Adam Turtle, Freelance Web Design in Belfast, Northern Ireland
Since1986
South Africa Roundup
- 16th November, 2009
- filed under: General, South Africa, Travel
- 1 comment
Last week I returned home from a 2 week trip to South Africa. It was my first time to Africa, so I was very much looking forward to it. As I wrote earlier, the main purpose of the trip was for a wedding but I made the most of it and did a lot of sightseeing while I was there.
I thought that rather than give an exhaustive day-by-day account of the trip (which would be way too long), I’d just pick a few highlights and write about my thoughts on the country.
The Wedding
Sarah’s wedding was obviously a highlight. It was certainly quite a change to the traditional wedding you’d get back home which was a breath of fresh air. The venue was fantastic – a special estate set up for exactly this type of thing with a little chapel for the ceremony and a huge canvas-covered area for the dinner and dancing.
The weather had been hot, but quite wet and miserable leading up to the wedding but we were fortunate that the sun came out just as the wedding was beginning. The whole day seemed to pass by quite quickly, despite the wedding itself not starting until after 3pm. A few photos and then got tucked into dinner. Dad showed off his embarrassing and highly old-fashioned dance moves to the amusement of everyone not related to us.
Sarah had put a lot of thought into the wedding, trying to get away from the traditional wedding format. There was no wedding song coming into the church, instead “You and Me” by Lifehouse and leaving the church to “Beautiful Day” by U2. Also, the wedding cake wasn’t the usual fruit cake but individual cupcakes for the guests and a small vanilla cake for the ‘cutting the cake’ photo. I especially liked that!
All in all a great day, can’t wait to see the official photos!
Drakensberg Mountains
The family arrived a week before the wedding, so Valerie and myself took a few days to do some exploring. We hired a car and drove up into the mountains near the border with Lesotho. The scenery around here is spectacular, yet strangely familiar with it’s rolling green hills (not what you’d expect from Africa, and more like home in Ireland).
It’s here that you get a taste of what rural South Africa is really like. Townships are all over the place here, just a mile or two down the road from the fancy hotels. Townships were a product of the Apartheid era, when Blacks were forcibly removed from “white-only” areas and sent these slum-like sprawling informal settlements on the periphery of the city.
Although apartheid was abolished about 15 years ago, the scars are still very evident. Townships prevail in every city, and are almost exclusively black. Even in the city centres where the races are mixed, there is a sense of hostility between the whites and the blacks.
In the Drakensberg, we passed through the rather grim towns of Winterton and Bergville which are essentially built up townships. As a white person, I actually felt unsafe stopping in these places as people literally stared at us driving through the main streets.
In saying all that, the Drakensberg is a beautiful place. There are no big cities so it is quiet, a pleasure to look at and abundant in wildlife. There are no shortage of things to do, we hiked in the mountains, visited a rock art museum and saw plenty of weird and unusual animals.
Ithala Nature Reserve
About 5 hours north of Durban is Ithala Nature Reserve, a safari park where Valerie and I spent two days. It’s in a lovely part of the world and the visitors part of the park is very pretty. We stayed in a little thatched cottage and got free buffet breakfast and dinner each day.
There’s a great sign as you drive into the park:
This, believe it or not, is a serious request. The dung beetles cross the road pushing their little balls of turd and you have to wait till they’re done. Amazing!
Our first game drive in the evening was a little disappointing. We saw some animals but just one of the ‘Big Five’ – a black rhino. We did see some zebras, impala (plenty of impala, actually) and plenty of wildebeest. There was a giraffe or two, also but we did spend a good amount of time aimlessly driving around looking for anything. Plus they seem to organise these things at dusk which means half of the game drive is in the dark with a searchlight. During that period we didn’t see hardly anything.
After a great feed we went back to the chalet where a huge lizard fell off the roof and onto the floor and ran into the bedroom. Scared the life out of me when it fell.
Lots of Dassies were running around the campsite in the mornings. Cute little fellas:
Unfortunately on the morning we were supposed to do the morning game drive (at the thoroughly unholy hour of 5am) there was a very heavy thunderstorm the night before and we turned up at the reception fully expecting it to be cancelled. But no, we’d make the best of it…
We spent three freezing hours driving around in a soaking, open-topped Land Rover getting caked in mud and seeing nothing through the heavy mist that covered the park. To make things worse, Valerie and I were the only two on the drive (the other group wisely didn’t show up) so we had to fake interest in what the driver was saying, who seemed oblivious to the cold and lack of animals.
More to come
This post covered just the first week of our travels. In the next post, I’ll take you through our second week in Cape Town. For now, check out the photos on Flickr.
Sounds like a pretty good time, I am really jealous… love the cupcake idea, it’s quite a popular idea at the moment…