Capetown is an incredible place. Ocean on one side, beautiful mountains on the other, makes us miss home! We've rented an AirBnB overlooking table mountain in a fantastic spot in the city for walking. Our first day we headed out to the Green Market Square, a mix of lively streets selling African made goods. We put our new found haggling skills to the test and walked away with 3 new paintings! On top of the street pubs and craft market there were multiple street artists providing some music and dancing. The market has a lot of really interesting finds and friendly vendors. It's a great way to spend a few hours. Shortly into our stay we headed out to Gansbaai, a cute little coastal town famous for shark diving. It was a super early start with a 4 am pick up and a 2 hour drive but well worth it. After a quick breakfast and safety briefing off we went. We quickly found the sharks about 10 minutes from shore where they live year round. South Africa is the Great White Shark capital of the world, sadly the numbers have dwindled to 500 or less in recent years. There isn't an exact number of great whites known in the world but we do known the numbers are shrinking due to over fishing, shark fin poaching and effects from global warming. I went in the cage first along with 6 others. We waited on a short while before our first shark was lured in by the smell of dead fish being dumped into the water. A 3.5 meter shark casually swam by my face only inches away checking out the smells before continuing on. At first my heart was thumping away making it hard to hold my breath. By the second shark I managed to collect myself and relax and really enjoy the second encounter. Chris went in the cage next and had an even better view as a different shark about the same size gave him a smile. It was really cool to be in the water with the sharks but watching them from the boat really gave us the full extent of their size. We also saw some massive sting rays coming up to take some nibbles from fish head on a string used to lure the sharks. Our guides were professional and fun and it was an incredible 3 hours. The only down side was poor visibility because of the algae blooms summer weather causes. Funny thing about Capetown is that the ocean is warmer in the winter and the water is clearer so if you're coming for sharks come in during winter (june/ july) After an thrilling day we kept it low key for a few days and headed to some local museums. The National Art Gallery was an eye opening experience with the main exhibition highlighting South Africa's dark past during apartheid. We couldn't help but think back to home and everything that's gone on recently in Quebec and in the US. South Africa has realized there is strength in diversity. Not every tension has been soothed here but they've come along way. The best way to get around and see Capetown as a visitor is with the Hop on Hop Off. There are 4 loops to hop on with various popular stops. We started with a Cable Car ride up Table mountain. The que to get up the mountain was insane, thankfully we bought our tickets in advance which helped a bit. It's worth the wait for the stunning views! We headed down and hopped back on the bus and continued our loop to V&A Waterfront. Named after Queen Victoria and her son Alfred, it was once an extremely busy harbour for trade goods until the Suez Canal was built. Since then the harbour has been reinvented and is now home to new trade, luxury cruises and fishing. The harbour is amazing for shopping and eating. We had a fantastic lunch at a brew pub rocking live music down here at Quay 4. With the Hop on Hop off we got a free canal boat ride from the V&A Waterfront. It wasn't particularly exciting but we did get to see a bunch of harbour seals playing around and sleeping in the large tires used as bumpers. Day two with our bus ticket we headed out to Kirstenbosch Gardens. It's an incredible, though some what maze like, garden. The views are epic, especially on the tree canopy walk recently installed that gives you a view over the city 12 meters off the ground. They have great interpretive signs all over the gardens explaining various uses and history of the unique plants. Even if you're not that into gardens it's a fantastic place to visit. After taking in the roses we headed to the oldest wine region in South Africa, Constantia. There are 3 wineries on the bus route. We made it to two before the generous portions and sun shut us down. Our first stop was Beau Constantia pouring up some incredible whites and reds with hill top views. We really liked the Pas de Nom White and bought 2 bottles (only $9.00 each!) plus one bottles of a red Cab Franc/ Merlot blend. Next stop is the oldest estate in South Africa, Groot Constantia. The estate is massive and beautiful. We did a tasting here and the wine was fantastic! We decided cheapest way to do stuff outside the city was with a car rental, prices are really reasonable for the rental though gas is a bit high (similar to Vancouver). We first headed out to Simon's Town and Boulder Beach the home to South African penguins! The town is super cute, small shops and waterfront restaurants serving up fresh fish. The fish and chips were amazing! A short distance from the main street is boulder beach, a nature reserve for the hundreds of penguins that call the beach home. There is a small entrance fee to get in but worth it for the well maintained walk ways installed to protect the birds. The views are amazing and the birds are fun to watch waddle around and surf the waves in the bay. Before leaving Africa we decided to make a last ditch effort to see some big cats in the wild. We booked a 2 day stay at Aquila game drive, 2 hours from Cape Town. The drive there was gorgeous taking us through the mountains and wine lands surrounding the city. The Aquila resort was beautiful with a large pool and lounge area over looking the game reserve and very comfortable rooms. They even grow most of their own organic vegetables on site using aquaponics. The basic idea is that the fish water and waste is used to fertilize the vegetables and the plant roots filter the water for the fish in a symbiotic relationship. The result is fantastic tasting fish and vegetables with each meal! Aquila is a private 10 000 hectares conservancy and home to the big 5 and many other animals. They also have a Animal Rescue Centre where they've taken in animals unfit for the wild, including 2 cheetahs, lions, leopards and crocodiles. We did 2 game drives during our visit. The first one in the evening we were extremely eager to see a lion. It was game drive #6 for us by this point and we hadn't seen a single large cat in Africa. When we started the game drive the first thing we came across were the giraffes and zebras, always fan favourites. As we were watching the giraffes and hearing about random facts we spotted rhinos up ahead. Our driver in this instance liked to go into extreme detail with each animal before moving on so Chris and I sat not so patiently to get up to the rhinos. Were losing our minds a bit on the inside wanting to see one up close! After hearing about the gestation period of a zebra we finally headed to the rhinos up ahead. They were incredible to get up close to! The females have the long, scary looking horns to protect their infants and the males have the smaller, blunter horns. They were fantastic to see and let us know when were getting too close by placing the pointy end of their meter + long horn straight at our truck. These were white rhinos which are exactly the same colour as black rhinos except for the white lip which distinguishes them. After a good while with the rhinos we continued on ward in search of new wild life. We came across some Elands, the largest antelope species and a very important animal to early African people. When we were at a museum in Cape Town the week before we saw some San rock art that were over 1000 years old depicting the elands in relation to the people. It described how vitally important this animal was to their culture and survival. We also caught sight of what is often referred to as the ugliest animal alive, the wildebeest. It's easy to tell how it got this title but despite it's odd pieced together appearance I liked them! Our guide described it as being an animal made form all the left over parts of other animals, head of a wart hog, rump of a hyena, neck of a buffalo etc. We continued on ward hearing more in depth descriptions of water buffalos, elephants, spring bok (South Africa's national animal). Finally our guide says the magic words, 'lets go see if we can spot some lions'. YES, this is why we were here, show us the lions! As we drove around he said the last thing we wanted to hear ' lets take a break fist'. NO, we want lions first than we can break. Of course this isn't fare to the rest of the people on our game drive so we sat tight, enjoyed our free champagne and snacks. Chris was getting less and less patient understandably by this point. Finally the break was over and we entered a gated area of the park. Within a minute we saw a massive female lion casually walking down the dirt path in front of us! What we didn't realize is that Aquila keeps the lions caged in an extremely large enclosure so they don't get out and kill everything in the park and also because they are rescued lions. As we continued we saw a few more lions high up and well hidden on the ridge of a cliff. Though they weren't exactly in the wild the way we had really wanted to see them it was fantastic none the less to see lions up close. The next morning on our second game drive we had a chance to go back through the lion enclosure where most of the lions had come down from there perch. It was fantastic, especially knowing these guys were at one time the potential trophy for some rich hunter. If you're not familiar with the term 'canned hunting', it's basically a practice in certain parts of Africa where lions are held in captivity for hunting. If you're in Africa and offered cub petting or walking with cubs it's best to avoid it. The cubs are taken from their mother shortly after birth and hand reared, this makes it impossible to release them back into the wild once they're older because they lack the essential skills for survival. These cubs are very often used for tourists to take photos with until they get too big. Once they've outgrown the photo ops they are sold to hunters or breeders. No true sanctuary will allow you to walk or touch the lion cubs, this is to protect you from them and to protect the cats from harmful diseases and stress. My general rule of thumb is if it's not something that would happen naturally in the animals life it shouldn't happen at all. The 2 days at Aquila were fantastic. after our stay we had a few day left in Cape Town before leaving. We spent them enjoying the sun, going for picnics in the park, shopping in Green Square and lunching at the V&A Waterfront. This city has everything from amazing food, fantastic coffee (Truth Coffee is seriously good), music and friendly faces. I don't say this lightly but I could happily live in the city and was very sad to be leaving.
We're now in Madrid where it's much colder but really fun! More updates to come!
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Anyone who's been to this continent will understand when I say that there is something indescribable about Africa that sucks you in. The people, the scenery, the wild life all works to lure your senses to fall in love with the place! We've just finished an epic journey that took us from Tanzania to Zimbabwe across 5 countries and many MANY kilometers. I apologize in advance, this post is a bit long, If you don't have the time there are tons of cool pics to skim through at least! We met up with our tour group in Dar es Salam, Tanzania after a week in beautiful Zanzibar. Our first day on the road with the group took us through Mikumi National Park in Tanzania where we got our first peak at Africa's incredible wild life! Elephants, zebras, impala, water buffalo, baboons and giraffes. Tanzania is beautiful country to drive through but the roads are rough and the police are, lets just say, less than honest. Our driver Steve suggested we were lucky for only getting stopped once. We reached the Malawi border after 2 days of 14 hour drives down dirt roads and endless construction. We each paid our $75.00 visa fee at the Malawi boarder and waited. Our guide Chris was quickly approached by a boarder guard and told straight up he had to pay a 'fee' if he wanted to get us out of there quickly or they'd make us wait over 4 hours! We've emailed the Malawi government regarding the Songwe border so hopefully something changes for future travelers but it's difficult to imagine. Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the wold with mass starvation and limited means. Tobacco is the the largest export and beyond this farmers can only afford to grow cassava for themselves which doesn't have very much nutritional value. Starvation is common and it's difficult to image living here. We reached our camp and had 3 days on Lake Malawi which makes up 40% of all of Malawi! It's a massive fresh water lake with one of the most diverse fresh water fish populations on earth making for fantastic scuba and snorkeling. Unfortunately during our time here it poured buckets and thunder storms most of our stay. This resulted in some serious pool tournaments at the camp bar! We did a bit of shopping at the craft stalls near our camp where we bought some jewelry and a painting. We really wished we had known to bring goods, the locals were more eager for stuff than money it seemed. They asked to trade art for socks or clothing, old head phones etc. In the end we didn't have much to give away because we packed so light and paid in Malawi Kwacha in the end. Had we known we would have bought some stuff from Thailand to trade/ give away for sure. Malawi is a stunning country with high cliffs, beautiful lake views, extremely lush forests (thanks to all that freaking rain) and the nicest people anywhere! Despite mass poverty the locals couldn't be nicer, farmers waved from the fields, women waved with huge stacks of items carefully balanced on their heads and the children would dance, sing and be silly towards us. This is where they get the nick name 'the warm heart of Africa', a well deserved nick name. We continued our trip into Zambia where we had 4 days. We spent our first night at the South Luangwa National Park. Our camp was set on the South Luangwe river the park is named after, home to hundreds of hippos! As we were setting up our tents we were advised to keep them at least 1.5 meters apart so hippos and elephants could easily get between them. This was reassuring! We dinned with impalas, baboons and long tail monkeys eager to get our crumbs. That night I stuck ear plugs in to remain blissfully unaware of the wildlife surrounding our tent and get some much needed sleep. 4:30 the next morning we got up, packed up the tent to the sound of hippos calling at each other. It was really cool and kind of haunting! 6am we hopped on a game drive into South Luangwe National Park. Before we entered the park we spotted bush bucks, huge groups of baboons, hippos and crocks. Once we got in the park we were greeted by massive herds of impala, zebras, water bucks, warthogs, amazing birds and a few elephants. We met another truck during our drive that had been following a leopard! We searched for a good while but never found it sadly. The second truck with the rest of our group did see it however. It's a beautiful park teaming with life and was an incredible morning despite missing out on the leopard. Driving through Zambia is amazing, each small village looks like a post card for the country. Though it's much wealthier a nation than Malawi there are still struggles for many villages. The capital city of Zambia is in stark contrast to Malawi with malls, huge grocery stores and fast food restaurants but traditional life styles are still opted by many in the country. Our last camp in Zambia before entering Botswana was near the Zambia side of Victoria Falls. We took this opportunity to take a Microlight over the falls! A micro light is like a hang glider that you sit in with a huge fan to keep you going. We went one a time for 15 minutes over the falls with a pilot telling us about it. It was spectacular! We were able to see just how massive the falls really are from up there and even spotted a few hippos from the air! It was an absolute high light and was made even better by staying at a camp that night teaming with giraffes, zebras and impalas hanging out by our tents! Very epic day. The next day we arrived in Botswana and headed to Chobe National Park. This place is unbelievable it's a shame we only had 2 days here! It happened to be Australia day upon our arrival and with more than half our group originating from down under we celebrated in style. With a fully loaded cooler of beers and an Australian flag flying we headed out on a Chobe River boat ride. We entered Chobe park and were greeted by a lonely hippo. We got within a few feet before he got out of water and sprayed his shit all over the place to mark his territory. It was amazing to see him hulled out of the water right in front of us but could have passed on the poo. They look cute but are extremely dangerous so it was especially cool to see one up close. We continued our journey down river and found some impalas, water buffalo, crocodiles and a huge herd of hippos out of the water casually grazing on grass. No matter how much Discovery Channel and Planet Earth you watch (and I watch a lot) it's nothing compared to seeing these animals in the wild behaving normally. To finish the boat trip off we got up close and personal with an elephant taking a swim. Right after finishing the boat ride we hopped on a game drive. Everyone was feeling pretty good by this point and the cooler was considerably lighter. The party continued through Chobe National Park and we weren't disappointed! We got a first hand view of the huge elephants herds that make Chobe famous. At several points we could count over 50 elephants surrounding us! We accidentally scared one of the babies and got a good scolding from the mother who swung her trunk at us and charged a bit. We were in a large over-lander so our game driver wasn't concerned but I backed up a bit in my seat when she got close. The wet season in Botswana has it's challenges as far as spotting animals in the thick brush and the constant threat of rain. However it's worth it to see all the babies! Every animal was in baby mode, wart hogs, impala, elephants, hippos, too many babies to count! I think every 10 minutes someone would let out an 'awww' or 'super cute'! We were really hoping to see a lion on this drive but no luck. That night we stayed in Chobe exposed to the wild life. Our guide gave us a safety briefing that basically went 'if you really have to pee at night flash your light out, green eyes go ahead, fire eyes slowly back into your tent keeping the light shining on the eyes'. I held it to say the least! That night elephants, lions and hyenas could be heard around our camp, I don't think anybody slept very well but it was a really neat experience. 4:30am wake up call we packed up the tents, quick breakfast and out for another game drive. Our guide was really keen to find us a lion so we started tracking foot prints right away. We tracked it for long time until we eventually lost the prints in the bush. We headed out to try and find fresh prints when a call came in which resulted in us taking off down the game trail like a bat out of hell. We thought for sure another ranger had seen a lion but when we pulled up we were thrilled to discover it was actually African Painted Dogs! These dogs are extremely rare, so rare in fact many guides have never seen them! There are only 5000 left in the wold and we got to see 12 of them! They are one of the most successful hunters in Africa with more than 85% success rate! They lose around half these meals to larger predators in many cases however. We hung with them for a while as they trotted then rested and then trotted some more with breaks to play with sticks and be dogs. They cover vast areas of land this way. They were really cool to watch and made up for the lack of cat action so far in our trip! We continued our drive and saw jackals, kudu, more elephants, giraffes, and so much more! Chobe is by far our favourite park that we've been to. Our last stop on the tour was Zimbabwe at Victoria Falls. Zimbabwe is another extremely poor country. Not because there isn't wealth in the land but due to greedy leadership. In 2009 with massive inflation the country adopted the USD to replace the local currency. We went to an ATM to take out some cash and all of them in town were out. There were lines of people waiting for them to be refilled. It was a really crazy sight to see the locals lining up each day for the machines to be refilled. As we walked around the streets guys tried to sell us 50 billion dollar bills that are absolutely worthless now. It was pretty shocking and puts the value of cash into perspective. The highlight here is of course Victoria falls. The Zimbabwe side is much more impressive than the Zambia side to view from land. Walking distance from our camp were walking paths that show off the powerful falls. The walk is made up several stops each getting your progressively more wet. The views are spectacular with rainbows, huge sprays of water and the crashing sound of water. We've seen a lot of water falls including those in Iceland, Niagara and many more but nothing quite compares to Victoria Falls, it's super impressive! We had one extra day in Victoria Falls so we decided to give one more go at finding cats and booked a night time game drive at a private game reserve near our camp. There were just 8 of us on this drive and the game driver was fantastic! The private reserve is actually a black rhino breading sanctuary. The government permitted the land owner to do it after he installed electric fences around the 6000 acres of land to ensure the rhinos couldn't escape and poachers couldn't get in. They started with 2 females and 1 male now they're up to 11 black rhinos! We tracked one group of rhinos for a while, a mum, dad and baby through the bush. We found fresh tracks but lost them in the thick brush. We saw loads of animals but still no freaking lions! After 3 hours of game drive we had a bush dinner that was fantastic. By the time dinner was done it was totally pitch black out so our guide used a spot light to shine into the bushes looking for eyes. We saw many shiny eyes staring back at us but they all belonged to impalas. The game drive was great but disappointing when we didn't see a lion. This is where the band broke up. It was hard to say good bye we met fantastic people on this tour and got extremely lucky with our group!
We're now in Capetown for 2 weeks and have A LOT of really cool things planned! |
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