we were smelling skunks everywhere until someone told us about the trees. They have them here too.

Light switches - a lot of the light switches for smaller rooms are not in the room, especially bathroom light switches, they are on the wall just outside the door. I wonder if children turn off the light to the bathroom when a sibling or a parent is in there and thinks it's funny?

Apartments are not for rent, they are "to let".

Dessert pudding is not the thick creamy stuff that we have at home, it's more like a cake and is super good and usually comes with cream or ice cream.

Dining out - The server won't take your food order until they see you put down your menu, unless it looks like you need help with it. They will wait until you are done with your salad, soup, etc., before bringing out your entree, unlike many restaurants in the U.S. where they slap down your hot entree only 10 minutes after delivering your salad or appetizer and you have a choice of watching your entree grow cold or not finishing your starter. They won't bring your bill until you ask for it. They never ask if you want change back when you pay in cash, they just assume that you do.

Menus - rarely list the sides that come with a meal, you could end up with two salads that way.

Your food is not "to go" it's "take away".

Real estate here seems to be super cheap and a lot of homes come with a scullery behind the kitchen. This home has one and I wish I had one, all the baking implements are in there plus an extra sink. In Plettenberg Bay we saw a real estate listing for a beautiful home with an ocean view and balconies, that had 4 bedrooms, two of them with private bathrooms, 2 other bathrooms, a scullery, a pool, and a separate "self-catering" (comes with a kitchen) one bedroom apartment that you could rent out, all of this for about $350,000!

Plettenberg Bay - the game preserve.

On Wednesday in Plettenberg we decided to go on a 2-hour tour through a game preserve. I had wanted to go to Kruger National Park but that was at least a 4 hour drive from our home base, however, in Plettenberg we were only a 15 minute drive away from a game preserve.

We booked the 11 am tour and drove off. As soon as we turned onto a dirt road and went through an automatic gate we started seeing animals, mostly zebra and sprinbok.

 These cuties were just hanging out in front of the lodge.

We saw hippos, giraffes (they only have 3, a mother, father, and daughter), cape buffalo, ostriches, eland, and crocodiles.

 Hippos!

There is a baby hippo in the grass somewhere. Our guide said that hippos can be very dangerous and will attack people in the water. They can open their mouths very wide and will just crunch right through canoes and then will kill you, especially if there are baby hippos to protect.

 Don't remember what this is, it sounded like the guide said "narla buck".

 Father and daughter giraffes.

 Cape buffalo. 

 Don't remember what this is.

 One lone crocodile and a lucky bird because its not feeding season for the crocs.

 A bunch of crocs, sunning themselves. For some reason it gave me the creeps to see them all just lolling around like that.

Yet another hoofed and horned animal that I can't remember the name of.

And now we have the big cats and some wild dogs.

 These are the only two lions at the preserve and the male is neutered. The preserve is surrounded by dairy farms (we saw lots of cows on the drive to the preserve!) and if the lions get loose they really wreck havoc on the dairy herds. With just two lions they are better able to contain them. We drove up to a gate, our guide got out of the vehicle and opened that gate, drove in, closed that gate then opened the other one. He went through the same procedure when we came to the cheetah enclosure.

 The lions are fed from the back of a truck (which looks nothing like the guide truck, don't want them thinking we're food!) that usually has a dead steer on it. A lot of the beef comes from the dairy farms, the farmers usually kill the steers.

 We're not food so the lions grew bored with us.

 Once outside of the enclosure again they gathered enough energy to stare at us.

 The wild dogs. They are very dangerous in the wild and run in packs of 20 to 30. They will kill a cheetah if they get the chance.

 These dogs have noticed something and are headed for it.

 What is this wild dog looking at?

 It's a cheetah! This guy was just lying by the fence, not caring that we were there because we weren't obviously food. There are two male cheetahs and the game preserve has been looking for a female. The cheetahs are also fed from the back of a truck, just like the lions, but they don't like beef, they prefer game like zebra or springbok.

 The wild dog was jumping around by the fence but the cheetah was having none of it and got up and walked away.

 Why can't we all just get along? Sad doggie.

We saw quite a few ostriches too.

But never got very close to them.

We didn't get a chance to see the white rhinos because they were off hiding somewhere. The guide told us that they "dehorn" them, they cut the horn off to prevent poaching. Powdered rhino horn is worth a lot on the black market. I hate poachers.

That was about it for the 2 hour tour and we were happy, we saw lots of animals and learned a few things about animal preservation in South Africa.

Plettenberg Bay

Last Sunday we took a look at the weather forecast and saw it was going to be raining and/or cold in both Cape Town and here in Marina de Gama for several days so we decided to head to Plettenberg Bay to stay at the condo there (the Pengellys have two homes and we have access to both!). Plettenberg Bay is close to the start of the Garden Route and is really more of a summer destination as it is on the ocean.

It is a beautiful drive there (most of the drives in this part of South Africa are beautiful, after all we are on the cape!) but long, we left at 9:30 and stopped for gas twice, and lunch and a short walk through the botanical gardens in George, and we didn't get to our destination until 6:16 pm. It was a wonderfully warm day and we enjoyed our evening on the balcony overlooking the ocean, that was after we had a really good pizza at Cornuti's Pizza, just across the road.

The next day was overcast so we decided to go on a township tour instead of a game reserve drive. We booked it that morning and drove the very short distance to Ocean Blue where we met our young guide, Hazel. She got in our car and we drove to the outskirts of town to the Qolweni Township. A little bit about Ocean Blue adventures:. 

"Ocean Blue Adventures, a marine-based operator that offers whale and dolphin encounters as well as other sea-based activities, is passionate about the local township, Qolweni, from where it sources most of its staff. Together with the Qolweni Development Trust, they organise intimate and respectful tours of the township with young locals as guides. All proceeds go towards teacher salaries and maintenance at the local crèche, Siakula Preschool. Having a functioning crèche means that women can leave their children during the day, knowing that they are well looked after and fed, to seek employment. Unemployment in Qolweni is close to 80%… Siakula also creates employment, and currently 7 teachers and 1 principal look after close to 250 children."

Qolweni Township, along with two other townships, were formed in the 1960's when blacks were forced from their homes in the middle of town and moved to the outskirts. It is estimated that there are about 60,000 people in Qolweni. Hazel told us that there are 7 points of water in the township. Think about that, 60,000 people, almost all of them without running water or flush toilets, and there are 7 places to get water. The schools, however, do have flush toilets. 

 Our first up close view of the township and where we left our car.

 Her friend stepped out of the way but this woman didn't mind having her picture taken. You always ask them first if you can take their picture.

 The pre-school, or "creche".

 The kids kept crowding Don to get their picture taken and then asking to see it on the camera screen. Other than that they were very well behaved.

 Me with the cook in the school kitchen. It's not much bigger than what you see here.

 Elementary school.

 Everyone has electricity even if they don't have running water.

 This woman was doing her laundry at one of the water points.

 Hazel and where she lives. These are supposed to be temporary "shacks" (Hazel's word for them) built by the government for people until they can get into a permanent brick home. When the government tears down a shack (for whatever reason) that a person has built for themselves they get one of these to replace it. They don't have running water or flush toilets and Hazel preferred her own home that she had before the government tore it down, she said it was bigger.

The sleeping area with a fridge on the left and the blue tub is for bathing.

 The kitchen area. That is a two-burner electic stove on the right.

The whole thing is about the size of a bedroom.

I asked Hazel how long she thought she would be living in this place and she said, "I think I will be living here forever." The government hasn't been building the brick houses very quickly and some years don't build any new ones at all.

That's all for now.