Cape Town in May

While I wait for more pics off K's camera - here is one of him on Atlantic Beach taking pictures of rock pools.

The Cape Town trip was all I hoped it would be, nostalgic, comfortable, surprising and all the shopping you could dream of! It is actually amazing how much cheaper everything there is compared to whk. We stayed with M, Mom stayed with Aunty T and so we spent quite a lot of time driving around. Which turned out to be a lovely way to re-familiarise ourselves with the mother city I don't think that I would ever choose to live there permanently but I could see us spending another couple of years there. The population of the city has grown ridiculously but the city hasn't and so now it really feels like it is overfull. No matter what time you are driving on the highways or when you are in the malls, on the beach, walking around downtown, there are SO many people around all the time. To the point where you are constantly asking yourself: don't these people have jobs to go to?? Having lived in DC and now in WHK where it never feels like the town is overflowing with people, it was very suffocating and oppressive to know that so many people were doing the same thing and wanting the same thing from the same small space that you are occupying. I guess we all had a little culture shock.

Of course all the good things about CT are still good. The best day I had was wondering around downtown, up and down Long street and in the Botanical gardens. We were in and out of second hand book shops where the books were piled high on the shelves, floors and and all surfaces available. We stopped in one of our old-time favourite coffee shops and had milkshakes. Although we had forgotten how much people smoke in CT and now that we have not been exposed to it, it really is obnoxious and interfered with our milkshakes to the point that we went and sat outside!

I think the best experience of the trip was catching up with old acquaintances. People have changed and yet still stayed the same, so that the visits were full of curiousity about the new parts of them and the comfort and warmth of the recognisable ones.

more photos to come.

At night

Something about the desert and the lack of cars sent H's car into spasms of loneliness and it kept setting off the alarm. Of course this was mortifying out there, because the alarm could be heard for Km's! But it did make for some amazing photography for K while he was taking his night pictures. In this one you can see the alarm flashing on the car as well as how the landscape was lit by the moon.

Spitkoppe through the Arch

Spitzkoppe photos

The first photo is of a barking gecko. We kept hearing a "kek kek kekk" noise and wondering what bird it was. It went on late into the evening and K remembered someone saying that the sound of the barking gecko drove birders crazy. So we went on a hunt and found one. Their little giggle (for it sounds more like that than like a bark) accompanied us all night.

The second photo is of a piece of bushman art that is high up in the rocks under a ledge and has a very mystical feel to it.

The third photo is of me in the famous arch at Spitzkoppe.

Our campsite and the view

Spitzkoppe

This weekend, on a whim, we decided to drive out to the Spitzkoppe and camp there for a night. The Spitzkoppe is a mountain about half an hour outside Usakos and three hours drive from WHK.

It is a granite extrusion into the bedrock, where the bedrock has been eroded away leaving this massive formation standing alone in a flat gravel plain. The rock is orange from oxidised iron in the rock, which makes it even more obvious on the white, brown and grey gravel plains. Driving towards it, Spitzkoppe turns from a shadow, slowly into a magnificent monolith, completely dominating the skyline.

The campsites are very rustic, there is no running water and essentially you know it is a campsite only because there is a metal drum acting as a dustbin. This does add to the atmosphere of heat and emptiness. Camping there, it is possible to feel entirely alone in that landscape. All that is visible is the Spitzkoppe and the plains dotted with acacia's and dry grass. At night there were other campfires visible, which gave us a feeling of safety, knowing that there were other people nearby. We really do have such a strong herd-instinct as humans. It is an intense experience thinking you are alone, and hearing nothing but the wind and the blood in your ears.

In the evening, after we had had our braai, the moon slowly rose, and as you will see from the photos, it lit up the landscape almost like daybreak. We were amazed at how powerful the moonlight was and how it changed the lanscape and made it eerie. I imagined that the landscape that the river Styx runs through must look like the Spitzkpoppe did on Saturday night.

In other news

We are getting ready to go to Cape Town for ten days. K has set up various appointments with clever people who can help him with his project and I have made a VERY long and complex shopping list which gets added to every day. Thank goodness for our spacious Hank the Tank.

Otherwise, school is out and I should be updating my CV and learning all about Ghandi, which is our gr. 8 topic for the next semester. Instead I am availing myself of my mother's bookclub books which are all in a large box under her desk. Ooh, they have such good books. I highly recommend: "The time travellers wife". fascinating idea, quite bizarre and so interesting.

I am spending the day at home waiting for our new bed! Which was a bday present from K's folks, it's going to be So great!

In sad news, Henry's gallivanting has got him into trouble with our neighbours. SIGH. Apparently he thinks he should replace their two month old baby and has been caught a number of times sleeping in the baby's cot. The family are naturally irate, but actually being very sweet about it. As a result though, Henry and Oleo have had their garden priviledges intirely revoked and we are once again cleaning litterboxes. SIGH. We are going to try putting lion poop around our garden wall in the hope that that will keep Henry in, but I don't hold out much hope. Also - where on EARTH does one get lion poop????? I am sure they have plenty of it in Etosha, but how does one actually lay one's hands on it. And also - how badly does it smell???

Beware the Ostrich!

Before we arrived at the Galloway farm we had been warned about the Ostriches there. We passed on the message to the Bronze group that should any ostrich approach them, they were to immediately lie down on the ground and not look up. The kids seemed suitably impressed, and understood that the breeding pair were naturally protective of their newly hatched chicks.

We set out at a blistering pace early on Sunday morning and hadn’t been walking 45 minutes when an Ostrich appeared on the horizon. It was on the horizon and so we tried not to worry about it or think about it. But the problem with something being on the horizon is that the horizon gets closer, it also doesn’t help if the thing on the horizon is a curious bird and decides to come take a look. So very quickly the Ostrich became something we needed to worry and think about!

Luckily our head leader is someone whose head is very capable. She got the students to slow down and group together. By this time the Ostrich was extremely close to us, and becoming a little agitated. He indicated his agitation by fluffing his wings at us and setting his chin in an aggressive manner. By the time the Ostrich was close enough to see his very large middle toe, which can rip a man from chin to groin in one powerful kick, we had the kids standing in a huddle, with their backs facing out and Their eyes very determinedly down.

If you have ever seen an Ostrich up close you will understand why we were all freaked out. The thing was taller than K. And wide, and does actually quite closely resemble those things from Jurassic park that chased the kid around the kitchen. Pterodactylpolysaurus something or other.

Ostriches will peck at anything shiny, and for that reason we told the kids not to show the Ostrich their eyes. They all had to look down at the ground, but what was funny was that they immediately become obsessed with the concept. They were worried about their earrings, their watches and the zippers on their backpacks. After about 15 minutes of this huddle we started to move the whole group away. Some of the kids were so worried that they were walking backwards and of course there is a tree here called “wagnbietjie” – in English: Wait a little. The thorns of the tree hook into any fabric or skin that comes past and at least one child had to wait while we untangled them.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we did eventually manage to move everyone far enough away that the Ostrich forgot about us. They do after all have brain’s not larger than a walnut. Of course when we got back to parents and the school later in the day, there were grand stories of being attacked by an ostrich and rescuing each other mightily. If you look closely at the previous photo you will see in the distance the mighty beast that terrified us so.