Kruger National Park

Our day began bright and early with a 5:00 am pick up time.  Lloyd, our driver/guide, was with us for the next four days.  We stopped to pick up two German friends, a male and female. She lives in Cape Town currently and he is beginning a yearlong travelling journey with South Africa as his first stop for one month before moving on to Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, and more.  Our other pick up was Boris, a police officer from Switzerland here on a two week holiday. The five of us set off on the road with Lloyd. 

About 2 hours outside of Johannesburg our front left tire blew.  Lloyd pulled over immediately as we got out to assess the damage.  The vehicle didn’t have a spare because it was loaned to a different van at some point and never returned. That van was going to meet us half way to Kruger to give us the spare back, but our tire blew before we got there. None of us really knew what to do next. Thankfully an empty van pulled over to assist us. A nice black guy was driving and he loaned us his spare, helped us get it on the car, and drove us to the next town, Belfast, to get a new tire.  Without him, I have no idea how long we would have sat on the side of the road.

The drive took us from the Highveld, where the Gauteng province is, and through the Drakensburg mountains into the Lowveld. The Drakensburg are the highest mountain range in South Africa. Kruger National Park is located within the Lowveld.  Kruger is one of the largest game reserves in Africa, and it is the size of the Netherlands. All of the plants and trees are low in height so as not to waste the rain water and keep up their health.

We made it to our activity for the day just in time, the Hoedspreuit Endangered Species Centre. The center focuses on the conservation of rare, vulnerable, or endangered animals. We got to go on a game drive of sorts through their preserved land as well as by their fenced in animals.  They have lots of cheetahs in their care, as well as wild dogs, a variety of birds, wild cats, and hurt animals. They take in animals that have been mistreated or abused in the human world. A few years ago they had old circus lions that were beaten and abandoned in Portugal. They had some turtles they were caring for that had rods forced to their shells to keep them from running away at their past home. The center cares for these animals as well as breeding those that are endangered.

Afterward we made it to our campsite. This facility has permanent tents set up for us to use. They were nice enough and the weather wasn’t hot at night or full of many mosquitoes which made it peaceful. The camp grounds are right near one of the entrances to Kruger National Park. The area is very large and wild animals live in the camp. We saw impala, wildebeest, warthogs, baboons, and bush babies.  A leopard has even been spotted outside the tents at night before. I don’t know what I would do if a leopard happened to be outside my tent in the morning – probably get eaten.

Orpen gate, our entrance to Kruger, opens at 5:30 am and closes at 6:00 pm. For two days in a row we spent the entire time within the park on safari. That is roughly 25 hours on safari over the course of the two days.  Lloyd woke us up at 4:30 so we could get up, have breakfast, and head out to the gates for the opening.  We would make several stops during the day at rest sites where we had lunch or bathroom breaks.  There are a few camps within the park as well. Inside the park we saw many animals and plants. The best news was that since it is spring most of the animals had little babies following them around!  Below is a list of animals in no particular order that I saw on my safari:

• Impala – an African antelope that is everywhere.  Tons of these animals live all over the park. One male lives with as many female as he can. They continually fight off the bachelor males who want to take their females and breed. We saw one male with at least 20 females in his herd. Generally the male gets so tired from mating with all of them that by next season a new male has taken over to spread out the gene pool.  Some of the females we saw were still pregnant and due any day.

• Ostrich – there were some of these just running around.
• Warthog – Pumba! One of the Lion King animals that just so happened to be strolling in the bush as well as in our camp.
• Giraffe – very friendly with the zebras. We saw two giraffes having a fight. To do this they constantly walk into each other and block each other’s path.  Then they swing their necks around to smack their heads into the other one. It was pretty entertaining to watch. They let little birds sit on their heads, and they just walk around with these birds on them. There were some cute baby giraffes that are much shorter (obviously) and are lighter in spot color. The spots darken as they age. The giraffes only sit down for around an hour a day and we came across one down on the ground. It is a very vulnerable position they don’t like to be in; a lion could even take one down if it got a good first bite.
• Zebra – frolicking around the buffalo and other animals. The zebra just roamed around wherever they wanted. They lied down by the giraffes. They played some sort of game of tag chasing each other all over in front of the buffalo. The baby followed its mom around.                                           
• Vultures – the vultures were circling in the sky around kills. Several different times we would come across trees swarming with vultures. If the kill was recent and the predator still there, the vultures wait patiently in the tree so that they can get the remains when done. Unfortunately we saw them off in a distance and couldn’t get any closer to see what had happened. Vultures have a powerful stomach acid that allows them to digest the rotting meat.                                        
• Kudu – a species of antelope. The males have really curly horns that I thought were cool.
• Waterbuck – another antelope, but this one has white marks on its backside.  The waterbucks were just roaming the savannah.
• Wildebeest – or a gnu (but it is just another antelope). They are larger than the others.
• Hippopotamus – they are so lazy. Hippos were just floating around the water areas and rivers.  They are a huge predator and most animals are scared to get anywhere near it.  There was an adorable little baby hippo that a crocodile could take on to eat; it never would though because the adult would kill it so fast. One of the river beds had a giant crocodile just lying beside the hippos and the baby hippo decided to walk over it. The crocodile did not retaliate at all, but continued to lay there. The hippo is one of the most dangerous animals in Africa as it is very aggressive. 
• Crocodile – just lounging about with the hippos.
• Baboons – their babies are so cute. The baboons were all over the place. They just monkey around with their tiny babies; our guide says one of them looked to be only two weeks old. The babies hang on their mothers tummies or jump onto their backs. The female’s butts get bigger and redder when they are fertile and ready to get pregnant.                                      
• Dung beetle – the women do all of the work. We saw a female dung beetle pushing her ball of fresh animal dung up the road. The female compacts as much dung as possible and rolls it, while the male just hangs on, up to where she wants to nest. Then she buries herself with his sperm (he dies) and uses the dung to feed her offspring until they emerge the next spring. All the males do is provide the sperm and ride on the dung ball.  We found a pile of fresh dung teeming with dung beetles trying to get it for their own ball. One kept attempting to steal other beetle’s balls instead of making her own.
• Ground Hornbill – endangered bird with the giant red pouch under their nose. They only lay eggs every three years. If their habitat is destroyed then they wait even longer to start their next cycle of reproduction, which leads to their population being threatened.
• Hyena – so cool. Hyena’s only come out at night. We searched for one and finally saw one on our way out of the park. It was walking off into the distance. It looked so huge, but it didn’t laugh. Hyena’s have very strong jaws that allow them to crunch bones. This is why they scavenge because they are capable of killing things like a normal carnivore and kill most of the food that they do eat.
• Jackal – a wolf species. The Jackals only come out at night as well. This one came out at dusk while we were leaving. It just was roaming around.
• Wild dog – only 300 remain in the entire Kruger Park. We were so lucky to get to see two of them by the road. They travel in packs and circle their prey while hunting. The rest of the pack was probably hiding somewhere. Wild dogs pee on each other to show power so the smelliest one is at the bottom of the totem pull. Fortunately, we could not smell them from our position in the safari vehicle. It was exceptionally cool to watch them lounge about relaxing before their hunt. We had to leave the park since it was closing time; otherwise we would have kept watching them longer.
• There were a bunch of other birds including various eagles and Zazu from the Lion King.  I’m sure there were plenty of animals that I can’t remember anymore.

Big 5:

• Elephant – SO MANY ELEPHANTS, especially on the first day. Elephants are definitely not endangered. Since they have such a long gestation period any time of the year is mating season. The females and children travel together while the males are separate. One of the first males we saw was particularly agitated and was stalking a female herd. One way to tell that the elephant wanted to mate was the constantly dripping semen. His entire back leg was soaking wet while he left puddles behind him as he moved. Also they get very aggressive and literally climb through trees. In every area of the park trees were destroyed. This was the biggest surprise for me in the entire safari – the utter destruction all over the place by crazed elephants.  Many times we saw elephants cross the road in front of us or climb out of the river to continue their march after cooling off.  Several of the herds had babies too, that were so precious.  One was only a couple months old and so tiny.  We also saw more males, particularly lone ones with huge tusks. The amount of wrinkles on the elephant helps depict the age; the more wrinkles, the older the elephant. 
• Rhino – We saw three rhinos milling about in the path, but they took off at the sound of our vehicle. Later on we stumbled on one in the distance resting. It stood up and proceeded to show us a massive penis.  They all had nice horns on them, worth a lot of money to poachers.                              
• Buffalo – they never smile. The first buffalo we saw was in a clearing all alone. The males have a huge headpiece with their horns that looks like one of the wigs our founding father wore. That was the last buffalo in a trail of them that had walked next to the road. We parked and watched at least nine of them cross the road. They just ate grass and stared at us. Later we came upon a huge heard grazing near zebra, a rhino, and impala. They are herbivores and aren’t irritated by other animal presence.    
• Lion – We had several lion sightings on our second day in the park. The first we just missed crossing the road, but saw the back as it sauntered off into the bush. This was a male lion with a huge main. Later on we found the mega-pride of lions. There was one male sitting behind some trees, but we could see his main. Then there were at least six female lions in the tall grass nearby, hiding.  Nothing was bothering them until an impala accidently crossed into their path since he didn’t see the lions. One of the female lions took off and chased down the impala running right in front of our vehicle on the road. The impala wound its way back toward us without the lion in tow – she must have got tired. Women do most of the hunting in prides because they are faster than the males. When the chase happened tons of female lion heads popped out of the grass and the big lion sat up for a bit. Everything died back down afterward with the lions resting again. Over on the hill a little ways away was a big male lion sleeping in the sunshine.                                                        
• Unfortunately we did not see any leopards in the park.  There were sightings in the area, but we never managed to make it in time to catch the leopard. They are more active at night, when we weren’t on safari as the park is closed. Also over 70% of the park does not have roads near it so animals don’t have to come near the vehicles ever in their life time if they so choose. Off-roading is strictly forbidden anywhere in Kruger.                                                                                                                

One of the campsites in the park has the daily spotted board to document where each of the big 5 animals were during the day. It was cool to see how many were sighted throughout the course of the day. Only rhinos are no longer documented for conservation efforts and to protect them from poachers. Poaching continues to grow worse and worse as one rhino horn can earn you one million Rand (which is over $100,000 USD).

At night we ate three course meals at the lodge. It was very good and not crowded. They had an outdoor bar by a pool that we sat at and mingled with each other and the bar tender. Caroline and I tired shots of ‘Strawberry Lips’ which is strawberry tequila and I highly recommend it.

After the two full days in Kruger we headed back to the Gauteng province to spend the night in Hartbeesport. On the drive we stopped to view Blyde River Canyon, the third largest canyon in the world, and the Three Rondavels. Unfortunately, it was so foggy that we couldn’t see any of it, not even ten feet into the canyon. Alas, I was only near these incredible sites. We had no car trouble on the way back, but we did encounter serious traffic in Johannesburg due to the cricket match taking place that evening.

In the morning we departed for Botswana!

Pretoria/Jo'burg

I am finally updating my blog with the first of my vacation stories!

Caroline and I arrived in Pretoria late Monday night on Oct. 22.  My dad’s friend, Beyers, picked us up from the airport. They worked in Nigeria together back when I was in middle school.  I had never met him before, but he was very friendly and allowed us to spend a few nights at his gorgeous house.  Beyers lives with his wife and two kids in a very nice residential neighborhood about half way in between Johannesburg (known in Cape Town as Jo’burg and people from there call it Jozi) and Pretoria.

Tuesday morning Beyers drove us to the Cradle of Humankind which is where some of the oldest human fossils were found dating back to 3.5 million years ago. Our first stop was the Sterkfontein caves. We wandered through the limestone caves with a tour guide explaining where significant archaeological finds had been made.  The caves were found while being mined for limestone that eventually led to all of the impressive finds. Mrs. Ples is between 2.2 and 2 million years old; she was found in the rubble of an excavation site where the cave paths were carved out. She has one of the most complete skulls of an A. africanus specimen. Robert Broom discovered several of the fragments and has a sculpture displayed at the site; if you rub the nose you get good luck and if you rub the hand you get wisdom. Little foot was also found here, estimated between 2.3 and 2.2 million years old. Sterkfontein has produces more than a third of early hominid fossils ever found.

The caves have remains of various animals as well, including extinct animals. The likely reasons for this are that the caves had entrances only in the ceiling, which are random holes in the surface above. Many animals, and humans, accidently fell in and died within the caves leaving these remains behind. The caves also have a vast underground lake that is no longer being explored due to the dangers and deaths that have occurred. The lake is rumored to go back very deep; one time dye was placed in the water and it came out kilometers away in a river. 

Next we went to Maropeng, an interesting museum type area geared toward education. It definitely felt like it was meant for a bit younger crowd, but Caroline and I enjoyed in none the less. The building looks like a hobbit-hole because they covered the outside with grass to hide it from being an obstruction to the view. On the way in you go down a spiral ramp that has the history of time on it putting every discovery into perspective. Next was a raft ride. The ride was very random and bizarre. It supposedly takes you through the big bang and ice age but really it was just us sitting on raft through bizarre rooms with no sound effects.  At the end was a spiral tunnel that rotates while you walk through in order to feel the big bang again before entering a large room full of fun games. The highlights include talking on the phone to an extinct dodo bird, posing as apes to see our similarities, and feeling characteristics of different animals by sticking our hands in weird holes.

On the road, many traffic lights were out because of copper wire theft. It is common to have people steal the wires to sell for money leaving areas without power. We were dropped off at the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria. It was built to commemorate the pioneers who participated in a migration between 1835 and 1854 called the Great Trek. Around 15,000 pioneers moved across the Drakensburg into the South African interior founding the Boer Republics Transvaal and the Orange Free State.  I believe the Dutch were fleeing the British who were fighting the Zulus.  Inside the main entrance there are carvings all along the walls depicting this great migration that reminded me of the Oregon Trail. Our guide, Goodwill, explained all of them to us including the importance of the strength of all the women during this time frame. The center of the room has a cenotaph, which is an empty tomb, down in the basement level visible through a circular hole in the middle of the room. At the very top there is a catwalk of sorts that allows you to look down on the room and see it from very far above. The ceiling dome has a tiny window where light only shines through on December 16 at noon directly onto the cenotaph. This is the date of the Battle of Blood River and the light is God’s blessing on the lives and endeavors of the Voortrekkers.  Everyone comes to the monument on Dec. 16 to honor this.

From the monument we could see the University of South Africa.  This is the largest University in Africa, and it has over 300,000 students. It is mainly an online University but its campus and buildings are shaped like a ship when you view them. This is so that they are “sailing to find knowledge in a sea of ignorance.”

Pretoria itself is a beautiful city this time of year because of the Jacaranda trees that are lining almost every street in the city. They are flowering purple in the springtime, which is now, so everything is purple (you would have loved it mom). The city has tried to rename itself Tshwane but it would have been too expensive to do on a global scale so they just renamed the city center Tshwane.  They are actually changing most of the street names now in a big black power movement since most were named during Apartheid. All the street signs have the old name slashed out and the new sign next to it. This reminds me of Omaha changing all of Elkhorn’s street names for no reason whatsoever at an extra expense.

We stopped at Kruger’s house. He was the President of the South African Republic a long time ago. There was not much to see except the old furnishings were mainly preserved in the room. Church Square is in the historic center of Pretoria and has a statue of Kruger. The square was banned to all blacks during Apartheid, with only whites allowed to enter the area. Now it is open to all races.  The Palace of Justice is next door and it is where Mandela was charged with treason and sentenced to incarceration.

The last stop on our tour was the Union Buildings which is the official seat of the South African government and houses the president of South Africa’s offices. These are much more impressive than Parliament in Cape Town.  They are on top of this massive hill with huge gardens going down, lined with flowers and fountains.  This is at the highest point in Pretoria. Back at Beyers, we had a delicious braai during a thunderstorm.

Wednesday Caroline and I were dropped off at Gold Reef City. This is a large amusement park in Jo’burg.  It is located on an old gold mine that we are allowed to tour to learn about the industry since mining is very prominent in South Africa. Unfortunately the tour was closed. Instead we just went on the rides! The park cost less than $15 USD to enter which seems very cheap compared to back home, especially because it is the best amusement park I have ever been to. At least eight different school groups were there with screaming black children so excited. I wish we had that cool of field trips when I was in elementary/middle school.  There were many peacocks just roaming around, even in the restaurants. The staff has to spray them with water to shoo them away. Cool rides:

·        Anaconda: an inverted roller coaster that took us upside down more often than I have on any other roller coaster before. It is the fastest and tallest inverted roller coaster in Africa.

·        Runaway Train: A roller coaster in a train type car. At some points you are at a 90 degree angle sideways from the ground and you are not strapped in very well. I was sliding into Caroline who was hanging on so as not to tumble out. Still fun though.

·        UFO: This is a spinning ride that moves at 50 km an hour and turns in all weird direction and you are just in a cage spinning through the air, sideways, up high, down low, and all over.

·        Pirate Ship: Similar to a pirate ship at home that rocks back and forth but this one goes up and over the regular stopping point until you are dangling upside down since it has a rotation of around 230 degrees instead of the usual 180. Caroline and I got to go on this ride just the two of us once and it was so funny being all the way at opposite ends but literally dangling over each other with just a lap belt pushing us in. One time we went on it with the school children and Caroline’s hair is so long it dangled into the mouth of the girl in the seat behind her. I had to twist while way up in the air to pull it back so the girl could breathe.

·        Tornado: like the G-Force ride at home but much much faster.

·        Tower of Terror: NOT the same as the tower of terror in America. Eight people are harnessed in (with harnesses over the head) onto a roller coaster cart. You are driven around a track and raised up over 47 meters. Then the cart makes a turn so you are at a 90 degree angle directly facing the ground and it shoots down all 47 meters while you scream thinking you are going to face plant into the ground when it doesn’t stop. Then it turns up goes around and is done. There are restrictions on how often you can go on the ride because of the adrenaline it causes.  Definitely the scariest ride I have ever gone on in my life.

I was most caught off guard by the lack of safety regulations. On a majority of the rides, no one checks that I am buckled in safely or properly. If I chose I could just not have had my belt on and the ride would have started with me potentially falling out.  Before the rides are over when they are just slowly moving to a stop, people jump out and head to the exit which is definitely not allowed back home. Then the big one with some of the safety measures definitely not enough to keep you in no matter what; this could be potentially dangerous.

Caroline and I walked next to the Apartheid museum.  It was not what I was expecting, and I think it tried to throw too much information at the visitors. Initially they split you up randomly into whites and non-whites. I was non-white. We have separate entrances so the first bit of museum I had to do with a wall dividing us, which was bizarre. I ended up crawling through the bars to get to Caroline so that we could do that part of the museum together.  Then inside there were walls of text and tons of videos; it would take many hours to read and listen/watch all of it. I felt overwhelmed and kind of irritated by all of this. One wall had just pages and pages out of a book someone wrote about the time. If I wanted all of that I would buy the book.

Afterward I mastered the train system to get myself home. We got on the GauTrain to Sandton, which is a large shopping area in downtown Jo’burg.  We wandered around there, but everything cost a lot so we took the train to Midrand and called Beyers to pick us up.  That night he made delicious shrimp from Mozambique for dinner. We also tasted several desert wines that were quite wonderful.

Then Thursday morning began our trip to Kruger!

Stanley

The past couple of weeks have been my favorite at work. Everything at PATA is in a crazy mode now with the forum coming up. All of the big things need to get purchased, reserved, and booked so that we can attend to the little details. We have almost purchased all of the plane tickets for the 20 clinic teams from the 10 Southern African countries and Nigeria. The hotel is reserved, which I get to stay in for the duration of the forum (so excited). The academic program is almost complete with our guest speakers set to fly in from all over the world.

One of the main projects I have been working on is now almost complete: the 100-200 page proceedings book from last year’s forum that I transcribed and developed. My name gets a place of importance in the credits since I pretty much did the entire thing by myself, despite having not attended that forum last November. I even wrote the introduction thanking everyone for making the forum such a success (which was semi-difficult since I wasn’t there).

We hosted a local forum in Swaziland this past week, and are having one in Tanzania and two in Malawi over the next two weeks. After that everything will calm down and we will only have basic things to get done before our big week is here with no more local forums until February.

The wind this past week has been stronger than ever. Everything shakes and rattles and blows around. I almost got blown over walking home from the bus station. Our sliding door was open a bit and somehow the wind blew the painting off the wall and sucked our blinds partway outside.  It definitely is a challenge trying to get anywhere when the wind behaves like that. We went up to the sauna and the sauna door (which is all inside) wouldn’t stay closed because of the wind pressure on the windows and gushing around through invisible cracks somewhere.

This weekend I got locked inside my apartment.  We have nicknamed our door “Stanley” because it constantly opens and even closes by itself, particularly if the sliding door is open.  The door mechanism isn’t strong enough to keep it in place unless the door is locked. We get really annoyed with “Stanley” and have to keep our door locked almost at all times to prevent it just opening up when no one is in the living room. We had it locked and Lisa came over to hang out. We tried to unlock the door to let her in and couldn’t. The lock wouldn’t turn. We slid the key under the door and had Lisa unlock it from the other side which worked.  Thus Saturday night we had to get a locksmith out and get our keys changed. Last time, about a month ago, I got locked out of my apartment when the door broke so when you turned the key it unlocked but the door still wouldn’t turn to open.  Then I was trapped outside for a couple hours until they could break in.

Sunday I went to get something out of the bathroom and realized that the ceiling was leaking, walls crying and the floor soaked.  We called Connect who got plumbers out to see what the problem was, since clearly something was happening on the floors above us.  Apparently a valve burst in a room on the 9^th floor directly above my room (I live on the 6^th). That room was completely flooded throughout the entire apartment. The water damage went all the way down to the ground floor. It was worse because I was the first one to call in the problem since no one was home on the 9^th, 8^th, or 7^th floors. Our apartment had two inches of water in all the bathrooms and the hallway carpet was soaked despite us putting down roughly 15 towels. The water kept creeping in for several hours. Finally it was contained and the vacuum/drier guys came to suck up the water out of our carpet and bathrooms. The carpet was just grossly damp and now is almost dry. 

Thankfully the weather was not very good this weekend, with wind, clouds, and rain so it wasn’t that big of a deal that I was trapped mostly inside dealing with all of the situations.  We have the “emergency” number in our phone that calls one of the volunteer placement coordinators. I have never had to call this number, but I did twice this weekend so at least I know now that the number works.

I am leaving tonight on my great Southern African adventure through Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and South Africa.  I am not sure what internet access I will have, but regardless I won’t be posting on my blog until after I get back on November 5.  I should have some awesome pictures!

Pinotage on Tap

I COMPLETELY forgot to mention that last week I semi almost-ish got hit by a car/walked into a moving car.  It was bound to happen as cars do not really follow the “robots” (i.e. traffic lights and signals) when on the road.  I have had quite a few near misses where Vivian pulls me back before I manage to get myself hit. The good news is the cars aren’t going that fast on the roads I walk on (I don’t walk the N2 or M3), so it hopefully wouldn’t be as severe if I actually got hit. However, Vivian has returned to the UK and is no longer around for my personal safety.  What happened was it was raining out so I had my bright green hood up which impedes my peripheral vision.  I was crossing a side street outside work that intersects Main Road which is a popular thoroughfare.  The side street goes up maybe 500 meters than has a gate so cars hardly ever turn left (remember cars drive on the left side of the road). I looked but thought all of the cars were going straight so I could cross the empty side street since they had a red light (so I had a green walk). Well the car was turning left and their passenger side mirror hit my arm. If I were one step ahead, the car would have hit me. It definitely startled me since I was right there and the car could clearly see me, but I lived and I am hoping that does not happen ever again.

The highlight of this work week was somehow managing to miss my bus not just one day, but almost again the second day.  On Thursday we had to stop at multiple places and run errands on the way to the bus station, which somehow got us far behind schedule.  We walked up to the main terminal and realized our bus had left us which was sad. Instead we went to a different pick up point to wait for any bus that was taking Main Road as that would drop us off near our work locations. It fortunately only made me 10 minutes late to work, which everyone thought was really funny.

Friday we got to the bus station at 7:37 (which the bus usually leaves at 7:40). Walking by the other buses, the security guard looks at us and said, “You guys are going to miss your bus again.”  Somehow he recognizes me and knows what bus I take every morning.  This probably is because I am in my bright green raincoat, and not many Americans nor white people take the bus. I am a definite minority and must stand out more than I think if this guy knows me.  Then our bus promptly pulled away from the curb as we stood 20 feet back on our way towards it. This time instead of walking to the stop and catching a random bus, we ran. The three of us sprinted across the Grand Parade and parking lot back to the stop, breathing hard and beating our bus there by 10 seconds since it had to go around the block to head down Darling Street.  We flagged it down all sweaty and climbed in.  Somehow in my first four months I never missed the bus once, but then it happened twice in one week. I am resolved to leave earlier for the bus now so it doesn’t happen again.

Orlando Bloom is in town filming the movie Zulu with Forest Whitaker.  He has been spotted in several locations across town, including his wife and child on the Sea Point promenade.  I am not 100% sure, but outside my apartment building at the Kimberly Hotel movie lights and props were set up three days in row for filming. Maybe they were filming something else, but I choose to believe it was for Orlando, although I have yet to see him and probably won’t.

This weekend was a huge let down as I fell ill.  Friday at work I could feel myself starting to not feel that great, but I made it through the workday. By Saturday morning I had a painful cough and a fever.  I had already paid for a wine festival called Pinotage on Tap so I attempted to rally and make it to the event.  Pinotage on Tap was very cool, and I wish I could have participated more. It was about an hour outside of Cape Town near Wellington in the Cape Winelands at the Diemersfonetin Wine and Country Estate.  The festival had many perks, but was popular since it was unlimited Pinotage on Tap. There were 8 wine barrels set up over the grounds for easy access to wine whenever your cup fell empty. One had white wine and the rest were red. Unfortunately I only managed to drink half a glass in the four hours we were there since I felt so awful.  We got sandwiches for lunch in a bag upon arrival as well as 3 meal coupons to use throughout the day for curry, lasagna, salads, and other meal options. A room was filled with a long table covered in strawberries and marshmallows with chocolate fountains for dipping them in.  A band was playing live music for dancing.  The grounds were gorgeous, with ponds, and gardens, and vines, and estate houses.  The sun was shining, with no clouds in the sky. 

For 90% of this event I just laid on our picnic blanket soaking up the sun and trying to not cough my lungs out.  The good news was another girl (due to a hangover) felt awful and was also sprawled on the ground with me.  Many people who walked by looked at the two of us and asked what we were drinking because they wanted some. It was kind of amusing. By the end of the event I had actually got a tan (my one plus for the day) and everyone at the event was covered in spilled wine and chocolate. It was so funny to look around and see the disaster that was everyone who had been enjoying unlimited wine on tap.  I had wine spilled on my face and hair while I was sleeping, our picnic blanket had quite a few mishaps on it, and the best part was no one cared.

Saturday was also used to raise awareness for the African Penguins.  Apparently 80% of them have died in the past 10 years and conservation efforts are in place to try to preserve these creatures. 

By the time we got back Saturday I was exhausted. I used the sauna to hopefully sweat out my poisons and went to bed.  Sunday I didn’t even leave the apartment. Today I am feeling so much better and am hoping my cough goes away completely as the fever is gone.  On the bright side, at least it was this weekend and not next week when I leave on my vacation!

One of the wine barrels. All the workers had "Pot crew" on their t-shirts.

We did take group pictures where I look semi-normal and not ill, but I they are not on my camera, nor have they been uploaded to Facebook yet.